Amid Many Indie Brand Closures, Designers Discuss What They Learned From Starting Over

Skim through the headlines, and you risk experiencing whiplash from all the happenings in the fashion industry — the creative director musical chairs, the menswear shows, Dries van Noten's final collection, Vogue World, Haute Couture Fashion Week. And that's just June.

All of that may have distracted from the more somber reality facing many independent labels, though: In May, Mara Hoffman announced that, after 20 years in business, she would close down her eponymous brand. Days before, Calvin Luo had revealed he was putting his label on hold; days later, The Vampire's Wife said it, too, would be winding down operations across the pond. In the weeks that followed, Victoria/Thomas also revealed it was shuttering.

These four brands are — were — vastly different from each other in what they offered and how they operated, save for their shared denomination as indie favorites. But the way that they closed, in such quick succession, was an acute reminder of the universal difficulties facing fashion businesses today.

It's not an unfamiliar story, by any means: Failure is an important part of any creative trajectory, something that many working designers know intimately. In the glossy, often deceptively positive (public-facing side of the) fashion industry, though, most are reticent to speak openly about the setbacks they've faced. But there's a lot to learn from those who've overcome them — and who used those learnings to start anew. After all, plenty have done so successfully: Catherine Holstein had a namesake label a decade before Khaite; Amina Muaddi's namesake shoe line was a second act; Tracy Reese pivoted her brand into Hope for Flowers five years ago.

Allina Liu's namesake label is technically in its Version 2.0. She originally began making her subversively sweet womenswear in 2015, but quietly ceased operations about two years later. "I had some decent press — Cardi B wore me on a cover at one point — that stuff is great and really exciting, but it doesn't translate for sales," she says.

Liu started the brand when she was in her mid-20s using her own savings. Despite having worked at fashion brands, she says she didn't really have any of the entrepreneurial knowledge necessary to successfully operate a business: "I didn't have a line sheet. I didn't understand MSRP. I didn't understand markups." She was also producing in New York City, which is expensive, putting her dresses in the four-figure range.

There came a point when Liu couldn't envision a way out of the red, so she decided to look for jobs elsewhere — first in fashion, and then in tech. She did well, but ultimately felt a calling back to fashion. In 2019, she started making moves to bring back Allina Liu, all while keeping her tech job. Among the pieces she began working on was her first big hit: the Camilla, an apron midi dress with a laced-through open back and sides.

Without her first attempt at the business, though, "I don't think I would be experiencing the success I'm having today," she says. Liu went into her second act with a different approach to production (she develops, samples and manufactures in China) and to how she promotes the business (she hired a publicist and found representation through a showroom). She also was determined to keep her offering focused and specific.

"My main thing is never designing something that exists on the market," she says. "My first go, I was following a lot — I would see someone put something out, and I'd be like, 'Oh, that's really good,' and shift my brand identity because I wanted to be like them. In turn, I did not have a brand identity. That was feedback I got, and it was really painful, because that's pretty much telling someone they don't have a personality… It just takes so long for people to even find you that, if you're constantly switching, they're going to understand that you don't believe in your idea that strongly. Why should they?"

Mia Vesper, too, is in Version 2.0 of her brand. Unlike Liu (with whom she shares a publicist), though, she didn't just reawaken a dormant label — the designer has completely reimagined her business.

Vesper's story begins even before the launch of her namesake line — as she puts it, "Before 1.0, I had a 0.50," making one-off pieces from vintage tapestries, which she stopped when she felt she had tapped out of potential customers. Two years later, though, she came back to the idea, instead focusing on ready-to-wear made out of a mix of new and repurposed materials. "Pretty soon thereafter, Beyoncé wore my clothes," she says.

What was objectively a major coup for any brand, let alone an emerging label, actually presented a big obstacle for Vesper. She came into a lot of money, all at once, but then didn't get the same amount of business the following month. ("I was sure it would happen again. And it didn't, then it did again and then it didn't," she says.) The bills, however, kept mounting. That, and an ongoing moral quandary about her contributions to the climate catastrophe, led her to seriously consider closing down her brand.

"For years, I had this overwhelming sense of worry about changing course," she says. "One day, I realized these are clothes, not the weight of the world… I realized nobody's actually looking at me. I'm fine."

The moment she decided it was time to rethink things, though, was in the preparation for her first and only fashion show. "Tens of products were going to be on display, and then I got some garments back that were made out of a slightly wrong material — I was appalled at the way that they looked, and it was a lot of waste," Vesper says. "That kind of mistake — ordering a fabric that has 1,000 yards made incorrectly — happens every year. I was just at my limit with it, both in the amount of money that I had spent and in that it made me sick to think about putting all that in the trash."

