In 2010, when a plucky upstart company called Warby Parker was launched by a group of classmates at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, the founders didn’t know that their idea of retailing eyeglasses on the internet — stripping out the middleman while simultaneously offering better value and capturing more of the retail margin — would become a playbook adopted by countless other DTC companies over the next decade.

Soon, a DTC revolution took the fashion industry by storm, fueled by billions of dollars in venture capital. There was only one problem. There was a fundamental disconnect between the expectations of venture investors and the economics of fashion, especially as acquiring customers through performance marketing became more and more costly.

This week our newsroom was abuzz with conversation about the excellent analysis by our correspondent Malique Morris on Parade, an underwear start-up once viewed as Gen-Z’s answer to Victoria’s Secret. The high-potential DTC company was disposed of in a fire sale to Ariela & Associates (which owns the license to Fruit of the Loom) earlier this year when it could no longer raise money to finance further growth.

Embedded in a carefully crafted statement Téllez provided to BoF are important words of advice for all would-be DTC fashion entrepreneurs. “In retrospect, it’s clear that the next generation of brands will be capitalised differently, and the era for market share-grabbing, fast-scaling start-ups is behind us,” she wrote.

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