- Business Insider talked with 12 current and former employees at Reformation — the trendy "cool girl" brand beloved by celebrities — who allege the company perpetuated a culture of racism against Black employees.
- Staffers say Reformation was a "toxic" and "horrible" workplace under founder and CEO Yael Aflalo, who resigned on Friday.
- Black stockroom employees of the New York City flagship store said they felt segregated from their white associates and worked in a "dark, dingy, roach-infested" basement without functioning air conditioning and heat.
- "It seemed as if the thin, pretty, white girls were put out on the floor and everybody else was kind of kept in the back to do the hard work," said a former employee at Reformation's Los Angeles flagship store.
- Reformation declined to comment specifically on the allegations made in this story. In a statement to Business Insider, the company said it has started an internal investigation and "does not tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind."
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Krystal S. says she definitively vowed to quit her job at Reformation's New York City flagship store the day she was asked to clean up human feces from a dressing room using supplies she had to buy with her own money.
Her colleague, Enga D., says the last straw for her was when she overheard a manager remark that she and her colleagues in the stockroom, who were mostly Black, were "easily replaceable."
Both of these women — Black employees who formerly held inventory positions at the store and who requested to be identified by their first name and last initial — said their decision to depart Reformation came after months of enduring racist slights and microaggressions from management.
They quit in succession in late 2018 and early 2019.
Their stories are just two of many shared by employees this week, alleging a culture of deep-seated racism and discrimination they say stems from a culture set by Reformation CEO and founder Yael Aflalo, who resigned from the company on Friday.
"Over the past few years it has become clear to me that I am not the right person to lead a business of Reformation's size and scope," Aflalo wrote in her resignation statement. "On a personal note, I have long struggled with the public facing nature of my role and with managing our team. It is time for a change."
Elana Rosenblatt, Reformation's vice president of wholesale, also stepped down, according to a source close to the company. Reformation president Hali Borenstein will assume the role of chief executive.
Over the last decade, Reformation established itself as a "cool girl' brand, winning over legions of Instagram-savvy millennials with its sustainable patterned dresses and babydoll tops. However, according to 12 current and former Reformation employees working across its retail and corporate teams, systemic racism is entrenched deeply within the company.
These employees allege instances of racist comments, discriminatory hiring practices, and claimed the culture – one that they believed Reformation leadership perpetuated – stifled the career growth of its few Black employees.
Their employment statuses were verified using former pay stubs, images of schedules, or emails from Reformation management obtained and reviewed by Business Insider.
Their stories stand in contrast to the image Reformation cultivated over the years — that of a "conscious mega brand that proves fast fashion and sustainability can coexist," a company that would "revolutionize the fashion industry," Aflalo wrote in a journal entry in 2013, according to an article in the New York Times.
Reformation declined to comment specifically on the above incidents, as well as the following allegations made in this story. However, in a statement to Business Insider, the company said it has started an internal investigation and "does not tolerate racism or discrimination of any kind."
"We have launched an independent, third-party investigation to look into all of these allegations so that we can resolve these issues, take appropriate corrective actions and make sure that all employees feel comfortable and valued working here," Reformation said.
The fall of the 'conscious mega brand'
Since it was founded in 2009, Reformation has spent the last decade building a loyal fan base of young, stylish women. In 2019, the company was projected to exceed more than $150 million in sales, and today it boasts 17 stores internationally, an Instagram account with nearly 2 million followers, and celebrity fans including Taylor Swift and Emily Ratajkowski.
However, as Reformation's star grew in recent years, so did its critics. Complaints started to crescendo, bubbling up on social media, saying the company's design and marketing intended for only one type of woman — white, young, and thin.
According to several staffers who spoke to Business Insider, the company's outward obsession with this aesthetic — promulgated by a leadership team tightly operated by Aflalo along with Rosenblatt and Borenstein — seeped into every aspect of its internal culture and amplified widespread discriminatory behavior at Reformation for years.
Two incidents were widely critiqued on social media as offensive and racist: A series of photos from 2011 that emerged of Rosenblatt dressed in a burka for Halloween, and a 2014 Instagram post of Aflalo and Rosenblatt eating fried chicken with the caption "Happy Black History Month!!!"
Reformation declined to comment on these incidents.
A former digital marketing employee who left the company in 2019 described the culture as "toxic" and "horrible," with a pervasive "mean girls" attitude that emanated straight from the top executives, who frequently declined to use models of color.
This former staffer said Aflalo told the marketing team in meetings that Reformation doesn't use Black models because they "didn't perform revenue-wise." She recalled a meeting in which Aflalo blamed models of color for low click-through rates in emails or sales conversions on the site.
