Brandon Maxwell Talks 10 Years Anniversary, Creative Director Role of Walmart’s Scoop and Free Assembly

Brandon Maxwell and Walmart are working to democratize fashion.

In March 2021, the celebrity stylist turned luxury American fashion designer joined the retail giant as creative director of two of its private fashion brands: Scoop and Free Assembly. His appointment was the first step in their ongoing journey together to bring fashion at a democratic price point, and joy to the masses. 

In an exclusive interview, Maxwell reflects on his nearly five-year journey at Scoop and Free Assembly and his namesake luxury brand’s 10-year anniversary. 

“One thing that I realized during the [Brandon Maxwell] spring 2026 show is that I may not have been great in school, but the past 10 years have given me a type of education that I could never be anywhere else. That education did not come through the big moments that people see. They came through the quiet losses and failures and moments that really tested me,” Maxwell said, proudly reflecting on his namesake brand’s anniversary. 

“The challenge of it is what has been really exciting for me, and I wanted to do things in my career that are outside of the box. If you look at me coming out of school, there’s not a single person that would have looked at you and said, ‘He would be celebrating 10 years of a fashion brand in New York.’ I really wanted to make choices in my career that challenged me, and I think I’ve done that with my partnerships as well,” he said.

Growing up working in his grandmother’s women’s boutique in Texas, Maxwell said, “Having the experience of dressing women in my own brand, that euphoric feeling that I felt as a young person is how I feel when I am making clothes for someone and seeing it on people,” drove him to keep growing.

Frequently returning home to spend time with friends and family has also served as not only inspiration, but time to reset. Around 2018, when his brand was growing, Maxwell said he was having conversations during these trips, and with others close to him, about his desire to work with Walmart. 

“I had seen the experience of someone coming into [my grandmother’s] store and trying on the clothes, and how that made them feel growing up. I had then seen it with my own brand. I really loved the idea of people in my town where I come from being able to have that feeling when they drive just a couple miles away. I loved the idea of people being able to experience fashion in such an accessible way That was, and still is, very interesting to me. I just didn’t feel there was any other place I could do that besides Walmart,” the 41-year-old designer explained. 

His dream of being able to dress more friends, family and the masses came to fruition following a 2019 lunch meeting with Denise Incandela, executive vice president of fashion for Walmart U.S., leading to his 2021 appointment. 

“We had a lunch meeting and, immediately for me, it was love at first sight, because he’s such a humble, authentic human being. He grew up in Texas shopping and appreciating Walmart. He understood our customer, which is such a big factor,” Incandela told WWD.

Maxwell said that when he decided to join Walmart, “I was looking around and hadn’t seen a lot of people making that decision.”

While the designer wasn’t necessarily the first luxury designer to partner with a retail giant — he cited Andrea Lieberman, Rachel Zoe and more as examples — his trajectory is one now seen more frequently, such as Zac Posen’s appointment as executive vice president and creative director of Gap Inc. in February 2024.

“I think that I understood what Denise was trying to do. I have a great amount of respect for her, and think what she’s done at Walmart is incredible,” he said, recalling his own memories of being excited by fashion collaborations at mass retailers. 

“As someone who didn’t really know yet what I was going to do, but knew I loved style, I loved fashion and, obviously, being raised around that — that, to me, was so cool. I remember being able to walk in and see images that, as a young person who loved fashion images, was very moving to be able to access that and see that. To be able to walk around and touch those — I felt like there was an opportunity to do that. I was so glad that when I met Denise, that she shared that same sentiment and was passionate about that. It just worked,” he said.

With the leadership “building out this design team, we have transformed in terms of our private brand assortment for Free Assembly and Scoop,” Incandela said.

She noted the brands cater to the fashion-forward “growth” customer — the more “Millennial, Gen Z and urban customer, in middle to higher income” — with prices ranging from $8 to $59 for Scoop and Free Assembly.

“The strategy is made up of three pillars,” Incandela told WWD of the ongoing strategy. The first is to overhaul Walmart’s assortment to give the customer the premium product she’s seeking. The second is to improve the customer shopping experience, both online and in store, and the third is to change the perception of the mass retailer’s fashion offering and broaden Walmart’s customer reach.

“Working with Brandon has really been about the first and third pillar,” she explained. “Everyone should be able to wear beautiful clothes and have that kind of taste level at extraordinary price points. The third pillar of changing perception and broadening our customer reach — Brandon is certainly well respected within the fashion industry and even with customers. It gets people to take a second look at us. Brandon decided to join us when, at that time, no one of his stature joined a mass retailer. He took quite a risk and we were just so pleased that he did, because it’s worked out.”

With Maxwell’s creative direction and Walmart’s private brand design teams, based in New York, the mass retailer has grown from serving their 140 million in-store and e-commerce customers their “socks, underwear, denim and Ts — basically the commodity part of their closet,” Incandela said, to head-to-toe looks for work, events and beyond. The retail giant has also tapped into its “growth” customer with their revamped brands, while still servicing their core customer with opening price-point labels. 

By the end of the year, Free Assembly’s womenswear will be in almost all stores and men’s will expand to half while Scoop will double its store count to more than 2,000 stores, accounting for half the doors. Both initially launched in 250 stores and also see traction on the retailer’s e-commerce.

Maxwell’s creative vision for the brand’s campaigns — for fall, Free Assembly’s features the likes of actors Keyla Monterroso Mejia, Erin Moriarty and Jake Lacy — as well as his connection and interaction with its influencer partners have also fueled traction for Walmart fashion.

