Stories by

Phoebe Gates

921 stories

L'IDÉE

L'IDÉE

Breeana Smith and Iuliia Ievdokymenko founded L'IDÉE in Australia in 2019, splitting the label between Smith's brand and commercial direction and Ievdokymenko's design and production work based in Bali. The whole point of the label is engineered, heat-set pleating in saturated colour, a technique Smith traces back to a trip to Paris and her grandmother's vintage pleated skirt.

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Vertigo Jewelry

Vertigo Jewelry

Taylor Sade started Vertigo in 2021 after buying out a closing lapidary's stock of oversized stones on a trip home to Phoenix, Arizona, then teaching herself to string beads despite having studied communication design at Parsons rather than jewelry making. She built the brand between Phoenix and New York, chunky amulets, medallions and hip belts in stones like turquoise, malachite and lapis lazuli, and a 2023 New York Times profile naming her pieces the necklace of the moment prompted her to quit her day job and run the label full time.

Gazza Ladra Jewelry: Gold Necklaces and Earrings Built in New York

Gazza Ladra Jewelry: Gold Necklaces and Earrings Built in New York

Gazza Ladra jewelry was built in New York by Sunny Setton De Poortere, a former documentary film producer and tour manager. I picked the gold necklaces and earrings, from lizard earrings to a single shell earring.

State Property Jewelry

State Property Jewelry

State Property is the Singaporean fine jewelry label started in 2015 by married couple Afzal Imram, trained in industrial design at the National University of Singapore, and Lin Ruiyin, trained in contemporary jewelry design at Central Saint Martins in London. They funded their first collection through commission work before launching properly, won Emerging Accessories Designer of the Year at the Singapore Fashion Awards in 2017, and landed their first major celebrity placement in 2018 when Nicole Kidman wore their earrings to a film premiere.

Mateo Jewelry

Mateo Jewelry

Matthew Harris, who goes by Mateo, started making jewelry for himself in Brooklyn in 2009, the story goes that a screw fell out of a wall while he was moving apartments and he turned it into a necklace. He is self-taught, and the label he eventually built stayed men's-only until 2014, when he launched a women's fine jewelry line after Rihanna was photographed wearing one of his pieces.

Keagan Ramsamy and Louise de Rothschild: Founders of Mazarin

Keagan Ramsamy and Louise de Rothschild: Founders of Mazarin

Louise de Rothschild and Keagan Ramsamy, who met working in the jewelry department of the Paris auction house Pierre Bergé, founded Mazarin in 2022. They named the house after Cardinal Mazarin, the 17th-century minister whose collection of exceptional diamonds became legendary, and built their own version of that history on lab-grown diamonds and recycled gold rather than antique stock.

SIRAPOP Dresses

SIRAPOP Dresses

A pair of Parson's founders Sirapop's whole approach is a kind of controlled tension, soft fabric pushed into structured, sculptural shapes

Jacquie Aiche Jewelry: 14K Gold Necklaces and Rings From LA

Jacquie Aiche Jewelry: 14K Gold Necklaces and Rings From LA

Jacquie Aiche grew up in Los Angeles making bead necklaces before she ever meant to start a company, and she launched her namesake jewelry line there in 2007 after years of selling pieces anonymously off her own body while running a clothing boutique on Sunset Plaza. The brand's break came from the finger bracelet she designed around 2009, an idea odd enough that it turned into a genuine signature worn by Beyoncé, Rihanna and the Hadid sisters, among others.

Nada Ghazal Jewelry

Nada Ghazal Jewelry

Nada Ghazal spent a decade in Dubai advertising, rising to senior art director at Impact BBDO, before returning to Beirut in 2003 to design jewelry instead. Her first collection, twenty five handmade pieces in eighteen karat gold wire called Organised Chaos, reportedly sold out within days of its December 2003 debut, and she opened her first Beirut boutique and atelier the following year.

Francesca Miranda Dresses

Francesca Miranda Dresses

Francesca Miranda started her namesake label in Barranquilla, Colombia in 1995, launching with a menswear shirting line after years spent helping run her husband's garment business. The house is known for reviving pata de cabra, a handcrafted Colombian technique that weaves strips of fabric into fringe-like draping, used across her dresses, tops and skirts and made with local artisans.

Les Tien Knitwear

Les Tien Knitwear

Courtney Michelle Ogilvie launched Les Tien, whose name translates from French as "yours," in Los Angeles in 2018, after previously founding the fashion developer Fit and Supply and the California manufacturing operation L.A. Makers, which produced for labels like Yeezy and Fear of God. The label's whole identity is process: fabric is treated and garment-dyed in-house before it is cut and sewn, which is what gives the sweatpants their lived-in, worn-soft hand feel.

Rachel Quinn Jewelry: From Painting and Sculpture to Gold

Rachel Quinn Jewelry: From Painting and Sculpture to Gold

Rachel Quinn jewelry here is made in 14K yellow gold, with amazonite, sapphire and coral in pendants and earrings.

Bleecker and Prince: Leehe Segal's 14K Gold Jewelry

Bleecker and Prince: Leehe Segal's 14K Gold Jewelry

Leehe Segal launched Bleecker and Prince in New York in the early 2010s, naming it for two SoHo streets that run close but never meet. I went through its 14K gold hoops, pendants and bangles.

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Kamperett Dresses: A Founder-Run San Francisco Label

Kamperett Dresses: A Founder-Run San Francisco Label

Kamperett dresses come from a San Francisco label that Anna Chiu and Valerie Santillo launched in 2015. I go through the silk slip dresses, tulle and lace gowns and skirts, and the nostalgic, art-deco leaning eye behind them.

