Every Body is a Beach Body, and Other Lessons from Johanna Davenport Calica, Founder of La Porte

For four years, Johanna Davenport Calica applied to exhibit at the Cabana trade show for swimwear brands and retailers in Miami Beach. And for four years, she was rejected. But that didn’t stop her from swimming upstream. She applied for a fifth time and, in July 2023, her luxury resortwear brand La Porte finally made its debut.

“It’s like participating in the Super Bowl for swimwear,” says Davenport Calica, who pitched new and returning wholesale accounts with her team at the trade show. Among the partners she scored at Cabana: Free People, Nuuly, Baha Mar hotels, Nikki Beach resorts, Ritz-Carlton locations in Miami and Puerto Rico, and all Tracy Anderson boutiques—which will carry Davenport Calica’s swimwear starting this spring.

La Porte’s expansion would have impressed Davenport Calica’s younger self, who grew up with a “bathing suit addiction” at home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She remembers, though, the supermodel personas of those days—the “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” of Kate Moss and the unattainable figures of Victoria’s Secret Angels. When she launched La Porte in 2018, Davenport Calica resolved to be the antithesis of exclusionary and conformist beauty standards.

Her philosophy starts with the La Porte name, meaning “the door” in French. Davenport Calica’s open door to swimwear features extended sizes (XS through XXL, with more to come) and gender-inclusive styles (in addition to conventional women’s and men’s options, La Porte features tops, bottoms, and one pieces for nonbinary and gender-fluid wearers). The approach applies to the brand’s overall design aesthetic, too. Customers will only see real bodies, sans Photoshop, in La Porte garments—which are made from exclusively recycled fabrics.

“At the end of the day, we just want to make people feel great,” says Davenport Calica, who majored in psychology and business while an undergraduate student at Northeastern University. “Clothes shouldn’t be something that you stress yourself out about.”

The same goes for her price point. La Porte customers, most of whom are between the ages of 25 and 34, want the quiet luxury and high quality of brands such as The Row, says Davenport Calica, but they want them “at a price that [they] can’t say no to.” She positioned La Porte between two bridge clothing markets—at the high end of contemporary and the low end of luxury—to free her garments and customers from the financial strains of other luxury swimwear brands.

Davenport Calica’s commitment to accessible fashion recently inspired Women Who Empower judges at this year’s Innovator Awards. They honored the La Porte founder with third place recognition in the experienced alumnae category, among fellow trailblazers in the beverage, supplement, and venture capital industries. In total, the annual initiative—spearheaded by Northeastern’s Office of University Advancement—has honored 69 entrepreneurs and dispersed more than $820,000 in funds (including this year’s record-setting $500,000) in just three years.

“Johanna’s innovative spirit is helping to reshape the future of the fashion industry and create a more sustainable and inclusive world,” says Diane N. MacGillivray, senior vice president of university advancement, of the La Porte founder’s transformative influence. “With a diverse range of size options and eco-friendly fabrics, La Porte is a brand that is having a real impact.”

For Davenport Calica, who also earned her master’s degree in counseling at Northwestern University, Northeastern has always been a place where ideas and dreams thrive. She values her experience as an inaugural member of the university’s venture accelerator, where she first envisioned a future for a clothing line such as La Porte in the IDEA Lab on Friday nights. While in her second year, she also juggled a co-op at clothing boutique company Rue La La and evening classes on clothing construction at the School of Fashion Design.

“If I knew the process and how to make a garment, I could figure out how to find the people to plug into those roles,” says Davenport Calica, who now leads a team of three full-time employees based in New York and four consultants from across the globe while operating remotely from Chicago.

Today, her investment in the process and the people starts at the very beginning of the production line. Davenport Calica partners only with previously vetted, fair wage factories in China, where workers—many of them single mothers, she says—are well respected for their craftsmanship. It’s a stark contrast to Davenport Calica’s early visits to factories in the U.S. Though she’d expected the gloss and glamour of the fashion industry, she was shocked to witness toxic and unsafe conditions close to home.

“You’d be amazed at how many sweatshops are actually in New York or LA,” she says. “Just because something is made in America, doesn’t mean that it isn’t a sweatshop.”

Her commitment to worker safety persisted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, when factories closed to prevent the spread of disease. Though she says that she’s aware of some brands that produced illegally during mandated shutdowns, Davenport Calica and the La Porte team embraced the opportunity to pause and recalibrate. Soon, she’d decide to run a sale and donate the proceeds to the production of hospital masks for New York frontline workers. Then, she’d release an inaugural brand scent, Monte Carlo. The candle quickly sold out and helped the brand to grow significantly, despite great uncertainty at the time.

“Every good entrepreneur had to say, ‘What can I do to survive and get through this period—and help pay the bills?’” says Adam Calica, Davenport Calica’s husband and founder of Built In, an online community for startups and technology companies. He remembers when, as the pandemic took hold and customers traded their vacation swimsuits for sweatpants, the sales of home goods soared. For La Porte, already a lifestyle brand, the candle was a natural extension that would also generate revenue.

This year, La Porte will produce upwards of 12,000 garments. Each year, says Davenport Calica, the brand has doubled its revenue. Though its celebrity sightings are certainly “spikes on the heart monitor” (Kourtney Kardashian and Hilary Duff are among notable La Porte wearers), Davenport Calica says all of her customers—who regularly reach out to share positive feedback about their purchases and La Porte customer service—feel like celebrities every day.

“No one wants to connect with people the way I do,” says Davenport Calica, who fosters community with collaborations such as La Porte’s recent one-to-one sale to benefit Chicago’s Girls in the Game. Each time a customer purchased their own swimsuit, Davenport Calica explains, she donated one to the sports-based development organization for girls of all backgrounds and identities.

“‘How can I help?’” It’s a constant refrain for his wife as she scales her business, Calica says. “‘How can my team and I help do some good in this world?’ Jo is always thinking about [that].”

Davenport Calica and her La Porte team have a new place to connect: the brand’s very own showroom in New York, which opened its doors in September. There, business-to-business clients browse and provide feedback on the latest releases—which will include the Resort 2024 collection in November. 

Whether she’s in the New York showroom, at home in Chicago, or on Harbor Island in the Bahamas (her favorite getaway), Davenport Calica has the same goal for La Porte.

“The number one thing we want for the brand is for people to reach for it knowing that they feel like their best, most authentic self in the swim.”