MIAMI—When the Latin American Fashion Summit (LAFS) returned to Miami’s Design District this November, it drew 700 attendees to its core event inside The Moore and more than 2,000 visitors across its pop-up shop, influencer programming, and open-access events. Now in its seventh edition, the Latina-led gathering has become one of the most effective (yet still surprisingly under-the-radar) luxury business conferences shaping U.S. retail. Past participants now stocked at Revolve, Moda Operandi, Shopbop, and Nordstrom, to name a few, underscore LAFS’s role as a discreet but powerful entry point into the United States.
LAFS was founded by fashion veterans Estefanía Lacayo and Samantha Tams, who spent their careers in editorial, buying, and luxury retail before recognizing a persistent gap: Designers across Latin America were building strong brands but had no structured pathway into the U.S. market.
Just off The Moore’s central atrium, a network of breakout rooms made it effortless for guests to chase the sessions they needed. Along the way, subtle photo moments offered organic touchpoints without disrupting the flow. Photo: Sans Studios
“They had a wonderful product and a clear identity, but they didn’t have access to the right mentors or capital,” Lacayo says. “They were allocating their money in the wrong places, and everyone was ripping them off.”
In 2018, she and Tams built the bridge they wished had existed. Tams, formerly a buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue Mexico City, brought commercial and operational discipline; Lacayo brought vision, community-building, and a fashion-tech background. Their first summit in Riviera Maya drew 350 attendees; the following year in Cartagena drew 750, including fashion industry leaders such as Carolina Herrera and Johanna Ortiz. When the pandemic hit, they pivoted into free digital programming with speakers like Diane von Furstenberg. That decision cemented credibility and loyalty, laying the groundwork for partnerships with Mastercard, Google, and Tiffany & Co.
The founders of LAFS mark the start of each summit with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the Miami Design District, flanked by partners and guests. Photo: Sans Studios
The summit’s audience now reflects the gap LAFS fills. Eighty-five percent of attendees are women: digitally savvy early- and mid-career entrepreneurs alongside founders, executives, students, and high-net-worth consumers. Initially created for Latin Americans, the summit now draws nearly 70% U.S.-based attendees—largely U.S. Hispanics who use it as both a business accelerator and a way to connect with their cultural roots.
“It’s a meeting point for professionals in the fashion, beauty, and wellness space,” Tams says. “People come together once a year to empower each other, network, and collaborate.”
For a conference with global ambitions, LAFS is intentionally intimate. The main stage hosts tightly programmed panels and fireside chats, while 10-person roundtables bring designers face-to-face with buyers, investors, consultants, executives, and operators.
“It feels very peer-to-peer,” Tams says. “Yes, it’s aspirational—but there’s no barrier between anyone who attends.” That intimacy extends to the setting. “If we’re going to be talking about sustainability and luxury and fashion, we want to be in a beautiful environment over a glass of wine,” Lacayo adds.
Panels spanned fashion, wellness, and digital culture, offering tangible insight into retail access and creative leadership, women’s health and longevity, and the rising role of content creators in shaping how brands are discovered, shopped, and scaled. Photo: Sans Studios
This year, The Moore Building’s multi-level layout kept programming contained and navigable.
“We’ve tried it all—multi-venue, one venue, big tents,” Tams says. “It has taken us seven years to find the perfect format.” Experimentation remains core to LAFS, and the model will continue to evolve as its audience does.
Content is curated with similar precision. “We need to give them relationships and information they can adapt into their business,” Lacayo says. “What’s the point of us doing 10 panels on AI if [small brands] don’t have the money to implement AI into their systems? Content has to be tangible.”
Attendees moved between sessions on trend forecasting, tariff navigation, pitching to buyers or media, and cross-border retail, along with workshops on sharpening their brand and go-to-market strategies. Major voices, from Disney’s consumer products team to designers like Jonathan Simkhai and Naeem Khan, offered unfiltered insight into brand storytelling, creative disruption, and brand longevity.
LAFS’s core programming leaned heavily into fashion’s most urgent questions, led by the kinds of industry figures who rarely appear in rooms this small. Buyers and executives from companies like Kering, Shopbop, Moda Operandi, and Nordstrom offered tactical insight into margins, pricing, pitching, branding, and wholesale strategy; Disney’s consumer products team broke down narrative-driven retail; and sessions with Design District founder Craig Robins, artist Harmony Korine, and designers Simkhai and Khan unpacked creative longevity and global expansion. Designers also cycled through 10-person roundtables with showroom directors, brand operators, and consultants—a format that featured mentorship normally reserved for private advisory work.
Natura Bissé turned a quiet corner of The Moore into a portable “air bubble” spa with private facial suites that offered attendees a reset between panels without ever straying too far from the action. Photo: Sans Studios
Programming also reflected the summit’s widening audience. “We don’t just have buyers anymore; we have content creators, operators, retailers, and founders who need different tools,” Lacayo says.
That shift played out in a robust wellness and longevity track, with sessions led by Amber Berger (The Well Drop), MindBodyGreen cofounder Colleen Wachob, and Melinda “The Beauty Broker” Farina. The creator economy also took center stage through ShopMy and Croissant’s sessions on new commerce models and a creator mindset panel with creators Valeria and Gary Lipovetsky.
