Mara Hoffman Is Closing Her Eponymous Line

After 24 years in business, Mara Hoffman is closing her eponymous fashion line.

Closing the label "is by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life," the designer told Vogue in an interview revealing the news. (She also shared the announcement on her Instagram and her website.) She had been considering it for years, but made the final decision in January: "I didn't want other people's ideas of solutions and how they thought it could be fixed or where I could have done things differently."

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Hoffman launched her brand after graduating from Parsons in 1999. Her punchy designs gained momentum thanks to Patricia Field, who sold the pieces in her famed East Village boutique. Since 2014, the Mara Hoffman label made sustainability a core value; that involved restructuring its supply chain, cutting out polyester fabrics, committing to no overproduction and investing in workers to qualify for Fair Trade certifications — all of which led the founder to spend more on the business. It also launched extended sizes in 2018, and opened its first store in 2022.

Financial challenges mounted: Aside from the cost of materials going up, Hoffman ditched wholesale in favor of selling direct-to-consumer, which meant she lost upfront orders.

"There are not many companies that have successfully done this for as long of a period as we have. And the reality is that the demands that are on a small company financially make it almost impossible to be privately held and run after a certain point," she told Alyssa Hardy.

Hoffman didn't want to risk an outside investment tainting the label's principles. So, she decided that Spring 2024 collection will be her brand's last.

Since undertaking this transformation towards more conscious production, Hoffman has become an advocate for sustainability in fashion. Just six months ago, she was awarded the 2023 CFDA Environmental Sustainability Award. "[There was a] complexity of being honored by an industry for this work we had done, yet feeling the devastation of how it simply cannot work in this current iteration of the fashion industry," Hoffman told Vogue.

In that interview, she reflected on how having a brand has been her identity for all of adulthood, but that she understands fashion is undergoing major changes. Closing the company is part of that.

"I've been using this saying, that it's almost impossible to be dying and trying to give birth at the same time. You have to make time for both," she said. "I'm not saying that the business itself was dying, but that this industry is calling for a great change. And as a thought leader, it's really hard to give myself that space to think of new ways to do that."

In her message to her community, Hoffman assured that she's not going anywhere, writing: "My work is far from done. I am looking forward to resting for a moment and then welcoming beautiful new invitations into my life. To create, collaborate, and lend my vision to meaningful projects. I know that I am here to help, and I am so excited to see how this unfolds."

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