default-output-block.skip-main
BoF Logo

The Business of Fashion

Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.

Partner Content

Drive Season 2, Episode 4: Noah Founder Brendon Babenzien on ‘Taking Greed Out of the Equation’

Brendon Babenzien’s menswear brand Noah focuses on values and collaboration instead of profit margins and competition.
Brendon Babenzien, Founder and Creative Director of Noah, for Drive.
Brendon Babenzien, Founder and Creative Director of Noah, for Drive. BoF.
Delivered by
The author has shared a Podcast.You will need to accept and consent to the use of cookies and similar technologies by our third-party partners (including: YouTube, Instagram or Twitter), in order to view embedded content in this article and others you may visit in future.

Subscribe here to never miss an episode.

In this new season of Drive, BoF's entrepreneurship podcast series delivered by DHL, we've been hearing from some of fashion's most dynamic leaders on how they have chosen to adopt sustainable solutions to the businesses they founded.

This week, BoF’s chief New York correspondent Lauren Sherman sits down with Brendon Babenzien, founder of menswear brand Noah. Following his long-term tenure as Supreme’s design director, Babenzien and his wife Estelle Bailey-Babenzien relaunched Noah in October 2015, after a 10-year hiatus. Babenzien identifies his brand as a “responsible,” rather than a sustainable brand, with a broad range of values-driven campaigns aligning it with organisations that share similar values as they do, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, Standing Rock Preservation and Ocean Against Plastic for Wildlife.

“We’re going to make the best product we can make in countries where we know people are looked after at work, where they’re not forced to work long hours, where they get vacation time and healthcare and all these things,” Babenzien tells BoF.

Babenzien, who has no formal design training, sees his work as “a form of cultural connectivity,” and is seeking to build a community around his brand that can interact with it independent of sales and consumption. “Once you take greed out of the conversation, it opens up all kinds of incredible opportunities to have an interesting business. Of course, we want to be financially viable so we can support ourselves… but enjoying it, feeling good about the things we’re doing… making sure that our success is other people’s successes. That’s what’s important to us,” he continues.

“If every business, every person in business, did little things, then the world would be a much better place. I can’t prove that… but I believe in it, so I’m doing it.”

To subscribe and never miss episode of Drive, please follow this link.

Subscribe to BoF Professional for unlimited access to BoF articles, plus exclusive benefits for members. For a limited time, enjoy a 25 percent discount on the first year of an annual membership, exclusively for podcast listeners. Simply, click here, select the Annual Package and use code PODCAST2019 at the checkout.

In This Article

© 2022 The Business of Fashion. All rights reserved. For more information read our Terms & Conditions

More from Luxury
How rapid change is reshaping the tradition-soaked luxury sector in Europe and beyond.

The brand on Monday revealed its 2023 “Blue Book” collection of high jewellery, a series of intricate pieces priced upwards of $75,000 that marks the brand’s first high jewellery collection since bringing on former Cartier designer Nathalie Verdeille as chief artistic officer in 2021, as well as the first collection fully developed under LVMH.




Creative director Giovanna Engelbert has rolled out a colourful, more exuberant aesthetic and enlisted fashion heavy-hitters like Steven Meisel and Pat McGrath as the Austrian crystal-maker seeks to return to profitability by boosting its presence in fine jewellery.


view more

The Business of Fashion

Agenda-setting intelligence, analysis and advice for the global fashion community.
CONNECT WITH US ON
Discover the Key Themes That Will Define the Global Beauty Industry
© 2023 The Business of Fashion. All rights reserved. For more information read our Terms & Conditions, Privacy Policy and Accessibility Statement.
Discover the Key Themes That Will Define the Global Beauty Industry