She ended up remaking the collection and moving forward with the show, which was well-received. Still, Vesper knew it was time to close that chapter. Six months later, she introduced her solution: Vesper Obscura, which is centered around garments made from both vintage tapestries and specialty textiles, plus fine and demi-fine jewelry. (The latter was nominated for the 2024 Fashion Trust Award in Jewelry.)

"I knew that my new concept had to be driven by pride and my personal principles… having it be a made-to-order system and putting systems in place that would curtail my ability to wreak havoc on the world," Vesper explains, "Being aware that if a product of mine goes viral, can I deal with that? Will I be happy to see that all over the place?"

With Vesper Oscura, she continues, she's "concentrating on a couple of things that I'm good at, that I like and that are working well for me. That was never wholesale, so that is off my radar, possibly forever. It has never been doing shows. For me, it's speaking directly to my audience, making new pieces and not worrying about the other stuff."

Both Liu and Vesper came up in a time when the internet already represented a massive piece of the making-it-in-fashion puzzle. Nanette Lepore lived through its rise.

Her brand began as a boutique in the East Village in the late '80s, called Robespierre. By the early '90s, she was designing a line for the store under her own name — and, as time went on, that became the business. The timing worked in her favor, as the contemporary market (which fills that space between mass and luxury) was a nascent opportunity, and more designers were coming out with collections under their own names.

"Anna Sui was just starting off. I was starting off. Jill Stuart… Now, you see it less and less. I think people have learned the pitfalls of that," she says. "It's not always the best thing to do. I don't have my name anymore."

At its peak, the Nanette Lepore brand reached $160 million in annual revenue. It became a bastion of the "boho-chic" look that ruled the era, boosted by a steady celebrity following and appearances on shows like "Gossip Girl."

"It was jumping like 30% increases per year — I was in the right place at the right time with my label and with the look that I was giving to women," she remembers. "I had been with my customers through a lot of their personal changes. It wasn't just my company changing and growing, but I was growing with the population. It's really fun when you have your finger on the pulse like that."

The bigger you get, though, the bigger the missteps can feel. Looking back, Lepore believes the brand went too hard on retail and brick-and-mortar, to the point where it needed to bring in partners. So, in 2015, Bluestar Alliance acquired a majority stake — and that didn't go well. At the same time, wholesale was getting increasingly difficult to crack.

"I felt like I got pigeonholed by the stores, and they weren't letting me grow," Lepore says. "I was in a place where they come to you for these five things, and then they go to somebody else for some of the things you might want to make, but they don't want them from you. Having this expectation of what my line should look like, it just never felt like I could take a total left turn and do whatever I wanted."

There were other factors, too — the decreasing return on fashion shows, the aftermath of the recession, the rising cost of manufacturing in New York, the tighter margins on materials, the impact of fast fashion — that eventually led Lepore to step away from her business, without her name.

"It was sort of a planned closing," she says. "There was a back and forth with the partners, and we had come to a settlement. But because of Covid, it happened about six months before it was really supposed to. I was exhausted."

Though she needed the break, Lepore admits she began to feel restless after two years. "I just started telling everybody, 'I'm starting a new brand,'" she says. "I knew, if I did that, I would force myself into having to do it. I would die of embarrassment if I didn't actually do this." Another big push: Lepore's child, Violet, and her friends, who would find her old designs on resale sites.

That new project, Maria Cecilia, launched in the summer of 2023. "My initial plan was to just dress me and Violet, just make things I love," she says. "I love a tiny mini skirt — I don't really wear them anymore, but Violet does, so I made these adorable mini skirts in gorgeous fabrics, and I made corset tops, which were always something that I did well. I had been developing a different brand that never took off, and we had a few styles from that that were a little more grown-up, but more casually elegant."

Maria Cecilia is produced in New York City's Garment District, like Robespierre and Nanette Lepore were originally, and is direct-to-consumer. "Things are going to grow and change, and I know that," she says. "I know that what you do in your first couple years is fluid, and people don't always remember. I remember when the Nanette Lepore business was 10 years old and they were calling me a new designer — I have time to play around, because it's a lot of years before anybody even registers that I'm here."

There's a certain earned confidence that comes from starting anew. Having lived and learned through trial and error, designers are able to make decisions informed by experience, as opposed to outside influences.

"You should never view these things as failures," says Liu. "You're just taking a step back for your own mental health and to reevaluate. Honestly, more thought creates better products and better things for the environment."

There's also a lot of power in speaking about the very real realities facing fashion entrepreneurs. Per Vesper, "None of us wants to share information about our own struggles because this is a reputationally based business, in many ways." Still, she says, "I want people to understand the often realities."

As tough as the setbacks can be, Liu encourages anyone in a similar position to keep going: "It was really heartbreaking, because it felt like admitting defeat. But it's your life. If you can redo this and give it a go again and you want to do it, do your best. Work two jobs, work yourself into the ground if you really want it. That's just what it takes."

Never miss the latest fashion industry news. Sign up for the Fashionista daily newsletter.