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Fernando Jorge Jewelry

Fernando Jorge Jewelry

Fernando Jorge trained as a jewelry designer in São Paulo before moving to London in 2008 for a master's at Central Saint Martins, launching his own label out of that degree in 2010. His signature is sculptural, high-polish gold built around movement rather than stacked stones, made by artisans working across Brazil and Italy.

Studio Amelia Shoes

Studio Amelia Shoes

Emily Amelia Inglis founded Studio Amelia in Sydney in 2019 after struggling to find a flat sandal that was neither too relaxed nor too dressy, and deciding to design her own. The debut collection launched with just four sandal styles in four colorways, and was an instant hit

Suzanne Kalan Jewelry

Suzanne Kalan Jewelry

Suzanne Kalan launched her eponymous jewelry line in Los Angeles in 1988, after years spent working in her father's downtown jewelry store and financing her start with a diamond bracelet given to her as a wedding gift. She is best known for the Fireworks setting, scattering baguette-cut diamonds and colored gemstones across a piece in a seemingly random pattern she developed after noticing loose baguettes spread across her desk.

Markarian Dresses

Markarian Dresses

Alexandra O'Neill founded Markarian in New York in 2017 after closing an earlier sportswear line she had run with her sister, naming the new label after the Markarian Chain, a grouping of distant galaxies. Every piece is made to order in Manhattan's Garment District, with clients able to pick silhouette and fabric, an approach O'Neill has said is common for menswear but rarely offered to women.

Ralph Lauren Dresses and Knitwear

Ralph Lauren Dresses and Knitwear

Ralph Lauren, born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx, launched a necktie line called Polo in 1967 while working as a necktie salesman with no formal design training, cutting his ties nearly twice as wide as the narrow standard of the day. Bloomingdale's built him a dedicated shop for those ties, and by 1968 he had incorporated Polo Fashions and expanded into full menswear, a business that eventually grew to include the 1972 mesh shirt and its embroidered pony that became one of the most recognized logos in American fashion.

Rainbow K

Rainbow K

Kelia Toledano and Kelly Souied, childhood friends from the same street in Paris's 16th Arrondissement, founded Rainbow K in Paris in 2019 after both first built careers in finance and economics. Souied trained as a gemologist in Ramat Gan to study at the Israel Diamond Exchange, and pairs that technical eye with Toledano's Art Deco-leaning taste for antique jewelry, landing the brand somewhere between vintage revival and something more irreverent.

THE GARMENT Dresses and Knitwear

THE GARMENT Dresses and Knitwear

THE GARMENT launched in Copenhagen in 2020, led by designer Charlotte Eskildsen, previously behind the Danish label Designers Remix, alongside stylist and Vogue Scandinavia editor Sophia Roe. The specific thing that makes the label what it is: a tight focus on knitwear and precise tailoring in natural and recycled fabrics, built around what the brand calls closet hero pieces rather than a full seasonal wardrobe.

Sidney Garber Jewelry: The Chicago House Founded in 1946

Sidney Garber Jewelry: The Chicago House Founded in 1946

Sidney Garber, the son of a watch repairman, opened his own jewelry shop in Chicago's Mallers Building in 1946 after returning from Air Force service in World War II. He built the house by traveling to European ateliers in Paris, Valenza and Idar-Oberstein to source stones and craftsmanship directly, a habit his daughter Brooke Garber Neidich continued after she inherited the company in 2008 and moved its center of gravity to include a New York boutique.

Goshwara Jewelry

Goshwara Jewelry

Sweta Jain launched Goshwara in 2005 in New York, after a childhood spent traveling with her gemstone-dealer father to mines in Africa and later training in jewelry design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The label is built around color first: bold, often unexpected gemstone pairings designed and manufactured entirely in New York.

Merlette

Merlette

Marina Cortbawi, an Australian who had spent years running international sales for Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, founded Merlette in New York in 2016 without any formal design training. She built the label around a gap she saw from the inside of those two houses, women who had evening wear covered but wanted seasonless, lightweight everyday clothes that traveled well.

Odissi

Odissi

Odissì is a footwear label built in 2024 by HIM Co., an Italian manufacturer near Venice with about sixty years of shoemaking behind it, as a way to move from private-label production into a brand of its own. The label is built around a stated idea of Italian craft filtered through global references.

Graziela Jewelry

Graziela Jewelry

Graziela Kaufman grew up in Brazil around the country's gemstone-mining regions before founding her eponymous fine jewelry line, building direct relationships with miners she still works with today. What distinguishes the brand is that sourcing comes first, with two gemstone variants she identified even trademarked as Midnight Aquamarine and Graziela Tourmaline.

Silvia Furmanovich: Marquetry Jewelry in 18K Gold

Silvia Furmanovich: Marquetry Jewelry in 18K Gold

Silvia Furmanovich is a São Paulo-raised jeweler known for marquetry, wood veneers cut into flowers and animals and set in gold. I look at her earrings and the crafts from Japan and India behind each collection.

Emme Parsons Shoes

Emme Parsons Shoes

Emme Parsons was a graphic designer and art director in New York, working on brands like Theory and Lucky magazine, before she moved to Los Angeles and launched her eponymous footwear label in 2017 with just three sandal styles. She had no formal shoemaking training, so she took a one-day workshop at a Los Angeles shoe-repair shop before her first samples were even cut, and every pair is still made by a family-run factory in Italy.