Fashion’s Hottest New Sales Strategy Is One of Its Oldest

Right now at a country club in Winnetka, a ritzy village on Chicago’s North Shore, members are buzzing about two things: Mahjong and Marfa Stance coats.

The former, the Chinese tile-based game, has topped Bridge and the rest to become the social set’s favourite pastime. The latter, $1,000 jackets from the British founder Georgia Dant in deadstock Italian and Japanese fabrics, can trace their sudden notoriety in this community to one person: Winnetka native Audrey Fosse. She’s been putting on trunk shows for the brand in her family’s restaurant, Mino’s, since 2022; friends she’s introduced to Marfa Stance have hosted their own events in Marin County, California and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

All those shows, though, make up just a handful of the nearly 300 events Marfa Stance held this year between the Hamptons, Nantucket, Atlanta and Aspen. They’re also a major factor in the brand’s expected sales growth — 30 percent — in 2025, too.

One of fashion’s oldest selling formats — where a brand takes their clothes on the road to a store, an event space, club or even a customer’s home for invited guests to shop — trunk shows are on the rise across the industry. A challenging e-commerce and department store landscape has pushed brands to look for alternative ways to generate sales. Plus, as consumers complain of humdrum retail experiences, devoid of human touch and a sense of discovery, those options feel more exciting.

“Women love to gather, they love to shop together,” said Fosse. “Department stores are empty, malls are dying. These traditional places of gathering for fashion are not working anymore. People want a more personal experience.”

Trunk shows get brands face to face with their shoppers but also help expose them to new ones through word of mouth as hosts — often an existing client — invite their friends to shop. The format lends itself to generating sales — there’s nothing like a pal in your ear telling you that dress is a must-buy to get you to hand over your credit card.

“When it works best it’s like ‘Annie in Austin loves buying X jewellery brand’ and invites her friends to shop it,” said Georgie FuTong, founder of New York-based creative communications agency FuTong and Friends, which works with brands including Marfa Stance. “Then you have a real advocate for the brand and a natural ambassador.”

The financial payoff can be big: Savannah Engel, founder of PR agency Savi, who helps put on trunk shows for brands including Markarian, Verandah, Luisa Beccaria and Lein Studio, has seen brands bring in $100,000 in a day. Mauricio Espinosa Tcherassi, chief commercial officer of the womenswear brand Silvia Tcherassi said three days of trunk shows in Mexico City can generate what his brand sells in one month in one of its most productive stores. And it lasts: High Sport founder Alissa Zachary said that after hosting a show in a particular city, she tends to see an uptick in e-commerce sales in the area.

But to pull it off effectively, trunk shows take a special alchemy of the right energy, environment, guest list and host.

“It’s a form of what fashion’s always been built on; exclusivity and inclusivity and teetering between those two,” said Engel.

IRL Social Shopping

Trunk shows are just as much a social event as a shopping one.

Zachary, who started putting on shows this spring, first and foremost tries to create a fun, relaxed energy at events.

“Some women just want to come hang out and talk to other women,” or, have a naughty mid-afternoon glass of champagne, she said. So at events like the ones she held with the handbag line Métier in Southampton and Sagaponack last summer, there was an all-day bartender, good music and valet parking. Marfa Stance often brings other women founders, investors and charitable organisations to events — which resonates with guests and hosts including Fosse.

A brand can put on a splashy fête with a wholesale partner, charity or other brand; or it can choose an ultra-intimate setting — a lunch held in someone’s home, or a meeting with the designer in a beautiful hotel suite.

The scene at a recent Marfa Stance trunk show. (Courtesy)

Having a client or fan of the brand host is preferred, said Tcherassi. Staging the event in their home is even better, said Adam Lippes, the designer behind his namesake womenswear brand.

“If you can get into a house of a woman who doesn’t offer her house so much, people want to go as much to see the house as your clothes,” said Lippes.

Once the guests are gathered, it’s a cocktail of different elements — including cocktails — that drives spending. The intimacy of the setting allow for customers to have an insider experience. Lippes, for instance, often stages a small runway at his trunk shows, where he’ll talk through the designs. At a San Francisco event in November, he introduced the room to his first handbag line before officially announcing the launch in December. He said he earns around $250,000 to $500,000 in sales per show, while each costs about $50,000 to produce.

Especially for people who have the means to buy anything, there’s an allure that comes with an invite to a trunk show — which often grants access to items before they’re on sale at retail. Luisa Beccaria, founder of her namesake Milan-based womenswear brand, says clienteling slowly but surely through these events helps maintain a sense of specialness.

“Luxury is very corporate, multi-market and all about the numbers. We [reach] women who are looking for something different, not known through magazines or shop windows,” said Beccaria.

Plus, there’s a cachet associated with hosting — and attending. Depending on the brand and situation, accepting an invitation to an exclusive trunk show can be a tacit agreement to purchase something. Plus, attendees are just generally motivated to support a brand they’ve actually interfaced with, even if it doesn’t happen until later. In some cases, there can even be a little bit of competition among shoppers to spend more than their friends.

“Customers like to feel first, they like to understand the clothing and they want to see the details,” said Lippes. “They want to feel part of it. … It makes what we do more than just clothing; it’s not just stuff on racks and that’s a big difference.”

Taking the Show on the Road

At the same time as big luxury houses such as Hermès and Chanel look to cities like Nashville, Tennessee and Austin, Texas to spur growth, many independent brands are using the trunk show model to establish roots outside typical shopping capitals.

“There is wealth everywhere across America, not just New York, LA and Miami,” said Engel. Though, she added, that requires more nuanced selling strategies: “The way the deep South buys and spends on fashion is different than the way the northern South does … You’re almost speaking different languages.”

Milan-based womenswear brand Luisa Beccaria has begun expanding its trunk show reach in the US beyond New York with its first show in Dallas last month, while Tcherassi said he’s focused on Latin America in order to appeal to people who may be less interested in travelling to the US to shop like they used to.

For brands that put in the work, there are rewards that go beyond the sales they bring in. Marfa Stance partner Barrie Glabman compares trunk shows to focus groups. Brands can use them to test new markets and plot retail expansion. Face time with customers can help them get a better sense of what products are resonating and why, said Beccaria. Formalwear brands, especially, can plug into the social calendar of a given area, whether debutante season in Charleston, South Carolina, gala season in New York or wedding season in Monterrey, Mexico. Marfa Stance appears wherever its clients go, following them as they travel seasonally from New York to Aspen, Colorado and Palm Beach, Florida.

“We make real friends, and make people really loyal to this brand, and that’s bigger than anything else,” said Glabman.