Workwear brand Argent helps women in all fields break the glass ceiling

Ninety-nine percent of partnership opportunities offered by the nine-year-old women's fashion workwear brand Money consider never getting a yes. We've been really intentional about our collaborations, says CEO and founder Sally Christeson.

Argent sells a functional range of pants, blazers, dressy tops, outerwear and other clothing for working women through an online store and select brick-and-mortar stores.

Argent's leadership, Christeson explains, wants to ensure that any alliance features a force multiplier of brand influence: Impact on women, basically, she said. Period.

If the qualified majority is suitable

So this is something that New York-based Argent has firmly pursued and signed a groundbreaking agreement in 2020 with all 4 million members. majority majority. The slogan of the non-profit association is: A woman can be ignored. Two women can be fired. But nothing can stop the thousands of women working together.

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Supermajority provides resources, training, and education to help women, especially young women and women of color, become leaders of change in their communities.

The supermajority is about getting women to vote, Christeson explains. Remember, she says, that women make up the majority of the population in the United States. We are the supermajority. And yet, she says, some elected officials have failed to represent women. What politicians don't realize, Argent says, is that women are the most powerful voting bloc in the country. Together, let's prove it.

As a visual partner in the ongoing collaboration with Supermajority, Argent developed an iconic pink costume. It was the perfect representation of the two organizations' shared mission: to encourage women to vote in every election and realize their collective power to shape democracy.

Several candidates and many voters have worn the costume during campaigns and election days (#VotingSuitsYou). We helped create and thoughtfully leverage popular platforms to amplify and celebrate female ambition. Period.

This partnership, according to Christeson, truly serves Argent's objectives and strengthens the loyalty of our target customer base.

Shaping and financing a movement

It's not that Christeson and Argent are making purely business decisions. Christeson, in fact, is something of a political influencer as much as a CEO; she is trying to change the world for women and to help women as a bloc change the world. It works, at all levels.

And Argents prospers. The private venture capital company raised $4.06 million in a subsequent Series VC A1 funding round in April 2023. It raised $5.05 million during its 2018 funding round.

In addition to traditional financing, Argents is fortunate to benefit from the support of a community of angel investors: Stitch Fix CEO and founder Lake Katrina; Co-founder of One Kings Lane Ali Pincus; model, actress and founder of Finery, Brooklyn Decker; Husband of Deckers, last man to win the Grand Slam, tennis champion Andy Roddick; and the founder of Broadway Angels, Sonja Hoel Perkins.

It starts and ends with what women wear

Christeson grew up in South Carolina. She studied business and finance as an undergraduate, then changed direction and earned her international MBA from the University of South Carolina's Moore School of Business in 2012, where she focused on the retail chain. 'supply. This program included a passage to the famous Goethe Institute in Berlin, which allowed me to land a job at Daimler Financial.

When she returned to the United States, it was to work in Silicon Valley. She has worked at Cisco and Johnson & Johnson. And through all these experiences, she insists, it was obvious that the working woman was very underserved. She was an afterthought, especially sartorially. Every woman will tell you that. This has been a problem shared by all peer groups, at all levels.

But I think I resisted, admits Christeson. I was reluctant to start a clothing company. But around 2015, Christeson read a study proving that women are judged on their appearance as much at work as anywhere else. Seems obvious, right? But this study, and several others since, have quantified the impact from what you wear to your financial results, over the course of your life, it's pretty important. This surprised and disconcerted her.

In fact, some recent longitudinal research shows that women today earn just 49 cents on the typical men's dollar. That's far less than the 80 cents often reported, according to a new study of Women's Policy Research Institute.

So, Christeson says, I wanted to create Argent because I believe in the power of brand. I think brands, when they're successful, have a platform they can use to drive change. She began to bring together successful, powerful and elegant women. Work friendssuch as Anjali South, CEO of Tubi who, along with Christeson herself, was able to model professionalism in a way that had never been done. Starting with Reworking the dress code.

Christeson decided to take all of these successful women and bring them into our brand, integrate them into the storytelling and really evolve that to the point where we were celebrating these women and giving tools to our community that allow them to really navigate in the job market, remove barriers for them and simply be a resource. This includes expert style advice.

Argent sees itself as solving the style dilemmas of women's workwear, with the help of the most inspiring and fashion-savvy women in the community. The Work Friends team, which includes women who are shaping the future of their professions, such as journalism, production and business leadership, is a central part of Argent's ongoing mission to empower women through to workwear designed to level the playing field in the office.

Bold changes and subtle touches

If your image of business women reminds you of the big-shouldered suits and voluminous jackets of Tess (Melanie Griffith) and Cynthia (Joan Cusack) or the slimmer ones (real power) costumes of Katherine (Sigourney Weaver) in A hard worker, Argent has a message for you: Work is evolving, but our clothes are struggling to keep up. We know: Silver is the result of years of searching and failing to find clothes with the attitude and ambition that match ours.

Take the jacket. You've seen women complain about not having pockets since the dawn of time, Christeson complains. I think it has to do with the fact that fashion has been driven by men. So Silver includes interior pockets in all our blazers. Silver outfits include stylus pockets for pins, stamps and lip gloss, says Christeson. We have bands on the sleeves of our blazers, so when you push the sleeves back, it keeps them in place. Same thing in our long-sleeved blouses.

It's just these little subtleties that streamline a woman's daily life, but also allow her to avoid some of the microaggressions that arise.

What is the right wardrobe for today's woman? This differs, obviously, given the diversity of women's bodies, tastes and styles, not to mention their jobs and the cultures of their different workplaces. But a Silver set will always possess an unapologetic attitude, boldness and ambition, says Christeson. I think these are all words that really capture the brand and our customers.

No matter the job, the location, the season, Christeson says, Argent workwear will be functional and fashionable, for those who take charge, make noise and break the glass ceiling.