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And now, the main event…

When Clare Vivier opened her first Clare V. store in Silverlake, in 2012, the neighborhood east of Sunset Junction in Los Angeles was by no means a retail destination. In fact, she told me, landlords and developers tended to avoid it altogether. But things have changed over the past decade and a half: The neighborhood has become a bastion of midcentury modern mavens with record players and “rescue” purebreds—it’s basically Williamsburg West. Vivier, an American designer with French taste, is renovating the original Silverlake store, which will nearly double in size to 1,100 square feet. Clare V. has been expanding its national footprint, too.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Vivier’s approach to expansion is slightly unorthodox: Like other retailers, she uses e-commerce data to identify promising markets, but ultimately makes the decision by walking through the neighborhood. In the end, she prioritizes community over foot traffic: “Where do we feel like we want to fit in and belong?” she told me. So far, this strategy has been worked out for her 14 U.S. locations, although she still works with retailers like Nordstrom for coverage in key mall locations, for a retail mix that’s 80 percent direct-to-consumer and 20 percent wholesale. She has two more stores scheduled to open in Texas over the next year and a half, which will be her entrée into the Lone Star State. (Of course, what works for one retailer doesn’t work for everyone—one brand recently told me that their own Silverlake location, where Vivier is growing her footprint, was its worst-performing store globally.) But the real test of Vivier’s retail philosophy won’t be measured by geographic expansion, but whether her business model can withstand the economic pressures reshaping American manufacturing and retail. Once a poster child for American-made accessories, with all of its products manufactured domestically, the share of goods that Clare V. manufactures stateside has dipped below 50 percent at the worst possible time. “We are well positioned [to weather tariffs] given that we have a lot of production in L.A.,” she told me, “but the problem is all of the components that come from overseas.” Even with California factories, Clare V. sources leather from Italy and hardware from Asia. Trump’s tariffs have created “a real burden on the company,” she told me, forcing scrambling across shipping, financial, and merchandising departments. Clare V. has also absorbed other pressures that specifically impact teams based in Southern California—everything from the L.A. fires in January to the recent ICE raids on factories in the area. Clare V. boasts $75 million in net annual sales projected for 2025, with no debt and consistent profitability, but these are the kind of external events that test a brand’s operations and resilience.

So far, Vivier has managed to scale the business without much outside help. She still controls the majority of equity in the company, which she co-owns alongside Fossil founder Tom Kartsotis—whose Bedrock Manufacturing (also an investor in Shinola and Filson) holds just under 30 percent—and pioneering boutique multibrand retailer Steven Alan, who owns 7 percent. Her approach to product development is similarly personal: Rather than hiring consultants or chasing viral trends, Vivier has built new categories by testing her friends’ businesses through a “Friends of Clare V.” program, in which she invites designers like Jamie Haller and Maya Brenner to occupy shelf space—essentially turning her stores into a mini marketplace. She was among the first serious D.T.C. brands to do so.