West Coast Fashion and Retail’s Biggest Headlines of 2024

Challenging times have a way of exposing those playing a game of pretend. 

West Coast fashion and retail’s biggest headlines of 2024 were all over the place. If there was one truth that emerged across the year’s biggest stories it was that seasoned veterans kept pushing forward, while followers stumbled.  

Key themes emerged on the M&A front as challenging times closed in on retailers who got caught with their pants – relevance? – down as others made power plays. Meanwhile, some of the industry’s new kings look a lot like the old ones, just in new outfits. 

What follows is a recap of the region’s major storylines for fashion and retail in 2024. 

M&A for Some, Dispositions for Others

As the overhang of challenges from the pandemic – namely excess inventory – got ironed out, companies flush with the cash and conviction to plan for the long-term made strategic bets in brand acquisitions.  

Los Angeles denim company Guess Inc. was the first in 2024 to shell out capital when it bought contemporary New York brand Rag & Bone in February. It marked the first-ever acquisition by Guess as it looks to build a multi-brand powerhouse. 

“We see two huge opportunities,” CEO Carlos Alberini told investors in June of Rag & Bone, pointing to boosting the product assortment and global distribution. 

Another local that sought to diversify through M&A: Revolve Group. 

In August, the retailer said it bought Alexandre Vauthier out of administration, taking on an 80 percent stake in the luxury label.  

“We view the luxury industry challenges as an exciting opportunity to go on offense and invest in market share capture,” Revolve Group co-founder and co-CEO Michal Mente said at the time of the deal. 

As companies like Guess and Revolve found opportunity, others such as Denver-based VF Corp. looked to unload laggards. 

As VF searched for a turnaround – most notably of its Vans business – selling off the Supreme business seemed the best option to slash its debt load. It rarely spoke of Supreme on quarterly investor calls and the New York skate label seemed more of a pet project of former VF CEO Steve Rendle. 

VF, under Rendle, paid $2.1 billion for Supreme in 2020. The company had had enough of Supreme, which was built on ultra-exclusive, limited distribution – not the operating model of VF – by summer 2024. VF sold Supreme at a loss for $1.5 billion in July.

The kicker: the apparel brand went to eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica. Outside of producing more Supreme eyewear, it’s unclear what expertise the Parisian brand will bring to Supreme.

Understanding Retail Dynamics

Resting on one’s laurels – or an acquired brand – is asking for it in the highly complex retail business. 

Just ask Global Icons CEO Jeff Lotman, who made the decision to shutter Los Angeles iconic boutique retailer Fred Segal this summer. 

After months of quietly closing locations one by one, Fred Segal’s final bow was at its Sunset Boulevard flagship in West Hollywood and online shop. 

“Everything just fell apart [after Covid], and then I sort of had to become a retailer, which is not what I planned to do. I knew nothing about retail,” Lotman told the Los Angeles Times. 

At least Lotman was honest. 

Global Icons, a licensing company, bought Fred Segal in 2019. The deal marked its foray into brand ownership. 

Like others before it, Global Icons attempted a strategy that placed the Fred Segal brand on sweatshirts, T-shirts and other blanks in a bid to leverage equity in the name. What it failed to also focus on was the merchandising of the Fred Segal multi-brand stores.

Fred Segal built a business off of forward-thinking buying, which requires a refined understanding of an ever-changing consumer base with a strong point of view. 

“Retail is hard and being a multi-brand retailer is even harder,” Lotman added in his reflection to the Times. 

Another retailer that’s retooling after tough times: Nordstrom. 

The department store retailer said in December it planned to go private through an acquisition valued at $6.3 billion by the Nordstrom family and Mexico-based department store retailer and mall operator El Puerto de Liverpool.

After buying missteps stemming from the difficulty in obtaining inventory during the pandemic, Nordstrom lost its way. The pressure of finding the path back to firmer footing away from Wall Street scrutiny could do it some good before the brand is tarnished beyond repair like some of its department store counterparts. 

New Kings

Keeping one’s finger on the pulse of new brands is a lot like drinking from a firehose. There’s no shortage of launches – and closures. 

Thus, writing about the potential of a recently launched brand can be fraught with landmines, but Pat Tenore’s new Tenore brand seems to be a solid line to get behind. After all, Tenore has the expertise in starting and running a business, mixed with the taste and point of view to offer something of interest to the market. 

From a pragmatic perspective, he has the relationships with retailers to get his new label onto store shelves, a loyal following among influencers (ranging from athletes to creatives) to help spread the word and the capital to jumpstart the business. 

There’s also the fact that Tenore may be more motivated than ever to succeed after Authentic Brands Group made the decision to not bring him along with its acquisition of Boardriders, the group that owned his former label RVCA before Authentic bought the group of action sports brands in September for $1.3 billion. 

Hell hath no fury like a motivated entrepreneur. Southern California’s fashion industry is rife with those success stories, where it’s never just a one-act play for serial designer-entrepreneurs.