Sander Lak Relaunches With Sanderlak, Two Collections a Year

Sander Lak returned to market in 2025 with a new genderless brand, Sanderlak, backed by angel investors and built on a deliberately leaner operating model than the one that carried Sies Marjan to instant success and then to closure during the pandemic.

The designer laid out the new structure at the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit, in conversation with WWD's style director Alex Badia. Four collections are already delivered. The brand shows on the men's calendar, debuting two collections a year. A small full-time team runs the business.

"I don't really see anything as a break; everything is just this one long story," Lak said. "I think building Sanderlak was a very different thing from anything else I've done."

What changed between Sies Marjan and Sanderlak?

The commercial answer is discipline on volume and overhead. Lak said the new business was founded on learnings from his previous experience, including how to raise money from angel investors and making sure the business was tight. That translates into producing without too much excess, running two collection cycles a year instead of a full fashion-week cadence, and keeping headcount minimal.

He also changed his retail footprint strategy. This summer Lak opened his first long-term pop-up store, combining retail with office and showroom space — a channel test that avoids the fixed-cost commitment of a permanent flagship while giving the brand a physical presence and a wholesale-facing venue.

Notably, Sanderlak has not staged a fashion show. "I haven't done a fashion show yet, even though I've done the biggest shows before," Lak said. "So I really want to take my time." For a brand four collections deep, that marks a deliberate departure from the launch playbook of spectacle-led visibility that defined his Sies Marjan years.

What happened to Sies Marjan?

Sies Marjan, founded in 2016 after Lak spent roughly 10 to 12 years working for other designers — including Phillip Lim, Balmain and Dries Van Noten — found instant success. The pandemic ended it. The company shuttered its doors, and Lak took what he described as a five-year "fashion break."

He did not sit idle. The break produced a book, "The Colors of Sies Marjan," a screenplay, a graphic novel and an ongoing furniture collaboration with the American textile house Maharam. The Maharam project in particular signals where Lak sees adjacent product and licensing potential beyond apparel: a designer-brand crossover into interiors that continued through the hiatus.

Of his years working for established houses before founding his own company, Lak said: "There's so much that I really felt I could learn on somebody else's dime and learn from other people's mistakes. I think I would have probably had a very different company if I would have started straight out of college."

How does his background shape the business?

Lak was born in Brunei and grew up between Malaysia, Gabon, Scotland and the Netherlands. He credits that upbringing with the adaptability required to run a young label through volatility.

"It has really shaped my openness and flexibility of adjusting," he told Badia. "I'll just make it work. I'll learn the language. I'll learn the politics." He added that growing up in a big family, with a view of the American dream in which "whatever is given can also be taken," gave him a natural sense of balance between risk and reward.

For supply-chain and brand executives, the relevant point is less biographical than operational. Lak frames his decision-making around pacing — "the luxury of time, with the luxury of knowing what you're doing, with the luxury of waiting" — and argues that enjoyment feeds directly into product quality and, by extension, into the customer who buys it.

What is his advice to new designers?

Asked for one piece of advice for young designers setting out on their own, Lak did not hesitate.

"If you are coming out of college, be hungry, be cheap, and go get it," he said. "If you are cheap and hungry, you will get a job."

The comment cuts against the current pattern of graduates launching labels straight out of school. Lak's own trajectory — a decade-plus apprenticeship at established houses, a first venture that scaled fast and closed in a crisis, and a second venture launched on investor capital at a slower cadence — functions as a case study in sequencing.

With four collections delivered, a long-term pop-up and showroom in place, and angel backing secured, Sanderlak enters 2026 with the question of whether the restrained two-collection model can carry a genderless brand to durable scale — or whether Lak will eventually return to the runway to accelerate it.