Zac Posen dressed Beyoncé and Michelle Obama — his label ran out of time

Zac Posen founded his label in 2001 and spent nearly twenty years dressing the red carpet: Michelle Obama, Natalie Portman, Rihanna, Kate Winslet, Naomi Campbell, Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé all wore his gowns, and Claire Danes's light-up dress at the 2016 Met Gala became one of the decade's fashion images. Along the way he judged Project Runway for six years, signed collaborations with Target, Delta Airlines and David's Bridal, and became the subject of the 2017 documentary House of Z. The business underneath the celebrity was thinner than the client list.

On Friday, November 1, 2019, employees were told that House of Z and Z Spoke were ceasing all operations immediately; the e-commerce site went dark the same day. The board of managers said it could 'no longer continue operations' and would pursue an orderly disposition. Posen himself was blunt about what had failed: 'The board made a difficult decision. We were in a sale process and we ran out of time.' He had been 'personally trying to find the right partner for some time,' in a difficult climate — fast fashion's growth, the migration online — and 'it's not an easy time in our industry.'

The timing made the point. Barneys New York, one of Posen's stockists, was sold the same day, in the middle of its own liquidation drama; the label's shutdown landed 'amid all the hubbub of the Barneys liquidation.' What closed was not an unknown brand but one of American fashion's most visible names — a label whose problem was never attention. 'It's been 20 years of love, I'm very sad,' Posen told Vogue. 'But I've had the great fortune to express myself creatively.' Fame, it turned out, was not a balance sheet.