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A year on from the fires that devastated Los Angeles, Vogue Business takes stock of fashion’s recovery and rebuilding efforts as part of our series, Refashioning LA, assessing where the city’s fashion and apparel industry is headed in 2026.
LA has long had a robust fashion and beauty industry, despite what some may think. Luxury players founded in the city include Chrome Hearts, Amiri, James Perse and Dôen. These born-and-bred LA mainstays have grown and operate well beyond the confines of the city.
Now, a fresh crop of brands are finding success in LA, and international players are realizing the city’s potential as an entry point into the US — rather than a secondary option to New York.
London-based Kiko Kostadinov, Manchester’s Represent and Chinese sportswear brand Anta all opened their Los Angeles locations — the former two in 2024; the latter in 2025 — before setting up shop in New York, or elsewhere in the US. These brands are recognizing a pull that LA founders have long harnessed, but has crystalized over the last couple of years: that the LA lifestyle, and the focus on community that goes with it, is ripe for building a fashion or beauty brand.
“There’s been a really fun shift in LA,” says Sahar Rohani, who co-founded refillable beauty brand Soshe Beauty back in 2019 as part of a project at the University of Southern California, and in 2022 grew the brand under Credo Beauty’s Credo for Change accelerator program. “A few years back, events were mostly about specific launches within the same influencer circles. Now, brands are leaning into the fact that everyone in Los Angeles is — whether they mean to be or not — an influencer in their own world.”
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Nina Garduno, who founded LA basics brand Free City in 2001 and is a former chief men’s buyer for Ron Herman and Fred Segal, is optimistic about this next generation. Garduno highlights Madhappy, who she’s collaborated with via Free City, as one of the brands that show promise. “It’s the next generation,” she says of this crop of brands. “They’re old enough now and in the workforce and in the creative experience here in LA. It’s a true story of watching a generation grow up that’s taking over.”
In 2026, LA founders want to up the ante, developing more physical touchpoints in a city where, they say, people are keen to come out and spend time with a brand. Here and now, direct-to-consumer (DTC) is more direct than ever. And what LA lacks in New York’s hustle and bustle, it makes up for in consumers’ willingness to invest their time (and they tend to have more to spare than those in busier cities) and dollars in brands they align with. It’s a different kind of hustle culture, founders agree.
The lifestyle
LA wasn’t necessarily where Kiko Kostadinov, who designs his eponymous brand’s menswear, and womenswear designers Laura and Deanna Fanning, planned to first open in the US. It wasn’t overly strategic, Kostadinov says, but more a matter of happenstance. The store, located in the Melrose Hill gallery district, is next to Morán Morán, a gallery the brand has a longstanding relationship with, while the brand’s now head of North American retail, Jenny Le, was already based in the city. Represent followed a similar path. The team wanted to open their second store in their home town of Manchester, UK, (the first store was in London), but couldn’t find the right unit. In LA, they found the perfect space in West Hollywood, down the road from the likes of Jacquemus and Chrome Hearts. (A third store in Manchester followed later that year.)
The LA location is Represent’s best-performing store, which co-founder George Heaton attributes to customers purchasing more of its higher-ticket, fashion-focused pieces. (Versus in Manchester and even London, where customers buy more of its carryover logo goods.) “The LA consumer is really coming to the store to browse for fashion and will leave with multiple pieces and full looks,” he says. LA customers want to buy into the Represent look — and lifestyle.
For Represent, LA’s active lifestyle is a natural fit. Fitness sub-brand 247 has propelled thanks to the city’s climate and fitness culture; Heaton shoots content, hosts events and collaborates with wellness institutions to entrench and expand the brand among the city’s fitness fiends. When the brand arrived in LA in 2024, it collaborated with Erewhon on a green juice to mark its arrival. This was an early signal of the founders’ understanding of what wins in their adoptive home: consumers will buy into brands that align with the lifestyles they’re already living.
This is the approach Rohani is focused on for the year ahead. “We’re going to keep activating with local stores, coffee spots and restaurants in 2026. That’s what feels most Soshe to me: showing up in places people already love and spending time with them there,” she says. That LA is home to so many founders means that the consumer is highly supportive of emerging brands, Rohani adds. It’s an entrepreneurial city. “There are so many people here who’ve worked in CPG [consumer packaged goods] startups, or know someone who’s currently building something. So they get it.”
