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When Vanessa Barboni Hallik decided to launch a fashion brand while on a sabbatical back in 2017, she only knew one person working in the industry (“my college ex-boyfriend’s sister”). Still, the former Morgan Stanley managing director knew there was a gap in the market that she could fill, after becoming keenly aware of fashion’s enormous impact on the planet.
“I was just blown away by the magnitude of the problem,” she tells Vogue via Zoom from New York. “I really thought there was an opportunity for a new brand to model what the future could look like, while simultaneously delivering something to the customer that they really loved.”
She wasn’t wrong. Since launching in 2020, Another Tomorrow has quickly developed a loyal fanbase, with customers in 56 countries all around the world. A-list fans include the likes of Angelina Jolie (who recently wore the Doppio Boatneck Dress), Meghan Markle and Gwyneth Paltrow, along with Jessica Chastain, Ava DuVernay and Courteney Cox.
“We really think about the woman who wants to wear the clothes, not let the clothes wear her – it’s the clothes bringing out their best selves,” Barboni Hallik says of the brand’s design DNA. “It’s really this minimal but strong and sensual aesthetic that I felt could really serve a wide range of women.”
From the get-go, Another Tomorrow was founded with three core pillars in mind: people, environment and animals. “It was really important to me that we addressed all three. It’s quite weird to say ‘I’m going to source environmentally friendly [materials] but I’m not going to pay my manufacturers living wages.’ To me it was just completely inconsistent.”
To that end, the brand ensures that all its manufacturers pay living wages to their workers – a move that, unfortunately, is still rare in the industry (according to the Clean Clothes Campaign, 93 per cent of brands don’t pay their garment workers living wages). Meanwhile, Barboni Hallik wanted to ensure that no materials used required the “harming or killing of animals”, meaning there’s no leather, conventional silk, down or exotic skins.
From an environmental perspective, the brand uses certified materials like organic cotton, recycled cashmere, and responsible wool, as well as working closely with suppliers to reduce its footprint across the supply chain. “The impact starts at the fibre origin,” Barboni Hallik continues. “But we really want to have, wherever we can, relationships back to the farm level, so we really understand the impact.”
Circularity, too, is crucial. Another Tomorrow was an early adopter of digital ID technology, which not only offers transparency to customers about how their garment was made, but also allows them to easily resell their garments via the brand’s authenticated resale programme. Customers can also exchange their garment for another size within one year of the item’s purchase date if their body changes shape.
All of this fits into Another Tomorrow’s philosophy of creating clothes that will stand the test of time, which is why the brand launched its core collection, named The Foundation, over the summer. “We wanted to articulate to our customer: here’s a place you can come and build the foundations of your wardrobe,” Barboni Hallik says, adding that the line is largely made up of pieces that the brand launched with. “It has the denim, the trousers, the jackets, the perfect T-shirt.”
Barboni Hallik has already set her sights on the next goal: expanding the circularity side of the business so it can offset the production of new products. Plus, she hopes to launch accessories for the first time, after finally finding a suitable plastic-free, bio-based leather alternative. “We really believe the product has to be perfect, so we didn’t want to rush it,” she explains.
While moving from the world of banking to fashion might seem unorthodox, it’s clear that it’s shaped how Barboni Hallik sees the clothes in our wardrobes. “We really wanted to treat clothing as an asset, which means that it has to have a sense of longevity, impeccable quality, but also some level of timelessness in the design,” she says, adding: “We feel like we’ve built something of value, both for the customer and for the industry.”