Around the summit, LAFS layered in brand activations that felt more like hospitality than sponsorship. Natura Bissé transformed a private suite into a wellness lab offering masterclasses and express treatments. Granado Rio de Janeiro hosted a fragrance-focused media luncheon, while Foundrae opened its Design District jewelry boutique for an invite-only shopping event.
Meanwhile, the public-facing LAFS Pop-Up in Paradise Plaza showcased 35 Latin American brands—many without any U.S. presence—and served as both a retail incubator and real-time market test. Across three days, it generated more than $300,000 in sales and significant buyer engagement.
As a luxury summit, LAFS favored hands-on experiences over photo walls. Natura Bissé hosted a guided facial class where guests sat shoulder to shoulder, learning techniques from an on-site expert and turning a skincare lesson into a shared moment. Photo: Sans Studios
Pitch to LAFS, the summit’s anchor competition, offers one of the region’s strongest launchpads. Nine finalists across three categories present to a panel of editors, executives, founders, designers, and national retailers. Weeks beforehand, finalists work with mentors to refine margins, production capacity, pricing, distribution, and brand storytelling. Winners receive a $10,000 seeding grant, a yearlong mentorship, a booth at Coterie, a Moda Operandi trunk show, and a six-month ShopMy premium package. Alumni include Kika Vargas, Susana Vega, Baobab, Escvdo, Maygel Coronel, Studio Conchita, and Juan de Dios—all of whom went on to global retail expansion.
Beyond the summit, Lacayo and Tams have built an entire ecosystem championing Latin American fashion and culture. Through LAFS Experiences, they activate programming with luxury brands, governments, and tourism boards throughout the Americas and Europe. In 2023, the Dominican Republic invited LAFS to Santo Domingo to attract high-spending visitors to local businesses; interest is also expanding to Panama, Brazil, and Costa Rica. “If a company wants to target the Latin American market, we are the right partners,” Tams says.
Their reach is amplified by an always-on content engine with daily storytelling, including sharing industry news, designer spotlights, and digital learning on social media, a podcast, and a high-frequency newsletter that all combine to become a discovery tool for stylists, retailers, and fashion enthusiasts. LAFS generated 15 million organic impressions from social media this year (up 114% YoY) with a 1.8% engagement rate across owned channels, partners, and influencers. “This growth reflects the power of an organically built community,” Tams notes.
Set in the atrium of The Moore, LAFS panels were staged in a U-shape designed to foster dialogue. The layout softened the scale of the space and encouraged guests to engage directly with speakers, reinforcing the summit’s emphasis on real connection. Photo: Sans Studios
These experiences and year-round active social presence double as recruitment and community-building tools, especially for designers who can’t easily travel to Miami. “If they can’t come to us, we’ll make sure to come to them,” Lacayo says. “We want to discover what they’re doing.”
And while the content is robust, both founders say community is the true value. “Content is everywhere,” Tams says. “What people need now is connection—who you can meet in the room.” Those connections routinely turn into outcomes: Agua Bendita met the CEO of Bottega Veneta at a panel and later brought her on as an advisor; two strangers from Houston met at a roundtable and opened South to North, now-beloved boutiques in Texas known for their Latin American curation.
Seven years in, LAFS has become one of fashion’s most strategic brand-building ecosystems. Designers leave with contacts, critiques, and concrete next steps, not just inspiration. Lacayo and Tams run it with a lean, fast-moving team and a clear philosophy: small rooms, tight curation, and year-round follow-through. It’s why so many return annually, and why its case studies continue to stack up: designers landing global retailers, brands born from chance introductions, and long-term advisor relationships formed in breakout rooms.
For a sector increasingly questioning the value of large-scale conferences, LAFS makes a persuasive counterargument: real intimacy, tight curation, and year-round support. “It’s about the people, and really understanding what our community wants,” Lacayo says.
And for many brands, that understanding and consistency is what changes the trajectory of their success.
Keep scrolling to see more from inside LAFS 2025…
Open to the public, the LAFS Pop-Up created a high-energy retail touchpoint where 35 Latin American brands introduced their work to new audiences, generating momentum, sales, and industry visibility in real time. Photo: Sans Studios
At a summit built for fashion insiders, entry came not with lanyards but with threaded bracelets—a small detail that set the tone for a more style-driven experience. Photo: Sans Studios
As the summit shifted into its evening networking hour, Colombian guaro brand Bacán stole the show with smoky cocktails and handwritten fashion notes clipped to each drink, an immersive way to position the heritage spirit as the next luxury export from Latin America. Photo: Sans Studios
Looking to connect with creators and industry leaders, SER, a Colombian millinery, hosted a tactile lunch where they brought their “Hatelier” experience to Miami. Photo: Sans Studios
Guests customized their own hats with charms and hand-finished details, an experiential way to introduce the brand’s craftsmanship. Photo: Sans Studios
To reach LAFS’s younger attendees, Disney paired its “Telling Stories Through Fashion” panel with a student meet-and-greet and a showcase of Marvel universe costumes. Photo: Sans Studios
The summit wrapped at The Temple House, where LAFS took full advantage of the venue’s 3D projection mapping, washing the room in custom visuals before revealing this year’s “Pitch” winners. Photo: Sans Studios