Hali Borenstein knew early on that she would end up in the retail sector, but took a detour before she got into the business. She started her career in consulting, at Bain & Company “to really just learn how to solve problems,” she says. After attending business school, she landed in merchandising at a children’s clothing company, where she says learned a lot, but eventually began thinking beyond the typical model.

“I was at this conventional company, where we were constantly talking about the average cost of a unit, and it was about getting that lower and lower, because you wanted to bring the product in cheap enough that you can promote it,” she says. “And I had this moment of like, how are we valuing labor? How are we valuing creativity? And it's kind of this downward cycle.” When the founder of fashion brand Reformation approached her about joining the company, she says she was excited about its unconventional model. “This idea of sustainability and putting people and planet first was really exciting to me, and felt fresh.” She joined as director of merchandising and over the past 11 years has worked her way up to the position of CEO, which she stepped into in 2020, a year after the company was acquired by private equity firm Permira.

Borenstein spoke with TIME late last year about Reformation’s plans for growth and sustainability, navigating tariffs, and collaborating with Monica Lewinsky.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Reformation has emerged as something of a cult brand, and there seem to be an increasing number of brands targeting a similar customer base. Consumers are also being bombarded with fast-fashion options online and in stores. How do you ensure that Reformation remains competitive in this landscape?

What is really core to our success is two things: Product and brand. First and foremost, we make incredible products that make our customers look and feel great. We survey our customers. Something like 80% or 90% report that we make them feel confident, which is something you don't [often] hear from a brand. And the amount of time we focus on fit, on quality—I try on every single garment we release personally, because I think it's so important that anything we offer feels unique and special and really makes our customer feel different than if they were in another garment. Most brands are just churning product out, or they're not really thinking about who they're servicing in terms of the fit and how we really ensure our customer looks and feel her feels her best consistently. We've enabled this through an incredible supply chain. It's geographically diverse and it's really fast. Over 50% of our product comes in 60 days or less. If your supply chain is 12 months out, you have to kind of be clairvoyant. Look into the future and say, leopard [print] is coming back, or red is the color of the season, but you get it wrong. Instead, we built this supply chain that is so nimble and responsive to what's going on around us that we can look at our customer, we can look at what's selling, we can look at the marketplace, make exactly that. So I think the product piece is super critical, and that you can't just retrofit the supply chain. That's what probably keeps us really unique and ahead of the pack.