Of all the 57 labels showing on the official New York Fashion Week Calendar this week, one has made an unusual move late in life. In its third decade, Lafayette 148 has shifted from a largely wholesale department-store staple operating in the mid-priced “contemporary” space to a luxury label sold at Bergdorf Goodman and Moda Operandi. Though the label is 29 years old, this is its third season presenting at NYFW.
It’s a move into exclusivity that many mid-tier brands would love to make, but few manage. When I first heard about it, I assumed it the label had acquired a generous new private equity investor, or maybe the board of directors had decided a strategic shift was in order.
But founder and chief executive Deirdre Quinn set me straight when I asked. “There’s no private equity,” she tutored me with a laugh. “I don’t have a board. We’re self-funded.” She describes the shift upmarket as the only way the brand could survive seismic shifts in the fashion industry of the past decade — the malaise of many department stores, an overabundance of contemporary-priced apparel, wild fluctuations in demand and supply chains — working with her creative director, Emily Smith, who joined in 2003 as an intern.
Lafayette 148 was founded three decades ago in a factory at 148 Lafayette Street in New York, making women’s wear aimed at what was then called “bridge” — making gently minimalist clothes aimed at working women, priced for those who couldn’t afford true designer labels. One thing that made Lafayette stand out was — and is — its inclusive US sizing from 00 to size 18, with petite and plus sizes as well. Another was that Quinn’s co-founder owned the factory, which also turned out items for Anne Klein, Donna Karan and Ellie Tahari. Lafayette 148 is the rare survivor. The factory moved to China years ago, and the brand’s studio and showroom moved to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2017, but the brand remains a fully vertical operation.
Quinn and Smith chose to show their autumn 2025 collection as a presentation at a Chelsea art gallery on Friday afternoon. The presentation format was, in part, a financial choice, Smith says, as runways are expensive. But it was also a move to allow press, store buyers and clients to closely see and touch the clothes, inspired by female textile artists’ work, including the influential Anni Albers, whose designs were as much art as craft.
During the presentation, Smith sipped champagne, welcomed guests and posed for photos. Quinn beamed as she spoke to friends and gushed over how beautiful the space had turned out — a lounge space gave guests a reprieve from the fashion week runabout while textiles lined the wall and floor. She boasted that her team had pulled it all off with little work needed from her (In fact, two days earlier, she had been working on the spring 2026 collection). It was hard to manoeuvre; the crowd was so thick.
It isn’t easy to secure an hour on the official NYFW calendar. Several years ago, when the CFDA shifted from a laissez-faire approach to a strict one-label-per-hour schedule, scores of shows and presentations were shed from the schedule and forced to show off-calendar. But when Lafayette applied for a slot, says Steven Kolb, the CFDA’s chief executive, “approving their application was an easy one”.
“Emily is on our radar. We know Deirdre well. It’s a brand that’s part of our family,” Kolb says.
Quinn says the move to designer level was an evolution spurred by the pandemic after orders for 77,000 garments were cancelled on one day, March 17, 2020.
“I’ll tell you, I don’t cry,” says Quinn. “I cried. What comes of that is a determination to survive.”
Smith found herself with a pile of fabrics on her desk that needed to be repurposed.
At the time, 75 per cent of the label’s sales were wholesale to about 150 accounts. Lafayette was known in the industry for its willingness to cater to department stores’ desires, producing items that store buyers felt would flesh out their sales floors. So much so that one person I spoke with said many people wrongly thought it was a private label for department stores.
What 2020 made clear, Smith says, “The world we had been living in just didn’t exist.” Bridge had morphed into contemporary, which was being eaten alive by fast fashion and then bashed by the pandemic. Many brands responded to these pressures by churning out more and cheaper apparel. Quinn and Smith opted to swim upstream instead.
Smith credits two things for the inspiration. After the brand opened stores in China beginning in 2012, those customers responded well to Lafayette’s highest-priced garments. A meeting with Bergdorf buyers convinced Smith that she needed to upgrade fabrics and workmanship. “They said it had to be luxury,” she says.
They hired a textile designer to work with Italian mills and began creating the label’s own fabrics. An $898 standout for this spring is the label’s iconic white blouse but swashed as though with a messy stick of charcoal. “I think that’s the shift that everyone feels,” Smith says.
Not every experiment worked. A brief foray into designing shoes in 2021 proved disastrous, and the brand retrenched. “We can’t afford to make many mistakes,” Quinn says.
What came next required entrepreneurial grit. Shifting up also meant cutting back and losing customers. Those 150 wholesale accounts shrank to 80 by 2024. “Some of our accounts had to leave. They couldn’t afford our prices anymore,” Quinn says.
Revenues now are growing handily. Even in the current luxury slowdown Quinn expects $148 million in revenue in 2025, up 8 per cent from 2024.
Production, though, has shrunk to 300,000 garments per year from 800,000 garments in 2020, she says. To acquire new clients, Lafayette opened more of its own stores. It now has 27. It created Atelier Direct, where 100 women, which the brand calls “community tastemakers”, sell the brand from their homes to their own friends and clients. It picked up some new wholesale accounts, such as the Mitchell stores, which have been growing as independent multi-brand luxury retailers.
“One brand, many lanes,” Quinn says.
Smith and Quinn also began declining requests from retailers to fill out collections with blander items. “We had buyers coming in with their laundry lists of things they wanted,” Smith says. Saying no, she says, “comes with practice. It gets easier over time.”
Wholesale shrank to 25 per cent of sales.
“Today, I don’t want to sell more clothes. It has to be good for the brand. It can’t be just another pant on a rack,” Quinn says. With that comes another freedom. “I’m not afraid of $8,000 garments.”
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Correction: This article was updated to change the number of stores to 27. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said 127 stores (10/2/25).
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