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Its a damp February afternoon in Tribeca. Arbiters of style from around the world are jostling for front-row seats at New York Fashion Week. But Carmen Busquets, arguably one of the greatest fashion visionaries of them all, is not among them. Instead, the Venezuelan entrepreneur is sharing her thoughts about the future of luxury from a sofa in her apartment a few streets away.

I used to go to a lot of shows, says the Net-a-Porter founding investor, tucking a Gucci-sneakered foot under a silk-trousered leg as she sips a Cuban coffee. But Im less and less interested in the kind of fashion where dictators say, Here you are, these are the real fashions, this is in and this is out.

She also refuses to buy fashion magazines, disliking their promotion of unhealthy ideas about physical perfection. In fact, she confesses: I dont think Im a true fashion person. Im more interested in the stories behind peoples lives.

You might not expect such admissions from someone who has made a fortune from fashions next big things. But many things about Busquets are unexpected. For those in the fashion world, her name is synonymous with luxury and profit; for those who know her, she embodies seemingly opposite priorities, such as sustainability and detachment from material possessions.

Her web of businesses has its main centres in London and New York; her main homes are in Verbier, Barcelona, Paris and Miami. (This is just a short-term let, she explains, gesturing at the curved glass walls of the Herzog & de Meuron-designed apartment she rents with her boyfriend, the television executive John Skipper; the same applies to their pied--terre in London.)

Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet (left) and Carmen Busquets.Credit:Courtesy of Carmen Busquets

Her public persona is that of a slightly ditzy fashionista; in fact, she has one of the sharpest brains in business. And while her partial deafness means that she has an idiosyncratic way of speaking all three of her languages (I speak Carmenese, she jokes), she is an inspiring communicator.

Most of her successes have been achieved behind the scenes. She started investing in internet companies in the 1990s, sold just before the tech bubble burst in 2000, and used the profits to double down on her main remaining investment, in Natalie Massenets Net-a-Porter. By the time it was sold to Richemont, in 2010, she had achieved a 1600 per cent return on her investment, and received another big payday in 2015 when it was merged with Yoox in a 1.45 billion ($2.66 billion) deal.

By then Busquets was well into her next wave of investments. CoutureLab, which sells luxury products made by artisans and craftspeople around the world, was launched in 2006 and evolved into an investment vehicle now subsumed into carmenbusquets.com for disruptive start-ups in fashion and luxury.

Since Net-a-Porter, she has invested more than 50 million in fashion-tech companies that include Farfetch, Moda Operandi, The Business of Fashion, PS Dept, Lyst, Figue and Flowerbx creating more than 10,000 jobs and a portfolio of non-traditional ventures whose trophy brands include Cult Beauty (curated beauty products) and Maison de Mode (luxury ethical fashion).

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Her recent emphasis has been on sustainability. Fashion is one of the worlds most profligate industries, generating more than 400 billion of wasted clothing each year. Busquets-backed ventures such as Armarium (online fashion rentals), Flont (jewellery rentals), Unmade (bespoke knitwear) and Villageluxe (peer-to-peer fashion sharing) suggest a way forward that is not predicated on further overproduction.

It sounds idealistic, but in 2018 it earned Busquets an award from the United Nations-linked Fashion 4 Development group for recalibrating the fashion industry to the benefit of people and planet. She has also proved herself, yet again, to be ahead of the commercial curve. Bain & Co forecasts that in five years rentals will account for 45 per cent of the luxury market.

Who is this woman, who senses so surely the pull of fashions big currents? Born in 1965, she grew up in Caracas, the eldest daughter of two political exiles. Her father, a metallurgist, fled Francos Spain after the civil war. Her mother, a social anthropologist, fled Cuba after Castros revolution. Both understood, and emphasised, the transience of material possessions. They knew you could lose everything.

Busquets father became one of Venezuelas leading industrialists; the family became wealthy. But their real interest was in values I think the first word I learnt was freedom and in spiritual matters. The couple were disciples of the mystic philosopher George Gurdjieff, and their children three girls and a boy learnt to meditate from an early age.

Carmen was a quiet, thoughtful child. When she was 12, she told her father, We need to talk, adult to adult and demanded that, to become my own self, she should be sent to boarding school. She was: first to a Sussex convent (Hogwarts without the magic), which soon expelled her, then to a school in Toronto, where she became a fitness fanatic and, for a while, struggled with anorexia. It took her 30 years to resolve the underlying body dysmorphic disorder.

I dont think Im a true fashion person. Im more interested in the stories behind peoples lives.

Despite this, she says, I was a happy teenager. But I didnt fit in. Much later, she learnt why. In addition to her partial deafness (spotted in her late teens after her younger sister was found to have the same problem), she suffered from severe dyslexia (diagnosed in her 40s, at the prompting of a friend with a dyslexic son). The combination hampered her interaction with the world around her. I just dont hear that much. I missed a lot of things.

She learnt to express herself through fashion and painting, and won a scholarship to study art at Parsons School of Design in New York, but instead, at her fathers insistence, went to the University of Miami, where she partied hard and studied marketing and advertising.

