And now for the week that was in fashion…

Everyone in Paris is sweating, literally and physically, over the men’s shows. (Look out for Lauren’s coverage on Monday.) But here in the States, the big news came from Reformation, which disclosed that it has filed for an I.P.O.—the first notable fashion startup in a while to go public. Naturally, the filing got me thinking about the state of the fashion startup–industrial complex.

Five years ago, fashion startups enjoyed an I.P.O. gold rush: Poshmark, Allbirds, Warby Parker, On Running, Rent the Runway, and ThredUp all went public in 2021, often for all the wrong reasons: The members of their cap table were antsy, they couldn’t raise any more capital privately, etcetera. Poshmark returned to private ownership in 2023 after Korean tech giant Naver acquired it following a dip in profits; Farfetch delisted that same year before Coupang rescued it from the brink of bankruptcy. And this year, Allbirds baffled just about everybody when it announced it would pivot to A.I. infrastructure while selling its assets to licensing firm American Exchange for $39 million.

Many of the remaining public companies now trade well below the $1 billion valuations they commanded at offering. Rent the Runway, whose co-founder Jenn Hyman left last month, has a market cap of just $109 million. Stitch Fix sits at $575 million, while ThredUp is worth around $875 million. Warby Parker and On Running are outliers that have largely preserved billion-dollar valuations.

Over the intervening years, unsurprisingly, I.P.O.s have fallen out of favor as investors have largely lost interest in fashion. Reformation’s I.P.O prospect contrasts sharply with Everlane’s sale to Shein at a $100 million valuation. Both brands broke out as sustainable fashion upstarts in the 2010s; both ultimately landed in private equity hands (Reformation with Permira and Everlane with L Catterton); and both founders, Yael Aflalo and Michael Preysman, were forced to step back during pandemic-era reckonings.

But under C.E.O. Hali Borenstein, who replaced Aflalo in 2020 in a planned succession that was sped up after some H.R. issues, Reformation has managed to do something that is nearly impossible in apparel: Keep growing without losing integrity with customers. The price-value equation has always made Reformation work. Last year, Reformation’s revenue grew 16 percent to $507 million—80 percent of which came from full-price DTC sales—while generating $13 million in net profit.

To be fair, many of Reformation’s predecessors were money-losing operations that never should have gone public. But, Borenstein’s decision aside, their chill has haunted the market, and partly explains why Vuori founder Joe Kudla appears content to wait. The apparel company raised $825 million from General Atlantic and Stripes in 2024, and reportedly generates around $1 billion in profitable annual sales by courting the nerdy hot tech bro. According to Consumer Edge’s analysis of credit and debit card data, Vuori’s U.S. sales increased 19 percent during the first quarter of 2026. (Vuori declined to comment on its financials.) Given its financial profile and cap table, an I.P.O. would seem the obvious next step. I’m sure Kudla and his board will be watching the Reformation float with bated breath…

For now, Vuori is focused on expansion, with plans to double its store count over the next few years, including in China and Korea. Increasingly, majority direct-to-consumer businesses are outperforming wholesale models, even if they require more capital and time to grow. As I wrote earlier this week, retail expansions have become fashion startups’ preferred drug of choice, with the large upfront costs considered as a worthwhile trade-off for the higher customer acquisition and stronger retention.

Strategic store expansions, particularly in Asia, help explain why Alexandre Mattiussi’s super-Frenchie brand Ami, which Lauren reported this week is “entertaining an exit,” has remained so strong. Its clothes are good, if a bit logo-heavy, and reasonably priced for contemporary luxury. The brand has built 109 shiny stores in markets including Paris, New York, L.A., Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo.

But back to Vuori for a beat: I reported this week that Skims’ senior vice president of planning, Susan Stroub, left this month to join Kudla’s team. Her exit was followed by Paula Galperin, the co-general manager of NikeSkims, who announced this week that she’s leaving the intimates company for the top job at another startup. The executive turnover comes a year after Skims C.E.O. Jens Grede told employees that an I.P.O. was no longer an immediate priority.

I’ll have more on the goings-on at Skims next week, but I’ll say this for now: The late-stage startup phase is complex. It’s one thing to go from $0 to $1 million and then even $1 million to $100 million. But operationalizing a company toward billions in revenue while demonstrating the rate of growth required by bank analysts is a whole other enchilada. After so many fashion companies of the previous generation lurched toward the public markets, the Gredes and their investors are right to be deliberate—they need to create the sort of momentum that Wall Street, which isn’t seduced by fashion or brand appeal, truly appreciates.

Consider Ssense, which filed for Canada’s equivalent of bankruptcy last year, despite doing more than $1 billion in sales a year earlier. As I’ve reported, the e-tailer is in the middle of restructuring after C.E.O. Rami Atallah and his brothers bought back the company in February. This week, the business announced that a small number of creative-team employees would be replaced by… A.I. (A Ssense spokesperson told me, “Ssense is evolving our studio operating model to increase agility, accelerate content production, and further strengthen the product storytelling that defines the brand. … As part of this transition, a number of studio roles are impacted.”) Not surprisingly, I’m told that there’s growing anxiety inside the company as everyone wonders whether their jobs can also be replicated. (Back in April, I reported that Ssense’s go-forward strategy, anchored by increased brand development and a new U.S. distribution centre, also included investments in A.I.) In the past month, the company gave a small cost-of-living raise after a yearlong salary freeze, and has downsized its Montreal headquarters.

It’s probably never been more arduous, and precarious, to scale, and maintain, a brand. That won’t change anytime soon. Reformation’s public-market debut will certainly yield clues on how the next era of fashion startups might be honing their ambitions. We’ll all be watching when the opening bell rings.

On the big Skims departures: “They indicate a reality check on the business’s fundamentals. I’ve been so fascinated by the Victoria’s Secret reversal of fortunes since our Gen Alpha daughter started hounding us for VS Pink a couple of years ago, driven by brand awareness generated from Roblox and YouTube streamers. She’d never heard of Skims.” —A comms exec

On Charlotte Collet’s Louis Vuitton and Auralee doubleheader: “Charlotte is the ultimate stylist for right now. She makes it all feel like real clothes. In a time when fashion is lame and needs to come back to earth.” —A stylist and editor

On the latest Prada collection’s commercial prospects: “On the day of the resee, it was hard to look at the clothes because there were so many clients eager to put their orders in. Including women. Also, it doesn’t matter if this is commercial or not. They have so many in-between collections that they’re sending into the shops.” —A stylist

Until next week,
Lauren

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