Rebecca Taylor dresses aim to land between the feminine and something more irreverent.

"Back in the day there was cool people and feminine people, but they didn't really cross over," the company's president, Janice Sullivan, said on this week's Modern Retail Podcast. "In Rebecca Taylor, it's where that meets," she added. "It's okay now to be a feminine feminist. It wasn't, maybe, years ago."

A year after the departure of its founder, the designer sells dresses in six of its own U.S. stores, and rents them out on both its own website and Rent the Runway. It also just launched a new program that will take older Rebecca Taylor clothing in exchange for credits and discounts for new.

Sullivan talked about the shopping experience, the rental business and why not to worry about cannibalizing your own market.