An employee currently working at Reformation headquarters said the marketing team is not only mostly white, but continues to almost exclusively cast white models.
"I see every model that walks in for a photoshoot and they are almost always white," she said. "I think that a huge part of the miss of Reformation is that we're not inclusive when it comes to our marketing. For me, the reason behind that is because we're not inclusive in our hiring."
According to self-reported information from Reformation, only 1% of the company's corporate team is Black.
The 'cool girl' company gets its reckoning
The concerns over allegations of racism made against the executive team first came to a head on Monday morning, when employees at its Los Angeles headquarters were summoned to an emergency all-company meeting.
The meeting came on the heels of a viral post by former retail employee Elle Santiago detailing her experience with the company before quitting in December of 2016. Santiago claimed that she was consistently passed over for promotions in favor of white employees, was treated dismissively, particularly by Aflalo, and started to develop panic attacks.
"If you want to change Reformation, start at the head with its founder Yael," Santiago wrote in her post. "Her mentality is why the leadership table at Ref has always looked like it has and has always treated Black & non-Black POC the way it has. Systemic racism. And not just POC were treated with disgust, but women not so trendy or not so skinny."
Santiago's post prompted shoppers to call upon retailers that carry Reformation to pull the brand from its shelves. In a response from Nordstrom's official Instagram account, the company wrote that it is looking into the claims, adding it "does not tolerate discrimination of any kind and that extends to our partners." (Nordstrom did not respond to Business Insider's request to comment.)
In response, Aflalo issued a public apology on the official Reformation Instagram account on June 7.
"Unfortunately, the way we have practiced diversity in the past has been through a 'White gaze' that falls too close to ignorance," Aflalo wrote. "I burn inside thinking about the sadness I inflicted. Please know that for me this was not about the color of your skin, it's about my shortcomings as a person."
The statement has been ridiculed by some on social media as empty and insincere. One Twitter user wrote: "The reformation apology quite literally reads 'I'm not racist I swear I'm just a really terrible person!'"
I knew Reformation was trash when I met the creative director separately at both my jobs and he was an asshole both times, also this from 2016 pic.twitter.com/4zXm4lyvGl
— Dakota (@reltubatokad) June 5, 2020
An employee who currently works at Reformation's headquarters and was in attendance for the all-company meeting on Monday described it as "disjointed" and "disappointing." In addition to sending an email that was a verbatim copy of Aflafo's Instagram apology in advance of the call, "it didn't seem like [Aflalo] had really prepared for anything" and "was all over the place."
According to the employee — who has worked at Reformation's headquarters for several years and spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity — morale at the company had been plummeting for months under Aflalo.
"She's made people's lives pretty terrible, and that's for everyone," the employee said. "She's a pretty equal-opportunity monster."
In an email to Business Insider sent before Aflalo's resignation, Santiago wrote that she felt that Aflalo promoted a culture of "degradation and neglect," in which company leaders are "more concerned with adhering to her than the betterment of their employees."
"The foundation at Reformation is rotted in prejudice and poor leadership. I cannot imagine it getting better as long as they want to only blame Yael's 'shortcomings as a person,'" she wrote. "Accountability goes for everyone who plays a role in the mistreatment of others. Employers need to take real responsibility for how they affect not only the livelihood but also the spirit of their employees."
'This is definitely segregation'
The stockroom employees at the New York City flagship store who spoke to Business Insider said they knew something was wrong from the very beginning of their time at Reformation. At orientation training sessions for new staffers held at Reformation's Lower East Side bridal location, front-of-house employees and back-of-house employees were given separate programs.
The back-of-house employees were almost exclusively composed of people of color.
"I thought at the time it was a little weird and coincidental that the only people doing major physical labor are two black men, eight black women, a Latin girl, and an East Asian girl," said Rian Phin, a former employee who worked at the New York flagship until early 2020, referring to the group of back-of-house employees at her Reformation orientation.
Phin was one of three Black employees who told Business Insider they had initially applied for different roles at the company, including sales associate positions, only to find themselves working in the stockroom. According to Phin, she had initially applied to a front of house position, yet when she received her paperwork it read "stock associate."
Still, Phin took the job, even if it wasn't what she had originally applied for. "The whole point was I moved to New York City hoping that I would be able to work for them. I thought, 'Okay, I'll take whatever I can do. I'm poor.'"
The divide only grew starker once they started their roles and discovered their new workplace was a "dark, dingy, roach-infested" basement, according to one former employee who requested anonymity. Above the basement, a gleaming storefront was staffed almost exclusively by white employees, the former employee said.
"From that moment, I said 'This is definitely segregation, tokenism, and size-ism, because upstairs is just so cookie cutter to a certain look," the employee said. "You had to be hip or 'approachable,' whatever they thought that may be."
