The Tamesis
Independent designers have long been looking for a way to break the fashion industry’s two-season model of relying on wholesale, which no longer works for many in the industry. But breaking long-standing norms isn’t easy. How did Cohen and Leif achieve their transformation?
To reveal the new business model, we sat not in Cohen’s studio but in Laroud’s offices and showroom on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Founded in 2020 by former fashion editor Marina Larroudé and her husband Ricardo, the footwear brand is vertically integrated and has factories in Brazil. In May 2025, the Larouds, Cohen and Leif—industry friends who had collaborated on footwear lines in the past—sat down to discuss a partnership that would see Cohen and Leif produce Cohen’s lines at Laroud’s factory. Less than a year later, the former was able to localize its supply chain to Brazil, shortening time to market and reconfiguring both brands’ operations.
“That gives us a lot of power — it gives us freedom business-wise, but also creative freedom,” said Cohen, as the first collection hung between two shelves in the background. He mentioned a conversation he had with his mother, who said that in today’s luxury climate, if big business gets a cold, brands like his are going to get the flu. “If we can defeat the flu on our own and actually create a sustainable, healthy way of working, I think we may have solved a huge problem,” Cohen said. “I really want to thank Marina and Ricardo.”
Is Larroudé’s business model the answer to independent fashion?
It’s an unusual setup: two fashion brands share resources and join forces to run independent companies. But it’s likely to become more common as pressures from the industry’s traditional model take their toll on more businesses.
“I’ve been working in the fashion industry for over 20 years, and I always say that it’s a very difficult requirement for a fashion creative to run a business—operations, digital marketing, customer service, etc.,” says Marina. “One of the things Ricardo has always been passionate about is getting other creative people into the business we create. It felt natural for Jonathan to be the first.”
Ricardo said Laroud’s vertically integrated manufacturing center in Brazil is now open for more brands, and he doesn’t see any limits on the scale of the model. He sees Larroudé’s potential as that of Zara’s parent company, Inditex: a company that can react quickly to the performance of its products to maximize sales, but with important differentiators – higher quality, better materials and original designs. “People have a misconception that fashion is slow-paced but high-quality and high-priced, but that has nothing to do with that,” says Marina. “It’s genius that fast fashion can do this at the speed they do things. We replicated that.”
When a brand like Larroudé adopts the fast fashion model, is it more sustainable? Marina and Ricardo think so. By using customer data to produce quantities responsively, they can minimize the likelihood of producing excess merchandise that has a lower chance of being sold. Materials are sourced locally in Brazil, with the Larroudé factory also using dead stock that Jonathan Cohen used in his new collections, as well as cotton, denim and satin, all of which will be repurposed in future releases.
In terms of the partnership between the two companies, Larroudé acts as a strategic operating partner, supporting White Label through its vertically integrated manufacturing structure (Black Label is not part of the partnership). This relationship operates on a revenue share basis. Cohen’s collection is sold on Larroudé’s website, while the collaboratively designed shoes will be sold at Cohen’s.
