Independent designers have long looked for a way to break out of fashion’s two-season, wholesale-reliant model, which has stopped working for so many in the industry. But bucking long-standing norms isn’t easy. How did Cohen and Leff pull off their pivot?
To unpack the new business model, we’re sitting not in Cohen’s studio, but in the Larroudé offices and showroom on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The footwear brand, founded by former fashion editor Marina Larroudé and her husband Ricardo in 2020, is vertically integrated and owns its factory in Brazil. In May 2025, the Larroudés, Cohen and Leff — longtime industry friends who collaborated on a footwear collection in the past — sat down and discussed a partnership where Cohen and Leff would manufacture Cohen’s collections in Larroudé’s factories. Under a year later, the former were able to localize their supply chain to Brazil, shrink time to market and reconfigure the business with the two labels.
“It’s been extremely empowering — this gives us freedom in our business, and also creative freedom,” Cohen says, as the first collection hangs between two racks in the background. He references a conversation with his mom, who said that in today’s luxury climate, if big businesses get a cold, brands like his have the flu. “If we can get over that flu on our own, and really create a sustainable, healthy way of working, I think we might’ve solved a huge problem,” Cohen says. “And I really have to thank Marina and Ricardo for that.”
Is Larroudé’s business model the answer for independent fashion?
It’s an unusual set-up: two fashion brands sharing resources and joining forces to run independent companies. But it’s one that could become increasingly common as strains of the industry’s traditional model wear on more businesses.
“I have spent over 20 years in the fashion industry, and I always say it’s a very hard ask for a fashion creative to be running a business — to be running operations, to do digital marketing, customer service, all of that,” says Marina. “One of the things that Ricardo has always been keen on is to have other creatives step into the business that we have created. It feels very natural that Jonathan would be the first.”
Larroudé’s vertically integrated manufacturing center in Brazil is now open for more brands to come and use, Ricardo says, and he doesn’t see any limit on how big the model can scale. He sees Larroudé’s potential as that of Zara-parent Inditex: a company that can respond quickly to how pieces are performing to maximize their sell-through rate, but with important differentiators — higher quality, better materials and original designs. “There is a misconception about being slow in fashion and having a high quality and price point, but that has nothing to do with it,” says Marina. “What fast fashion is able to do at the speed that they do things, it’s genius. And that we copied.”
Is fast fashion’s model more sustainable when taken up by a brand like Larroudé? Marina and Ricardo argue that it is. By using customer data to produce volume responsively, they minimize the chance that they’ll create excess goods that have a lower chance of selling. Materials are locally sourced in Brazil, and the Larroudé factory also uses deadstock, which Jonathan Cohen used in his new collection, alongside cotton, denim and satin, all of which will be repurposed across future drops.
On 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 sits outside of this partnership). The relationship operates on a revenue-share basis. Cohen’s collections are for sale on Larroudé’s website, while shoes designed in collaboration will be sold on Cohen’s.