How Tariffs Swayed SamCam’s Stylings

Warning: This article is about tariffs. But don’t worry, it isn’t about tariff politics, and the politician mentioned isn’t the one you will expect. You see, the US’s new tariffs claimed their first high-profile takedown Wednesday, and it illustrates their economic and market effects in a nutshell.

Back in 2017, an art school graduate and mother of four was excited. Her husband had just stepped down from the extremely high-profile and taxing job of running a country, giving her an opportunity to do something she had long fancied: start a small clothing label. She had worked in fashion, knew the industry and knew what a nightmare it could be for women seeking smart, financially attainable office and daytime attire with a stylish edge. As a creative, artsy sort, she had ideas. And as a woman in the public eye with substantial means at her disposal, she had the resources to give it a go. And so Samantha Cameron, wife of former UK Prime Minister David, launched her fashion label, Cefinn—named after their children.

Friends, it was a hit, with appeal crossing class and party lines. Members of the royal family, TV presenters and everyday women found stylish, flattering, well-cut wardrobe staples. Sales were strong, and Cefinn joined a small coterie of independent, female-founded, fast-rising UK clothing brands.^[i] As fashion conglomerates sank deeper into a group-thinky malaise of unimaginative, low-quality duds, these independent labels, which largely remain under individual ownership, made things people would actually wear year-in, year-out and feel good in. They quickly found an eager customer base in the US, where women were equally tired of fast-fashion and unwearable “luxury” offerings. People were happy to pay up for high-quality pieces that would have a low cost-per-wear over several years of life.

And so sales grew and Cefinn thrived, a staple from offices to television to the Royal Box at Wimbledon. SamCam, as journalists affectionately nicknamed her, became the rare political figure to transcend party and creed.

But Wednesday, the party ended. Cameron announced on Instagram that the label will wind down after the fall/winter fashion season. Cameron won’t design a collection for spring/summer 2026, and the boutiques will close once the autumn/winter sales cycle completes. She noted the brand had “recently seen strong trading figures,” which is Britspeak for excellent sales. However, “as a small company navigating the turbulence in the fashion wholesale sector, ongoing cost pressures and international trading restrictions,” she determined it wasn’t possible to find a profitable path in the long term. So, it is all coming to a quick, sad end.

Her manufacturers will lose business, and this will not be a tale of a business founder taking big personal financial risk and achieving big rewards. Her UK-based staff will be out of a job, too, so this won’t be a story of a business leader seeding fruitful careers for others, either.

Obviously, there are a few things going on here. Some are industry-specific headwinds, like the fashion wholesaling turbulence. The independent fashion industry took a major blow last year when one of the biggest online retailers, Matches, folded suddenly. Wholesale clients often won’t pay labels upfront, forcing them to finance an entire production run themselves, then hope retailers will pay them what is due on the back end. When Matches folded, labels who had consigned merchandise for sale had only worthless IOUs and couldn’t even get their inventory back. Several failed instantly, including the beloved Vampire’s Wife, founded and owned by rocker Nick Cave’s wife, Susie. The survivors continued facing a tough landscape, culminating with Canada-based online retailer Ssense filing for bankruptcy late last month—potentially a Matches repeat, based on several reports of overdue payments to independent labels.^[ii] 

But there are also policy things—policy things that hit small businesses a bazillion times harder than large publicly traded firms. One is unique to the UK: “business rates,” which are essentially a tax on commercial real estate. This hits brick-and-mortar retailers disproportionately, whacking them with costs online-only retailers don’t face. Large retailers with global operations and economies of scale can absorb the hit, kind of like how a grocery store uses cheap bananas as a loss leader. But for independent businesses, it is a destructive balance-sheet hit that politicians in both parties are very good at griping about but terrible at reforming.  

And then there are tariffs. Cefinn is a British label. Cameron designs every collection in the UK. Her cutters and fitters are all UK-based, which Telegraph Head of Fashion Lisa Armstrong describes as “a little atelier of skills, nurtured in UK colleges, that is now no more.”^[iii]

But Cameron made the choice to manufacture in China, and the US tariff code treats the entire value of the product as “made in China,” subjecting it to the 30% tariff rate. Make no mistake, though, this is also a large headwind for labels that manufacture in the UK and EU, which now face 10% and 15% tariff rates, respectively.

This, too, is far easier for large brands to navigate. Bigger, corporate-owned brands have more clout with suppliers. Larger production runs give them more leverage to negotiate costs downward. Many also have name recognition and prestige enabling them to foist higher costs on customers. Or, to air the fashion world’s dirty secret, their profits come mainly from shoes and handbags, whose prices have always been inflated beyond quality, logic and reason, with apparel simply being the excuse for the handbags to walk down the runway at fashion week. They have many ways to make the math work.

Small businesses don’t. Their wholesale customers will pressure them to absorb the cost, arguing they won’t be able to sell at a higher price point. Americans who buy directly from the labels online may see garments priced as normal at first, but those who handle tariffs on customers’ behalf are now adding those duties as an extra line item at checkout. Which is fair, transparent and correct, but it is an added point of friction and risks making would-be buyers balk. And when retailers leave tariffs in the customer’s hands to handle, and the customer receives an invoice from the shipping carrier, there is a risk of the customer refusing and the order being returned to sender.

Swallowing higher costs or losing sales is a bad enough choice. But clothing labels are especially vulnerable because, in the slow-fashion world, they finance an entire production upfront twice a year, then hope sales are enough to repay creditors, fund employees’ salaries and leave something in the bank. Building a business in what many would consider the “right way” means operating on a shoestring and a prayer.

At an economic and market level, there is good news and bad news. The perverse good news is that the clothing labels most vulnerable to tariffs are small, not publicly traded and therefore not a factor for markets. The publicly traded clothing universe has some headwinds, to be sure, but tariffs are pretty low on that totem pole—one more navigable cost.

The bad news is that small, independent businesses, while not represented in the stock market, play a big role in national and local economies. On both sides of the pond, there is a lot of handwringing about the death of local retail and small boutiques, and quite rightly so, in my opinion. Small businesses tend to feed off one another. The best commercial districts are those with a blend of retail and restaurants. Where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area, several downtown areas are basically restaurant-only, with tumbleweeds blowing down the street outside mealtime. It is depressing. But thriving local retail doesn’t just create more vibrancy—it employs local workers and adds to the local tax base.

Tariffs hurt this in a few ways in America. One, as Cefinn’s closure shows, they risk taking brands out of the market, giving local retailers fewer merchandise options. Two, they raise local retailers’ costs, given the US lacks a robust garment manufacturing industry that can produce quality garments at scale with ethical working conditions. If you have a local boutique, you are likely in the business of selling imported clothing. Three, the massive uncertainty leaves buyers pulling their hair out, wondering if they should order now or wait for tariffs to change again. And wondering if they should hire that new sales associate they needed. Or if they should lease that new storefront. Or or or.

So when we say tariffs are an economic headwind, this is part of what we mean. It may not show readily in economic data. And it isn’t the sort of economic headwind that hits stock markets hard, especially when the consequences are well-known. Callously, stocks seemingly registered all this in Liberation Day’s immediate aftermath, when they swooned for a few days, then moved on fast. But that is very cold comfort to the small businesses and sole proprietors trying to give it a go.