What Does Building a Brand in LA Look Like in 2026?
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.”
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.)
