The Essay is an independent consultancy based in New York, focused on merchandising, buying, retail strategy, and brand activations.
Founded by Lindsay Chang, the practice draws on over a decade of experience across luxury retail and fashion. Prior to establishing TheEssay, Lindsay was Head Buyer at Rick Owens and La Garçonne, and Director at Atelier New York. She is a graduate of Parsons School of Design.
An essay is, by definition, a short, structured piece of prose writing that presents an author's personal argument, analysis, or interpretation of a specific subject. Derived from the French essayer — "to try" — it functions as an attempt to explore ideas.
We like to work like editors. Editing, shaping, refining, and consolidating ideas into decisions that can actually move a business forward.
We advise brands and founders navigating periods of growth, transition, or strategic change. Most engagements begin when existing decision-making frameworks are no longer sufficient for the scale or complexity of the business.
We take on a small number of engagements each season.
Tell us a little about what you are working on —
The Essay LLC is a small independent consultancy based in New York. We collect limited information in order to correspond with you, understand potential engagements, improve the site, and operate the practice. We do not sell personal data. This policy explains, in plain language, what we collect and why.
Information you provide. Your name, email, organization, and message contents when you write to us or fill in the contact form.
Information collected automatically. We may collect basic technical and usage information, such as page views, referrer, approximate location, browser, device type, and standard server logs. This information is used for analytics, security, diagnostics, and site performance.
We use what you send us to reply, discuss a potential engagement, and — once we are working together — deliver the work. We use analytics in aggregate to understand how the site is used and how it can be improved. We do not use your information to train models, build advertising profiles, or process it beyond these purposes.
We share information only with the service providers that allow the practice and website to operate, including email, analytics, hosting, security, and site infrastructure providers. We do not share your information with advertisers or data brokers. We may disclose information where required by law.
This site may use cookies and similar technologies for basic functionality, analytics, security, performance, and user experience. These may include first-party cookies and limited third-party services that support the operation of the site. We do not use cookies for third-party advertising.
Correspondence is retained as long as reasonably needed for the engagement, our records, and legitimate business purposes, and may be deleted on request where applicable. Analytics data is generally reviewed in aggregate or non-identifying form.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or restrict our processing of your personal data, to object to processing, and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. To exercise any of these, write to theessayllc@gmail.com and we will aim to respond within a reasonable timeframe.
The Essay is committed to building a website usable by everyone, regardless of ability, device, or assistive technology. Accessibility is a discipline of editing — clear hierarchy, sufficient contrast, generous targets, prose that can be read by ear as well as by eye. We treat it the same way we treat the rest of the work.
This site is designed and maintained with reference to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, Level AA. Conformance is targeted across public pages.
We work continuously to identify and resolve accessibility issues. At present we are aware of the following: the italic display serif used for the wordmark is intentionally low-contrast in weight — color contrast meets AA, but very small italics may read more slowly for some users. Third-party platforms we link to are outside our control and may have their own accessibility characteristics.
If something on this site is difficult to use or broken with your assistive technology, write to theessayllc@gmail.com with a short description of the issue, the page involved, and your browser or assistive technology. We aim to acknowledge within five working days. If any content is unavailable in a format that works for you, we will provide it in another format — plain-text, large-print, or read aloud over a call — at no cost.