“My job encompasses many different things. One of the things that is so interesting for me now is not only do I work on the clothes, but I work in selecting the photographers, the models and working on the imagery for the campaigns, which is a super exciting part. I love the idea that I’m just coming back from Paris and seeing on the billboards as I’m driving by are also the teams that we’re working with to create imagery for people everywhere,” he said.

“One of my favorite parts of my job is to be able to tell stories. It’s exciting for me because I was able to do that with my own brand too, and now I’m able to do it in a much bigger way at Walmart. For me, being able to work with the design teams and work with the creative teams and, ultimately, put that whole story together for what we want to say is what I’m most passionate about in my work. I love being in the fittings at my brand, and I love being in the creative process of Walmart,” Maxwell said of his role.

This encompasses not only overseeing Walmart’s design teams for the two brands’ fashions, but also their visuals team for the campaigns, on the pop-up shops and with the retailer’s strong influencer and creator program, which alongside Maxwell’s elevated campaigns are accelerating the pace of perception change to Walmart now being a credible fashion player, Incandela noted. 

Furthermore, he’s worked with Incandela and her teams to revamp in-store shopping from its historically commodity experience to, “more of an inspiring, browsing experience for fashion,” Incandela said of remodeling stores to include mannequins and video screens to enhance customer experience.

“Working with and assembling those teams in that way is that same euphoric feeling I felt [as a child]. There have been so many women in our campaigns at Walmart who’ve walked my runways. To be able to have those experiences together in different places is really rewarding,” he said.

Over the past year Walmart has held three consecutive pop-up shops for the private fashion brands during New York Fashion Week. Incandela noted these shops have been “extraordinarily successful in introducing the brands to the New York market, where Walmart is under-penetrated.”

During September’s NYFW, Walmart’s third pop-up nicely tied into Maxwell’s namesake luxury brand’s 10th anniversary runway show by offering a reimagined blazer from his spring 2016 collection for Scoop for $98. “It being the 10-year anniversary, I remember toiling over that jacket for so long. I wanted them to have a part of my brand as well. I wanted them to experience the very first thing that led to all of this,” Maxwell said of the exclusive style. 

The limited run of 100 pieces sold out and the pop-up shop saw a 25 percent participation increase and three-and-a-half times larger average order size among Millennial and Gen Z customers than a typical Walmart store, Incandela noted. Due to the success of their first two pop-ups, the third also included two more revamped brands from their portfolio that target Gen Z and Millennial audiences: No Boundaries and Avia. 

In addition to the four brands, Walmart has been going through its private brand portfolio to modernize, elevate and/or relaunch brands, including No Boundaries, Joyspun and Weekend Academy, to cater to its growing audience and demographics. Each is designed by Walmart’s New York-based internal design teams, “a completely new capability for Walmart, and the cohesiveness of the brands is due to the design teams that we’ve set up here,” Incandela said.

“We want younger customers; we want to continue to be inclusive to $100,000-plus [households], as well as under $50,000 in terms of democratizing fashion. But not surprisingly, as the fashion industry has struggled, we want to present the customer with an option that maybe they wouldn’t have considered before as we work to democratize fashion with great talent and provide an exceptional style at an exceptional price point,” she explained.

Being able to see what customers are responding to and desire — whether through influencer events or the pop-up shops — has been part of the ongoing education in Maxwell’s career, he said. 

“Our job as designers is to make clothes that people wear, right? That’s the most important thing. It’s, of course, influenced how I approached my work at Brandon Maxwell,” he said. 

Over the years the designer has pivoted from offering more of an event-focused range to a diverse offering of ready-to-wear and accessories, including his debut handbags seen on his September NYFW runway. Available via his luxury brand’s e-commerce and with Moda Operandi, the category launched with three key silhouettes: The Maxwell, The Louise Pouchette and the Vance Weekender, priced $1,800 to $3,600.

Furthermore, for his 10-year anniversary, Maxwell collaborated with Merit and Pottery Barn on two categories he’s also passionate about: beauty, specifically fragrance, and home goods.

“I’m very much as interested today in making a great sweater for you to wear at home as I am for you to wear something out. I have learned so much from my job at Walmart — it’s just been a really great education for me,” he said. 

His learnings from working with the mass retailer have played into this ethos of designing great wardrobing for the luxury woman, which has played into the designer’s global expansion. While the U.S. remains his brand’s largest market, international sales have increased by more than 10 percent year-over-year, bolstered by new placements at Le Bon Marché, Browns and Anita Haas alongside longtime specialty retail partners and the likes of Net-a-porter.

“The brand, for me, it’s taken me a long time to understand that I don’t have to compare myself to anything. That what still stands today, from 10 years ago, is that for me, it was about community and about coming together. That’s how I saw communities, because I worked in jobs my whole life, through making clothes for people or styling people, or making photographs. Those communities were crucial for me. That’s what brought me up and made me who I am. I aim to try to do that with my own brand,” he said, also citing American designers such as Halston, Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Donna Karan as heroes who continue to inspire him.

Ten years in with his independent brand, and almost five with Walmart, Maxwell is looking to the future with a sense of gratefulness and pride — not only for his brand’s trajectory but also working in New York with numerous amazing designers, collaborators and more — and is approaching growth and change with joy and thoughtfulness at the forefront. 

“One thing that I still have within me is a joy in the process, and I want that to come through in the clothes and the imagery. I want fashion to be a fun experience for people. I want fashion to be a happy experience for people. Seasons change, trends change and I reserve the right to change season to season based on what I’m feeling emotionally, but I think joy is forever. I think what has never changed is that sort of togetherness,” he said.

“Throughout the years, so many people in fashion have talked about joy and all those different things. I think people say it because it’s real and I think it’s a privilege to be able to make clothing for people. It would have really excited me if I had gotten in the car with my friends and been able to access the clothes that I’m making now.”