Then came the great trauma of her life, a tragedy she rarely discusses, but did mention in a blog interview in 2016; her brother died during a game of Russian roulette. She rushed back to Caracas, where the family tried to put back together its broken world. Busquets was shown the ropes of her fathers businesses, in a series of boring roles: in accounting, in a factory; and in the import-and-export department, where she learnt that import tariffs were about to be slashed. She persuaded her sceptical father to invest in an import venture of her own a boutique selling high-end fashion from Europe.

Her father was a tough investor: If he invested $10,000, hed refuse to invest more until hed got $20,000 back. But her boutique, Cabus, which opened in Caracas in 1990, thrived. The ambience echoed Chanels store in Paris; the clothes came from more than 50 designers.

The clientele quickly became international, and Busquets provided a service to match. She would visit shows in Europe and use DHL to send her customers sketches, Polaroids and detailed descriptions of garments she thought they would like. Thats why I knew Net-a-Porter would succeed. I had already been providing an analogue version of what Natalie wanted to do.

Her first forays into e-commerce, in the mid-90s, were linked to wellbeing. Both flopped. But Busquets never doubted the internets potential to make retail more intelligent. In Toronto she had devoured the visionary writings of Marshall McLuhan, prophet of the global village. When the worldwide web got going, she was ready.

My greatest privilege was that my parents empowered me with their values. They taught me not to get attached to things.

Venezuela, on the other hand, was in turmoil. Hugo Chvez, who had led a failed military coup in 1992, was elected president in 1998, then re-elected on a revolutionary platform in 2000. A plummeting currency threatened to make Cabus unviable, and when the press reported some anti-Chvez remarks that Busquets had made, her shop was attacked. The spray of bullets broke three windows. Thank god we were having lunch out the back.

After much soul-searching, the family decided to leave. Busquets and her father sold their businesses. The family settled in Switzerland. Busquets has not seen her homeland since.

She believes that all these experiences contributed to her success. I was lucky that I had money to risk. But my greatest privilege was that my parents empowered me with their values. They taught me not to get attached to things, because sometimes you have to let go of your roots. And they taught me to value spiritual things.

She laughs often and infectiously; she is much more human in person than her perfect, designer-clad image. Yet beneath her frivolous manner you can sense the inner strength. In boardroom battles, she is fearless; equal parts angel and pit bull, in Massenets admiring words. She has turned her partial deafness into an asset, which sharpens her visual perceptions, distances her from conventional thinking and frees her to empathise with consumers. Sometimes, in a long meeting, I lose track and just disconnect. A lot of things come to me in those silences.

Most of her energy now goes into charitable work, notably with Bhutan for Life (the state-endorsed program that has made Bhutan a world leader in environmental conservation), Glasswing International (which works with vulnerable children in Latin America) and the Oslo Freedom Foundation, through which she has supported victims of repression in Venezuela. Shes also on the council of the World Wide Fund for Nature.

Busquets during a visit to a Bhutan nunnery in 2019. Most of her energy now goes into charitable work.Credit:Courtesy of Carmen Busquets

The work takes her to some exotic and sometimes dangerous places: Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador. It reminds her, too, that as an unmarried woman without children (I never wanted the responsibility), she defies the conventions of many cultures, especially in Latin America.

Young girls say to me, Youre not married? Is that an option? Its amazing to be able to help children by empowering them to make a choice. In other respects, however, she finds being a philanthropist much like being an entrepreneur. I want to apply the same ideas. Think big, start small. Work closely with the people you invest in. Only fight battles I can win. Look for ways to empower people.

And the future of luxury? Her money is on further growth in the sharing economy, not just in fashion, but also in, for example, shared living spaces and luxury experiences. The growth will be driven by mindful consumers, whose choices at the luxury end of the market may inspire a wider trend for minimal waste fashion. Consumers can change the world, she says. You can already see it happening with beauty products, with what we eat. Consumers are dictating the way we do things, and big companies are changing.

Theres always a place for luxury, for beautiful things, she adds. But they dont have to own you. Theres a difference between luxury and the accumulation of luxury. Accumulation is like eating caviar every day: whats the point?

The sun is setting over the Hudson. Its rays stream through the floor-to-ceiling windows, lending a golden glow to Busquets pale hair. For much of her life she obsessed about her appearance, but the need to put herself out there in support of her campaigning forced her to confront her fear of having her imperfections exposed.

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I realised that, in todays world, anybody can take a picture of you: when youre not in a good place, when youre doing weird faces, when you look like theres no Botox in your face. You cant control your image.

Around the same time, she was diagnosed with coeliac disease, which disproved her belief that, through meticulous attention to diet and exercise, she could control her body. Then it dawned on her that her 30-year internal war with body dysmorphia was over. Anorexia is about control. You cant control the world, so you control your body. But we cant control anything. Its all an illusion.

Today she is at peace. She still loves to dress exquisitely. Otherwise, she puts her faith in her mothers top beauty tip: to love yourself. Her enthusiasm for her work does the rest. I love the feeling that Im empowering people to change their lives, she says, blue eyes shining. Every night I say to the universe: If you dont need me any more, take me in my sleep. If you need me, wake me up. If I wake up, its because today Im meant to do something.

Edited version of a story that first appeared in The Times, UK.

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The clothing visionary who refuses to buy fashion magazines - Sydney Morning Herald