Alum Spotlight: Melina Flabiano

In E.M. Forester’s novel, A Room with a View, there’s a sign with a quote that hangs outside of a character’s wardrobe. “Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.” The business world has traditionally been one such “enterprise.” But the days of shoulder pads and oversized blazers—as unforgettable as they were—appear to be drawing to a close. For Melina Flabiano (MPP ’13), this represents an opportunity to reimagine workwear for the modern-day professional woman.

Flabiano’s own experience with workwear revealed to her how limiting and uncomfortable professional women’s attire could be, “After I graduated from Batten, I worked for McKinsey & Company as a management consultant. I traveled a lot for work and had to spend significant money and time dry cleaning my clothes,” said Flabiano. “And I did not even like what I was wearing!”

It’s become increasingly common to see tech employees showing up to work in flip flops and hoodies a la Mark Zuckerberg, but at the same time, there is something to be said for the confidence that comes from dressing up for work. For women, who make up 47 % of the American workforce, the selection of clothing—for all shapes and sizes—remains sparse, drab, and often unexciting. Flabiano believes that comfort and style shouldn’t be mutually exclusive, and built Keaton to provide the solution.

Welcome, Keaton, Flabiano’s clothing start-up that she conceived while pursuing her M.B.A at Wharton (she will graduate this May). Flabiano will launch her first Keaton product, a workwear pant at the end of this month.

“A lifelong fashion lover, I wanted to dive deeper into the operational side of the fashion business, so I took a role in PANDORA’s Jewelry’s Strategy team,” said Flabiano. “I leveraged my Batten skills, such as macroeconomic analysis and survey development to answer questions like: what overseas markets are a good fit for our business? What type of in-store experiences keep customers coming back?”

Flabiano loves using experimental methods to test ideas, like changing an in-store fixture in a few stores to measuring the effect vs. a control group which she learned during her time at Batten.  

“I came to the Batten School because I wanted to better understand how and why people make decisions,” she said. “Batten’s curriculum is a great mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches to understanding this question.”  

This February, Keaton, will launch with its first product: a thoughtfully-designed work pant created with input from over 300 professional women.

“I was inspired to start this business because I see a significant shift in how women today approach the working world—there is a desire to express our personalities with style while being comfortable during our busy work days.”

The Keaton pant, which is machine washable, doesn’t wrinkle and has large pockets and is designed to be flattering to a range of bodies.

“At Batten, we focused a lot on the importance of listening to constituents when developing policy,” said Flabiano. “Similarly, the core of my business is listening to women and responding to what they need. I believe that the future of retail will be about developing more meaningful products that are able to solve real problems.”

Melina Flabiano (Schoppa) is a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences (BA ‘12) and Batten (MPP ‘13). She is currently finishing her MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. She is the founder of Keaton, a women’s workwear brand offering a thoughtfully-designed work pant created with input from 300 professional women. She is a Charlottesville native, lifelong fashion lover, dog mom, and mixology enthusiast. You can check out Keaton at www.wearkeaton.com