While Wall Street has, of late, favored artificial intelligence chips, drones and rockets, Los Angeles’ newest public company isn’t a usual suspect.

Reformation, a Vernon-based purveyor of environmentally minded women’s clothing, made its public debut on July 30 with shares priced at $15 a piece. The move sent the retailer’s valuation flying to roughly $950 million, just shy of its $1-billion target.

Founded in 2009 as a vintage retailoring shop on Melrose Avenue, Reformation has shaped into a celebrity-loved, accessible-luxury brand with sustainability as its ethos. The company, known for its line of wedding guest dresses, runs 70 stores located across the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and France. 

Hitting the public markets will help the company expand on its ambitions and its reach, Chief Executive Hali Borenstein told CNBC before the IPO. Reformation plans to double its store footprint over the next five years, boost its e-commerce business and trench deeper into new product categories, she said. 

“Our business is ready, we have a great team, and we’re excited to show what we can do,” Borenstein said.

Sights set high

It didn’t take long for Reformation to bust out of its early second-hand upcycling model and introduce its own collection. The growth that followed saw the company experiment with category niches and break into new markets at an accelerating pace. 

The brand started selling its clothing online in 2013, the same year it opened a factory in downtown L.A. After setting up a number of stateside brick-and-mortar shops, it opened its first store outside of the U.S. in Toronto in 2019, followed by London, Vancouver and Paris. 

Reformation’s sights have been set high for a while, said Jessica Ramirez, cofounder of consumer insights advisory firm The Consumer Collective – making an IPO the company’s natural next step. 

“They’ve always had ambition for growth,” Ramirez said. “I think that (an IPO) has maybe always been in the books for them.”

With less than 1% penetration of its core market – the roughly 94 million American women aged 18 to 60 – the brand has a long way to go to win new customers and gain inroads across its increasingly diversified product offerings, Borenstein told CNBC. 

“You’re going to see a lot from us,” she said. 

While semi-formal and formal dresses fit for rehearsal dinners, cocktail parties and wedding receptions are its bread and butter, Reformation has introduced a range of categories to attract more customers. It launched a bridal line in 2014 and started making jeans in 2017, shoes in 2022, and bags, swimwear, sweaters and pajamas more recently.

“We’re seeing right now, what’s hot, is a lot of separates,” Borenstein told CNBC. “Customers are coming to us for our tops, our bottoms and our shoes, as well. (They’re) really looking for the full outfit: Day to night, across all occasions.”

Denim is among the brand’s fastest growing categories, reporting average annual revenue growth of 30% between 2022 and 2025. 

Reformation’s sprint to growth under the guidance of private equity firm Permira, which acquired the retailer in 2019, came at the cost of product quality, Ramirez said. 

“We started seeing a bit of a fall as they gained loyalty from customers, and it was sitting with private equity,” she said. “What I noticed was the quality of the products started diminishing, yet we still had the same price point.”

But in the year ahead of its public debut, Reformation doubled down and turned around, the analyst said. The brand rebounded as efforts to appeal to a broader customer base have seen it re-focus on production and material standards, introduce more diverse silhouettes, and experiment with pricing.

“Some items I’ve seen are a little bit more entry level, around $100, and the quality is better,” Ramirez said. 

Reformation’s price-point sits a notch under higher-end brands like Vince and Theory, Borenstein said, and a touch above Aritzia and J.Crew, which lean heavier into basics. The brand’s prices range from around $40 to $1,500, with casual tees at the bottom and heavyweight silk evening gowns and outerwear at the top. Wedding guest and cocktail dresses start at around $198. 

“Our assortment straddles aspirational and approachable, offering many different types of shoppers an entry point into the brand,” the company wrote in an S-1 filing ahead of its IPO.

A new arena

While Reformation has seen a strong debut, the pressures that come with public trading could undermine the tenets that built the brand – namely its focus on sustainability, said Felipe Caro, a business professor at UCLA. 

The company’s slogan – “Being naked is the #1 most sustainable option. We’re #2.” –  is a clear nod to its environmentally friendly practices. The backbones of its promise are low-impact materials like deadstock fabrics and recycled cashmere, carbon and water neutrality, and careful footprint tracking.

“Once you go public, you have investors that put tremendous pressure … to grow, to increase volume, and that’s where the conflict might come up,” Caro said. “If you’re telling customers on one hand, ‘Hey, keep that dress forever,’ then why would they want to buy another one?”

To keep its eco-conscious approach, Reformation won’t have much room to compromise on price, Caro said. Sticking to its guns could mean slower growth, he said, but success nonetheless. 

“If they’re willing to keep the high price point and maybe not pursue growth at the scale of fast fashion brands, I think they can still be a very financially viable brand,” Caro said. 

As a public company, keeping prices accessible may be important as high inflation and rising costs make consumers pull back from spending on fashion and beauty. A recent report from The Consumer Collective shows a squeezed middle-income consumer dipping into savings to cover costs and deprioritizing discretionary spending. 

But consumers will still dish out a little more for higher-end clothing that’ll last, Ramirez said. 

“If you can match quality to price, then you will still be able to win,” she said. 

A rare fashion debut

Reformation’s unlikely climb from a vintage upcycling shop to a near-billion-dollar company stands out in a dispirited consumer retail IPO market. 

Wall Street soured on fashion IPOs after seeing several direct-to-consumer brands flounder on the public markets. Brooklyn-based clothing subscription company Rent the Runway and San Francisco-based sneaker company Allbirds both saw their market value tank after debuting in 2021. The latter has since ditched the shoe industry, announcing a pivot to artificial intelligence infrastructure in April.

Now, as the doors to the IPO market reopen after several sluggish years, few consumer retail brands squeeze through. Muted, uncertain consumer demand, along with low population growth in the U.S. and supply-chain pressures, are responsible, said Duleep Rodrigo, KPMG’s Americas and U.S. sector leader for consumer, retail and hospitality in the Americas. 

“It’s been a selective market, and consumer, retail, and hospitality companies have not had the same degree of participation in the IPO market this time around as we have had in the past,” Rodrigo said. 

In a bid to prove its Wall Street readiness, Reformation has touted its cultural resonance and brand durability. Last year, the retailer surpassed 1 million active customers on its direct-to-consumer channel, which made up 90% of its net revenue.

“Part of our success and our growth strategy is really continuing to engage our really strong customer base,” Borenstein told CNBC. 

While net income fell year-over-year, from $33 million in 2024 to $12.6 million in 2025, the company has delivered 20 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth through the first quarter of 2026, according to a regulatory filing.

Investors will want to see that upward trend continue, Caro said, as the company realizes its brick-and-mortar expansion plans. Building on existing momentum across newer product categories and increasing distribution across both its DTC and wholesale channels will also be key, Ramirez said. 

“They’ll want to see that this brand has consistent margins, that they have sustainable growth plans, and that there truly is a runway for growth for them,” she said.