Imran Amed

Imran Amed is a Canadian-British founder, CEO and Editor-in-chief of online magazine The Business of Fashion (BoF). Imran is considered one of the most influential figures in fashion.

Imran was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada and has been involved in fashion since 2007, when he started The Business of Fashion and has been expanding his blog ever since. Imran has been named to British GQ’s list of the 100 Most Influential Men in Britain, Indian GQ’s list of the 50 Most Influential Global Indians, British Vogue’s list of 25 New Fashion Faces to Watch, and Wired UK’s list of the 100 most influential figures in Britain’s digital economy. Likewise, he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to fashion.

Imran Amed was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He studied at the Harvard Business School from where he has a MBA and a B.Com from McGill University. Prior to become a fashion expert and entrepreneur, he was a management consultant at McKinsey & Co.

In 2007, he started writing a blog called The Business of Fashion (BoF) from his sofa just as social media and smartphones were about to explode onto the scene, new markets were rapidly emerging in China, India and Brazil, and the financial crisis threw the industry into a tailspin.

In 2011, Amed launched a bag design collaboration with British leather goods designer Bill Amberg.

It was in 2013, however, when his career really took off and he and his blog became a pre-eminent daily destination for the global fashion community.

That same year, after financing BoF independently, Imran raised a seed funding round, followed by a Series A round of funding in 2015, from a group of investors including Index Ventures, LVMH, Carmen Busquets and Felix Capital, who together hold a minority stake in the business.

In 2014, Imran was the youngest ever recipient of the Desautels Management Achievement Award at McGill University. In 2015, he was named Honorary Professor of Fashion Business at the Glasgow Caledonian University. In 2016, he was the recipient of the CFDA Media Award in Honour of Eugenia Sheppard for his work at The Business of Fashion.

Imran is an Associate Lecturer at Central St Martin’s College of Art & Design. He has sat on international fashion juries at The Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Belgium, the Festival d’Hyères in France, and Who Is On Next in Italy.

Imran has been named to British GQ’s list of the 100 Most Influential Men in Britain, Indian GQ’s list of the 50 Most Influential Global Indians, British Vogue’s list of 25 New Fashion Faces to Watch, and Wired UK’s list of the 100 most influential figures in Britain’s digital economy. Likewise, Imran was listed in Fast Company’s annual list of the Most Creative People in Business

In 2017, he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the New Year Honours for services to fashion.

Prior to that, Imran was the youngest ever recipient of the Desautels Management Achievement Award at McGill University. In 2015, he was named Honorary Professor of Fashion Business at the Glasgow Caledonian University. In 2016, he was the recipient of the CFDA Media Award in Honour of Eugenia Sheppard for his work at The Business of Fashion.