Natalie Massenet

When Natalie started talking to people about her idea for Net-a-Porter, the concept was ridiculed. No one believed that people would buy designer fashion online and the designers themselves wanted to keep their shop fronts on the streets, rather than on the internet.

Despite the naysayers, Natalie forged ahead with her idea for a luxury, online magazine that people could buy directly from. She raised £1.2m in start-up costs with help from her then husband, Arnaud Massenet, a French hedge fund manager and launched the site from her flat in 2000, changing the luxury retail world forever.

Natalie’s future in fashion was very much shaped by her early years. Her father was a journalist and her mother a Chanel model. She was born in Los Angeles and spent time living in Paris and Madrid when she was young, while her father worked as a foreign correspondent for United Press.

She would often return to the US with the latest fashions from Paris, wearing clothes her peers would be sporting in a year’s time – quickly understanding the power of trends. She studied English Literature at UCLA, got her first job writing for Women’s Wear Daily in LA before relocating to London, where she landed a job as Isabella Blow’s assistant at Tatler.

While at Tatler, Natalie picked up a brochure from Barclays that asked, “Are you an entrepreneur?” She started considering ideas for a side hustle. Her first idea was creating luxury candles, but her friends responded saying no one would pay more than a dollar for a candle. Her second idea, before Starbucks came onto the scene, was for a chain of coffee shops where you could sit and chat and listen to music with friends. Again, her friends scoffed at it.

She was on photoshoot when the idea for Net-a-Porter came to her. She realised that they were taking photos of clothes that no one could actually buy. Often the styles featured didn’t ever hit the shops, or did much later when the moment had passed. She thought it would be amazing to enable readers to click and buy when they saw something they loved.

Natalie’s first big challenge was building a retail website, something they had to plough all start-up capital into – given that it wasn’t really the done thing yet. Next she had to persuade designers to list their clothes online, something that seemed inconceivable at the time. An early breakthrough moment was when Natalie persuaded French designer Roland Mouret to sell his first collection on Net-a-Porter.

By 2004 the company was in profit and won “Best Fashion Shop” at the British Fashion Awards – a big deal for an online retailer at that time. In 2010, Massenet sold a majority stake in Net-a-Porter to Richemont for an estimated £50 million but remained executive chairman until 2015. During her tenure, she expanded the brand to include discount designer site, The Outnet, Mr Porter for menswear and Porter magazine.

Beyond Net-a-Porter, Massenet has been a powerful advocate for British fashion. She served as chair of the British Fashion Council from 2013 to 2017, helping to raise its international profile and support emerging designers. In 2018, she co-founded Imaginary Ventures with Nick Brown, a venture capital firm investing in digitally native brands. They started with a fund of $75m to invest in the likes of Glossier and Reformation.