Quotes from Imran Amed

I love nothing better than immersing myself in different street cultures; exploring all those neighbourhoods in Tokyo was quite amazing, or visiting Morocco to see an Inditex factory.

Know your target audience. Always keep them at the forefront of your mind. Understand their lifestyle and what they are looking for. Gather their feedback and use it to tailor your approach. The voice of the consumer is an essential input into the development of any fashion business or blog.

Growing up in Canada, I used to love a walk in the early morning, when the streets are quiet and the sun was shining. Walking in the morning is still very refreshing... and if I can, I will walk to my first meeting or appointment.

It's not like I ever sat in my room and said I was going to start a media company and become an editor in chief. It was never my dream. It was something that just happened.

Frankly, I don't understand the monthly magazines that continue to publish news that is two months old and which has already been reported on ad nauseam online, including on their own websites.

Not everyone can be successful selling fashion at $25,000 for a wedding outfit. Certain designers are able to do that. And there is only a certain amount of consumers who can do that. The real opportunity is in that $25 garment.

Fashion is not art. Fashion is a business that requires discipline and attention to detail and very organized systems of logistics and operations and processes. But even with the most smoothly oiled machine to manage the business, without creativity, fashion could not exist.

My parents landed in Calgary in December 1974, straight from Nairobi. They were immigrants, like many people coming to build a better life. My mom was five months pregnant with me when they landed.

The power structures in fashion used to be limited to western Europe and the States. That's changing.

Fashion is an industry of action, not discussion.

Combining technology and fashion shouldn't be about PR gimmicks - they should genuinely enhance the experience of buying, owning and experiencing a luxury product.

I'm not a designer, nor do I fancy myself a designer.

The way the media tends to cover fashion is as this superfluous, vacuous industry. They focus on models and shows, but behind all that is a massive global industry.

One of my closest friends was a half-black, half-Jewish girl. Another good friend had a shaved head... but I was also friends with jocks. I was a 'floater,' I guess you could say.

Although he's no longer with us, Steve Jobs is still inspirational to me, as he managed to find the balance between right brain/left-brain thinking that is crucial to building a creative technology business.

Fashion for a long time was very elitist and difficult to get access to. The access I can now provide to my readers live from fashion shows with my iPhone was never, ever possible before.

I realised I had to work in something creative, but with a business and global element. And that I had to do it while I was still young and had an appetite for risk.

I had long had an instinct about there being a role for me in a creative industry. Maybe I didn't listen to that voice as much earlier on, but when it had become a deafening sound in my head I realised I had to go and explore it.

The most fascinating part is how fashion just attracts all these social rejects, if you will, from around the world, encourages individuality. They're the people who make the industry tick.

Digital has really made the fashion industry a lot more transparent. So people can see and understand how the industry really works, and participate in an industry that was very inaccessible to people. The only thing that people used to see before was the end product. Anyone can participate in it now.

A whole series of events pushed me towards meditation, and now it's become such an integral part of the way I manage myself. It's a tool for me; when you're an entrepreneur, and you're pulled in every direction, it is wonderful to have this discipline.

For someone who comes from my business background, getting fashion people aligned around certain things can be a challenge. In a way, the industry is so forward-looking. And yet, sometimes people in fashion are not open to change.

I could have probably built a great career in management consulting, but one of the insights that I had early on is that just because you're good at something doesn't mean that you should continue to do it. Somewhere in my heart of hearts I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do.

In the daytime, I was studying at school and in the evenings, I was a stage kid. I was trained in theatre and public speaking. I was a really active kid.