The Fashion Brand Clinic Podcast - Season 4 Episode 06: Silence Isn't A No: Why You Need The Audacity To Ask
Every fashion brand founder I've ever worked with has a list.
Sometimes it's written down, and sometimes it lives quietly in the back of your head. It holds the stockist you'd love to be in, the brand you'd give anything to collab with, the editor whose feature would change your year. And I'm not gonna lie, most of us deal with that list the same way. We work harder. We post more. We make the product better, the photos better, the website better, and we hope that one day somebody on the list notices.
Kira Matthews, who spoke at Fashion Marketing Live, has a much simpler theory, and it's slightly uncomfortable how right she is.
You only need two things
Kira runs Pitch School, a course on landing brand partnerships, and she's pitched Ganni herself. According to her, you don't need the flashy website or the massive ad budget. You need two things: know what you want, and have the audacity to ask.
The first is harder than it sounds, because nobody teaches us how to work out what we want. We get handed a menu of sensible options, and when they stop fitting (Kira compares it to a cashmere jumper that's been through the wash: small, itchy, wrong) we can spend years in the gap between "I don't want this" and doing something about it.
The second is where most of us fall over. Kira says there are two kinds of people: the one who won't tell the waiter they forgot the mashed potatoes, and the one that person asks to tell the waiter for them. The quiet ones know exactly what they want. They just try to overwork the ask and hope people get the hint. It's never worked.
Some ideas are just early
My favourite part of the talk is Fred van der Weij, the Dutch inventor of the air fryer. He built it in his basement over three years of nights, while his daughter lived on frozen chips and his wife considered divorcing him. Philips launched it in 2010, and it then sat in obscurity for years until the world changed and suddenly everyone wanted one.
Kira's point: if you judge your potential on what the world looks like right now, you miss out on everything your creativity has to give. Every idea starts as a scribble in a notes app and has to reach people with the influence, skills and money to build it. "If you're dreaming big enough," she says, "you will not be able to do it alone." So asking isn't a side skill. It becomes your biggest and best one.
Hold the belief for both of you
Then there's Ganni. In 2023 Kira got cheeky, tagged them in a story, someone replied, and her pitch started brilliantly: this is amazing, Kira, you're fantastic. Then it went cold. The email chain ended up as Kira talking to herself. "Hi, have you seen this? Hi, just following up. Hi."
We've all got that chain somewhere. What she took from it is what I most want you to take from this episode: when you're building something that doesn't exist yet, you sometimes have to hold the belief for both parties. You can't read silence as "I'm not worthy" or "they think I can't do it". Silence isn't a no. It's just silence.
Why it hurts so much (it's not just you)
So if asking is that simple, why do we avoid it? Kira brings in some science: the motivational triad from Dr Douglas Lisle's TEDx talk, The Pleasure Trap. We're wired to avoid pain, seek pleasure and conserve energy. In business terms:
Avoid pain. Rejection and failure register in the body like being punched in the face. That's roughly what an unanswered email feels like to your nervous system.
Seek pleasure. We want to be near the top of the social food chain, so even a one-to-one rejection triggers the "who do I think I am?" feeling.
Conserve energy. Familiar feels safe, so we repeat the same things, whether or not they work.
So when you feel like quitting, remember your brain may just be looking for relief. Separate what's happening to you emotionally from what the data says.
The fact vs story exercise
This came from a question in the room. What if you're completely riddled with self-doubt? Kira's answer is the bit to screenshot.
Take a clean page and draw a line down the middle. Label one column Fact and the other Story. Think of one thing you want to ask for.
Most people put things in the fact column that aren't facts. "My brand sucks" is not a fact. It's a story built on some data. Real facts are smaller: I don't know who to email. I'm not sure what to charge. The story is the heavy stuff: who am I to ask?
Then you treat the facts like a recipe. For a Victoria sponge it's flour, eggs, butter. Here it's: find out who the right person is, decide on a fee (Kira's example is £2,000), and send the email. It'll get you either the result you want or the lesson you need to get it next time.
And when they open the message but don't reply, do the exercise again. What's the data? You sent it three days ago. They might be busy. They might have just had a baby. And if you've sent one message to one person? As Kira put it: come on. That doesn't count.
🎧 Listen to Kira's full talk on The Fashion Brand Clinic Podcast, or watch it on YouTube.
And if you want to be in the room next time, Fashion Marketing Live is back on Monday 15 March 2027. The first one sold out in 24 hours, so join the waitlist → elizabethstiles.co.uk/2027-fashion-marketing-event
Be brave with your asks this week.
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