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The past five months of tariff chaos have put independent designers in a tough spot. Material and production prices are up; retailers are scaling back on orders; and consumer spending is dwindling. Those without security blankets in the form of conglomerate backing or private equity dollars are left to fend for themselves.
The last time fashion saw this level of upheaval was during the pandemic. At that time, designer Jonathan Cohen and co-founder and CEO Sarah Leff hosted an Upper East Side pop-up. “That’s when we saw our online sales boom,” Cohen says. “As much as everyone has grown their e-commerce, there’s nothing like that one-on-one experience.”
The lack of control amid all of the tariff unknowns drove the pair to revisit the idea of a physical pop-up space to sell their clothes. Only whereas, during Covid, the pop-up was just the Jonathan Cohen brand (with a few collaborator drop-ins), this time around, Cohen and Leff are bringing 13 other designers into the mix. Hosted at Freeman’s-Hindman auction house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — they donated the space — The Collective pop-up will run for three days, from 18 to 20 May.
The 14 brands participating are Alejandra Alonso Rojas, AnOnlyChild, Batsheva, Christopher John Rogers, Gigi Burris, Hunting Season, Jonathan Cohen, Larroudé, Presley Oldham, Ronny Kobo, Rosie Assoulin, Selima Optique, Studio 189 and Theophilio. Christina Neault and The Hinton Group are also supporting the event’s production and PR.
The decision to bring other designers into the fold was informed by past collective experiences. Leff recalls the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund (Cohen was a runner-up in 2018). “There’s such power in numbers,” she says.
Each designer will keep 100 per cent of their sales, which will come from existing inventory, whether it’s Spring/Summer 2025 collections or one-off pieces that never wound up going into production. “We are all taking 100 per cent of the margins, taking control and having those one-on-one conversations with clients,” Cohen says. Each designer has their own point-of-sale system. Money will go directly into their bank accounts. No retailer cuts; no additional fees. “It’s kind of unheard of,” Cohen says.
The organisers and participating brands are confident that their clientele have the potential to overlap (even more than some already do). “Besides just supporting each other in our manufacturing efforts and our retail efforts, why not also bring our clients into the mix?” Cohen says.
It’s this opportunity to connect with clients IRL that made jewellery designer Presley Oldham keen to come on board. “Over the last year I was able to do a lot more trunk shows for my brand and I really saw how beneficial it was as a mode of connecting with your customer,” he says. “Creating an experience where someone can go buy a Gigi Burris hat with a Christopher John Rogers dress and then come over to me and get a Presley Oldham necklace is a really wonderful one-stop shop,” he says, likening it to what boutique wholesalers — some of whom are having to re-think the independent designers they stock amid tariff strain — are doing.
Christina Ripley, director of brand and strategy at Christopher John Rogers, agrees. “We always love any moment where we can be face to face with the consumer, which as a brand that sells predominantly through wholesale, those moments aren’t as often as we’d like,” she says. “This felt like the perfect opportunity for that while also coinciding with the launch of our Spring 2025 collection.”
Oldham is also optimistic about the connection the pop-up will foster on the designer side. “We’re all kind of in the same world, which is nice to build community through this sale with like-minded designers,” he says. “It’s a good group of a lot of people who I’m friends with and others who I’ve admired from afar.”
The Collective is the first major effort from independent designers to push for sales — and connection — amid tough times. Other brands, though, have embarked on similar physical initiatives to reach clients at this moment. Lingua Franca, for instance, is planning to host more trunk shows to get products directly to consumers. Realisation Par, which paused shipping to the US on 23 April (all of the brand’s silk garments are made in China), is hosting a Los Angeles pop-up from 22 to 30 June as a way to reach US consumers without shipping garments into the country. (The pop-up was announced before the China tariffs were paused for 90 days.)
Oldham, for his part, had hoped to organise a sample sale with fellow New York designers, as he told Vogue Business in April. “Jonathan and Sarah beat me to it,” he jokes. He’s glad that the pair were able to leverage their network built over the course of their 14-year brand journey, making the pre-packaged deal an easy yes.
It’s the right time for a new model, Cohen and Leff agree. Cohen recalls advice he gave students on a recent Parsons School of Design panel: “I told the kids that, aside from being innovative in design, you have to be innovative in business. That’s almost more exciting right now — these new systems, rather than a new silhouette.” These new systems, from methods of production to communication with clients, are what’s missing in fashion right now, Cohen says. “It’s really important to be constantly thinking of new systems to get your clothing on people.”
It’s a conversation that comes up a lot amongst designers of this next generation, Ripley says of her peers. “There’s a real sense of wanting to have ownership over our sales,” she says. “For many of us, at least in our case, we were able to build the brand thanks to the support of our wholesale partners. But making the shift from wholesale to DTC takes time, infrastructure, and funding which aren’t always present.”
Initiatives like this offer a way in. The pop-up may not be a new concept, but rallying a brand’s community to enable designers to keep 100 per cent of profits generated at said pop-up is a significant milestone. Can it be replicated beyond this brief moment?
Cohen and Leff are optimistic. “Obviously we need to tackle this first weekend and see how everyone’s sales are,” Leff says. But they’re keen to expand beyond New York. “There’s always the possibility of doing LA and other states,” Cohen says. “People are excited when designers come to places like Nashville.”
Correction: The article was updated to reflect that the pop-up was hosted by Freeman’s-Hindman auction house, not Hindman Gallery as previously reported.
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