Imran Amed MBE |
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Born | Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
Occupation | entrepreneur, editor, lecturer, consultant, professional speaker |
Known for | Founding The Business of Fashion website |
Awards | MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire), CFDA Media Award in Honor of Eugenia Sheppard |
Imran Amed MBE is a Canadian-British fashion expert and founder and editor-in-chief of The Business of Fashion. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to fashion.
Amed was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta and is of Indian descent. Although not especially interested in fashion growing up, he did watch a fashion show on television hosted by Tim Blanks. Amed attended McGill University in Montreal, Quebec and after graduation worked as a management consultant. In 2000, he enrolled at Harvard Business School to complete an MBA. Upon graduation in 2002, he moved to London to work for McKinsey & Company, the global management consulting firm. He left McKinsey in 2006 to explore his interest in the fashion industry.
An industry outsider, Amed started writing a blog, "The Business of Fashion" about the fashion business in January 2007 from his sofa at home in London in the evenings, while consulting for fashion brands and emerging designers during the day. Prior to that, Amed had set up a company providing capital to designers, which lasted for a year. Soon, the blog attracted a global following of readers from around the world, and has since become a must-read for the global fashion industry. By 2013, The Business of Fashion blog had in his words "taken over my life". That year, Amed raised a seed round of funding and hired a team.
Amed has built a name for himself as an incisive interviewer. He has conducted interviews with some of the fashion world's biggest names including Karl Lagerfeld, Kate Moss, Giorgio Armani, Yohji Yamamoto, Raf Simons, Tom Ford, Tommy Hilfiger, Stella McCartney, Franca Sozzani, Natalie Massenet, Nick Knight, Dolce & Gabbana, and Jefferson Hack. He has also interviewed the CEOs of global fashion businesses including Kering, Chanel, Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Versace, Fendi, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Calvin Klein, Nike, Benetton, Lacoste, and Marc Jacobs.