Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jacqueline Rabôt. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jacqueline, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
RABÔT is a womenswear brand reimagining sustainable luxury clothing. I founded RABÔT with the intention of creating a different kind of fashion company, My goal was to create a brand bigger than clothing. I wanted to foster change and create positivity through fashion.
Since launching in January 2020, we’ve created the following activations, among many others:
-The Female Portrait Series is a project where we highlight inspiring LA-based female creatives.
-The Sunny Stuffies are stuffed suns made of leftover RABÔT fabrics which we donate to children at the East LA Women’s Shelter.
-We hosted an art auction with 12+ female artists in October 2020 where we raised money for the California Fire Foundation.
-For each collection, we give a percentage of profits to local charities.
-We save all of our fabric scraps and create patchwork silk pillows that we donate to local shelters.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
Each season, RABÔT collaborates with a female artist to create a custom artwork that we transfer to a large silk scarf. The scarf and the artist act as the inspiration behind the rest of the collection in regards to color and silhouette.
Collaboration and highlighting other females work is so important at RABÔT. I launched the Rabôt Female Portrait Series in April 2021, a project which highlights inspiring creative LA-based females. We launched this project in April 2021 and have since highlighted 85+ women. A project so intimate, we capture the subjects on film in their homes or places of work. We’re so proud of what this project has become and how we can shine a spotlight on the females shaping the creative landscape of Los Angeles.
I want to be a beacon for community and uplift creative people. That’s how I get inspired and I think others will find inspiration from that too.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Before I started RABÔT, I worked as a designer at large corporate fashion companies. We always built larger collections, with the intention of giving the customer choice. I thought that was the industry norm, and what I should be implementing at RABÔT.
I learned that it’s more important as a small brand to offer more niche, specialty styles. Because the industry is saturated with fashion brands, it’s more important to offer unique product with a strong POV, and less important to have a large product offering.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I quit my full-time job as a designer at LA-based denim brand, Current/Elliott in January 2020 to launch RABÔT. I built a fall/winter collection and hopped on a plane to NYC and Paris to present the collection with my sales team in March 2020. Little did I know, most of the population would be quarantining in their homes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I quickly pivoted from selling silk dresses, to creating face masks out of fabric scraps. With each face mask sold, our team hand-wrote poems and created mini artworks to send to healthcare workers at hospitals.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://shoprabot.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rabotworld/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rabotworld
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@rabotworld
Image Credits
Jacqueline Rabôt Portrait – Photographer: Zhenya Minaeva RABÔT FW23 Lookbook Imagery – Photographer: Jasmine Rutledge RABÔT FW22 Lookbook Imagery – Photographer: David Dorcich