fit alumni holiday party

Laure Heriard Dubreuil In Conversation with Joe Zee

Event Details

Monday, December 5, 6–8 pm

The Webster Los Angeles

Beverly Center, 8500 Beverly Blvd., Unit 157

Los Angeles, CA 90048

Celebrate the holiday season with fellow alumni at the official FIT alumni holiday party hosted at The Webster!

The highlight of the evening will be an exclusive conversation between two visionary FIT alumni: The Webster owner Laure Heriard Dubreuil and stylist, journalist, and producer Joe Zee.

Ticket price includes entrance to the event, specialty cocktails/mocktails, hors d'oeuvres and a special gift bag.

Laure Heriard Dubreuil, Founder and CEO of The Webster

Laure Heriard Dubreuil opened The Webster in South Beach, Miami in June 2009 after relocating from Paris with a vision for a store that offered warmth, comfort, personality, and the best of international fashion.

Heriard Dubreuil grew up in Paris and Cognac, France. Her love of the sun and water comes from holidays spent in Corsica. Her love of fashion evolved from a longtime passion for becoming a nose and developing fragrances—a slow, painstaking process. Craving something more fast-paced, she turned to fashion.

After earning degrees in business and Mandarin from the University de Paris Dauphine, Heriard Dubreuil moved to New York City to study merchandising at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She worked on Nicolas Ghesquiere's merchandising team at Balenciaga and went on to be Stefano Pilati's head merchandiser at Yves Saint Laurent.

Heriard Dubreuil's history with the top French luxury houses initially helped her secure access to the most sought-after brands, such as Balenciaga, Balmain, and Celine, for The Webster. Yet it was the store's happy, vibrant, residential atmosphere and Heriard Dubreuil's rule-breaking attitude toward merchandising and organizing collections not by the designer but as one gigantic dream closet that continued to lure elite brands and clients. Chanel, Gucci, Off-White, and Paco Rabanne are just a few of the houses that have done exclusive creative partnerships and capsule collections with The Webster. The store now carries more than 200 fashion and accessory labels, including Heriard Dubreuil's own line, HD, a home collection done in collaboration with Parisian interior designer Stephane Parmentier, and most recently, the addition of a beauty vertical.

The Webster now has nine boutiques with locations in South Beach, Houston, Bal Harbour, Costa Mesa, New York City's SoHo, Los Angeles, Montecito and Toronto, which is their first international store. In January 2022, The Webster opened their first domestic-based pop-up in Palm Beach. Heriard Dubreuil lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Aaron Young, and their children Marcel and Marguerite. In 2015, she became an ambassador for Mothers 2 Mothers, a global nonprofit dedicated to eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa through education, medical support, and financial empowerment for HIV-positive women and children. 

Joe Zee, internationally acclaimed TV producer, host and style expert, and fashion industry veteran

Zee’s impressive resume features leadership roles at mega fashion publications including creative director at ELLE Magazine (US) and editor-in-chief and executive creative officer at Yahoo! Style. Zee’s trusted fashion expertise has earned him roles on top broadcast programs, including the role of resident judge on Canada’s Stitched and Oscar’s pre-show coverage for ABC’s Good Morning America, as well as on-air contributions to NBC’s TODAY, CNN, Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight. 

Zee has worked with some of the fashion world’s most important image-makers, including Annie Leibovitz, Juergen Teller, and Patrick Demarchelier. Zee also has versatility, offering his styling expertise to brands from Chanel to Banana Republic. Additional career accomplishments include Zee’s role as producer for the hit Netflix series 7 Days Out, and personally penned memoir titled That’s What Fashion Is: Lessons and Stories from My Nonstop, Mostly Glamorous Life in Style, published in 2015.

Zee was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Toronto. Zee moved to New York to pursue a career in fashion, attending the Fashion Institute of Technology, and is currently based in L.A. He first broke into the industry when he charmed the legendary stylist Polly Mellen at Allure magazine into hiring him as her assistant, after which he became the magazine's market editor.