Some former employees said they believed "approachable" at Reformation meant white, and manifested itself in the way that employees interacted with customers, including high-profile shoppers. Krsytal S. recalled one particular incident in which she says she was filling in for a front of house shift, when a Black woman entered the store and was completely ignored from the moment she walked in until the time she entered the dressing room.
"I remember working with her and helping her, because I had seen she was a person of color and I was like 'Wait, what? They're going to literally ignore her?'" Krystal S. recalled. "She ended up buying two dresses that were $250 and she was telling me she was going to the Grammys."
Musician SZA chimes in on Reformation pic.twitter.com/CHRtRkbTuG
— evie zamora (@rianphin) June 7, 2020
These stockroom employees said the job itself was not only physically strenuous, but also dangerous. The basement lacked proper ventilation and heat, and involved multiple trips up and down a "ladder that was not secured to the wall" through a narrow passageway that employees were constantly bumping their knees and heads on, according to Phin.
"Yael the CEO literally once banged her head on the ladder and stairs going up through the pass-through," Phin said."It's not possible for her to say she didn't know about the conditions we were in. She knew it was dangerous."
There was a similar divide in Reformation's Los Angeles flagship store, according to Charlie Emi Rose, a former sales associate at the store who left the company in 2019. Rose, who identifies as Asian but white-passing, said that while she never personally experienced racism, she thought the racial discrepancy between the sales and stock groups was "quite blatant" during her time at Reformation.
"It seemed as if the thin, pretty, white girls were put out on the floor and everybody else was kind of kept in the back to do the hard work and conditions weren't awesome," Rose said. "We had a plumbing issue one time, it lasted for about two months before they got it fixed. We couldn't use the restroom, we didn't have any water, and it smelled awful."
Concerns over issues like the broken bathroom in Los Angeles and a lack of proper heating and cooling in New York were brought to management in person multiple times and repeatedly dismissed, according to the employees Business Insider spoke to.
According to five former employees, in the summer months in the New York flagship, employees found ways to construct their own fans and create a breeze. In the winter, they worked in down parkas, as a thermometer at the top of the stairs regularly clocked the temperature at 20 degrees.
"There were times where not only did we work in our jackets and coats because it was so cold, but they encouraged us to bring our jackets and coats to work," Enga D. said. "They were fully aware of the conditions of the stock room."
After months of asking for proper heat, management installed a system which both Krystal S. and Enga D. said didn't work. After persistent non-responsiveness from upper management and corporate, Krystal S. said she began looking into filing a report with OSHA in hopes of finding guidance.
"It wasn't a concern for the non-colored employees because they were upstairs working on the heated build floor while most of the colored employees were downstairs in the cold basement," Krystal S. said.
Employees were asked not to discuss pay discrepancies
When the stockroom employees at the New York flagship, who made $14 an hour, heard they were making as much as $4 an hour less than their white front-of-house counterparts, they decided to raise their concern with their managers.
In an email obtained by Business Insider, a member of the management team told a store employee inquiring about the pay gap that she had not received a "merit increase" which is "based off of the employees [sic] yearly performance and contributions made to the business."
"This is an opportunity to reflect upon how you have contributed and to create an action plan on how you can move forward to improve your performance," the email reads. "In this instance because your performance in your current role does not meet expectations, you may not be eligible for a merit increase."
The email further asked that the employee cease discussing salaries with her colleagues, or else be subject to "disciplinary action."
"We request that these conversations and your pay rates are kept confidential and are not discussed with others within the Ref community," the email continued. "As you know, salaries are a very sensitive topic. We understand that questions may arise and should you wish to discuss further, your direct supervisor is your first point of contact."
Myah Hollis, a former employee of the Los Angeles flagship, said that she and her colleagues were similarly reprimanded for bringing up pay disparities at their store and asked not to do so again.
"There was a big issue around employees not being allowed to discuss our pay with each other after one employee found out she was being paid much less than a lot of the new hires, including myself," Hollis said.
An uncertain future for Reformation
Most of the employees Business Insider spoke to, who were interviewed before Aflalo's resignation, said that her apology felt like too little, too late.
"Unfortunately it's taken this movement to bring the racist behavior of Reformation to light, but it's not enough for them to just apologize," said Krystal S. of the New York flagship. "These types of things have consequences and they need to take proper amends towards the situation."
Santiago, the former employee who posted the viral Instagram that kickstarted the conversation around alleged racism at Reformation, stated in an interview with Business Insider days before Aflalo stepped down that she doubted removing the CEO would be enough to change Reformation.
"I truly believe all of HQ needs to be replaced," she wrote in an email. "Everyone there is complacent, everyone there knows the truth, and no one has ever said anything."
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