Community matters
For Pia Mance, founder of jewelry and accessories brand Heaven Mayhem, LA’s proximity to celebrity was a major perk. She credits this closeness to stars and their stylists to getting the amount of celeb placements she has; the sheer physical proximity means Mance can get products over fast. But looking ahead to 2026, many LA-based founders — Mance included — aren’t focusing on celebrity at all, instead zeroing on interest-based communities across the city.
Local consumers want to be part of a brand’s growth story, rather than simply marketed to, Mance continues. Lindsey Carter, founder of Set Active, agrees. “The more brands can build with the pillar of community being their priority, the more successful they’re going to be,” she says. Most of the brands who spoke with me for this article spoke about the importance of tapping into LA communities. In Carter’s view, this is a much more recent phenomenon. When she founded Set in 2017, ‘community first’ wasn’t a focus for local brands, she says. Yet Carter credits Set’s early momentum to this approach.
But LA is a sprawling city, meaning it’s no small feat to get consumers into stores. Kostadinov recently described the city’s retail scene to Vogue’s Luke Leitch as “a bit intense”. “It’s a massive city that requires a very concentrated effort to pull clients into the store. It’s not a walking city,” Kostadinov said. This means every client who does come into the store wants to engage more deeply with the brand, he added. “There are very few casual shoppers. So every in-store interaction is an experience with an educated and informed customer. This is very exciting for us as a brand yet also requires a highly knowledgeable team on the ground.”
Brands need to know which community they’re speaking to, and be knowledgeable about the consumers therein, founders agree. Because LA is so dispersed, it’s made up of a slew of micro-communities, dictated by specific location and interest. “If you know LA, you know it’s not one community, it’s a bunch of micro-communities stacked on top of each other,” Soshe’s Rohani says. “We’re not trying to make people drive an hour across town. We want to show up where they already are, partner with places they already love, and plug into their built-in community.”
For Represent’s part, this has involved many sports collabs. Earlier this year, the brand collaborated with ‘47, the lifestyle brand that produces licensed sports headwear, on an MLB (Major League Baseball) collection. In November 2025, having released its second joint edition, Heaton said Represent sold thousands of units in just one minute. With the Dodgers winning the World Series in November (a victory many local sources brought up when speaking for this series), this was a sure way for Represent to embed the brand in local culture.
Kiko Kostadinov, meanwhile, partners with Rocky Xu’s Rocky’s Matcha to host monthly breakfasts, alongside its events in partnership with NTS Radio. “There is a strong yearning for a sense of community in LA, especially since everything is so spread apart and you really have to make an effort to go from place to place,” Kostadinov says. These partnerships give the brand’s community something they can be excited to be part of, he adds.
Brands place emphasis on establishing — and tapping into — community among their customers. But the city also fosters connections between founders, they say, more so than in more individualistic, urban environments like New York and London. “I have so many founder friends that are just a text or call away,” Heaven Mayhem’s Mance says. “Connecting with other founders and sharing information has benefited us in so many ways.” Rohani says this information sharing “almost feels protective”, adding that conversations with founders typically result in some kind of joint event, activation, or social moment. “LA can be competitive, but in beauty specifically, it’s very collaborative.”
Carter agrees. When Set Active had its first down year in 2023, it was fellow founders she turned to for advice. Kira Mackenzie Jackson, who wound up joining Set as chief brand officer in 2024, and Maggie Sellers, founder of podcast and newsletter “Hot Smart Rich”, were instrumental, Carter says. She met them both at a founder dinner hosted by Siffat Haider and Nish Samantray of supplement brand Arrae. “We ended up ending Q4 really strongly that year, and it’s what saved us to be able to have momentum going into 2024,” Carter says.
Because LA is a hub for founders — especially in the wellness space — this collaboration works across industries. Rohani is grateful for access to founders in coffee, wellness, restaurants and retail spaces, she says. “People here are open to testing and collaborating,” she says. “That energy is so fun and it makes community activations possible even with a scrappier budget.” (See: Kostadinov’s partnership with Rocky’s Matcha.)
In LA, ultimately, you get what you give, especially at a moment where there are so many brands in the city to choose from.
“The main takeaway from this first year is that the city will give you what you give it,” Kostadinov says. “If you engage with the community, the community will support you. If you just unlock the doors and hope someone will show up, you will be very lonely by the end of the week. We have done a good job of being active in the city and have seen this play out with a great first year from a financially sustainable standpoint.”
How LA Fashion Is Rebuilding Post-Fires
