Bags
Bags
Janessa Leone Bags
Janessa Leone bought a vintage men's dress hat in Paris, later found the original milliner's surname stitched inside was also Leone, and turned that discovery into her own Los Angeles hat line in 2013. Notes on which hat shapes hold up to daily wear and where the bags and belts fit into that idea.
Judith Leiber Couture Bags
Judith Leiber, a Budapest-trained handbag maker who survived the Nazi occupation and emigrated to New York in 1947, started her own company there in 1963 after twelve years working for designer Nettie Rosenstein. A shipment of poorly plated brass frames pushed her to cover the flaws in crystals, and that fix became the house's signature minaudière, the small, sculptural evening bag later carried by numerous First Ladies.
Quiet Luxury: Khaite Tops, Skirts and Pumps
Quiet luxury means clean lines and quality fabrics that do not announce themselves. I gathered Khaite tops, skirts and pumps in that spirit.
Savette Bags
Amy Zurek founded Savette in New York in 2020, after studying art history and fashion design at Parsons, then working at The Row and building Khaite's handbag line from scratch alongside founder Cate Holstein. She named the label after her mother's maiden name and built its design language around two women, her mother's classic taste in leather goods and her grandmother's eye for sculptural jewelry.
Proenza Schouler Bags and Dresses
Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez met at Parsons in New York and founded Proenza Schouler, named for their mothers' maiden names, when Barneys bought their senior thesis collection outright in 2002. The label built its reputation on the PS1 satchel, introduced in 2008, and on a run of CFDA awards including the first-ever CFDA and Vogue Fashion Fund prize in 2004.
Polished Pieces That Look Designer (But Aren't)
Polished blazers, faux leather trousers, loafers and soft knits that look like designer pieces. This is for anyone who wants a sharp, pulled together wardrobe without the designer label.
Jacquemus Bags and Shoes
Simon Porte Jacquemus founded his label in Paris in 2009, at twenty, naming it after his mother's maiden name the same year she died, a loss he has described as the shock that pushed him to start designing. The house grew from a one-man operation into an independent fashion company with hundreds of employees, opening its first permanent store on Avenue Montaigne in 2022 after years of building a name through inventive presentations and a fast-growing digital following.
Bembien Bags and Shoes
Yi-Mei Truxes launched Bembien in 2017 in Brooklyn after six years running marketing for Vogue, following a chance sighting of a stranger's disheveled straw bag on a downtown street. The label works almost entirely through artisan weavers in Bali, treating a basket bag as a craft object rather than a factory good
SIMKHAI Dresses and Bags
Jonathan Simkhai launched his namesake label in New York in 2010, coming out of his family's apparel manufacturing business and training at Parsons and the Fashion Institute of Technology. The brand built its name on draped eveningwear and body-conscious tailoring, won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund in 2015, moved its studio to Los Angeles in 2018, and dropped Jonathan's first name from the label in 2023 to put the focus on the wider team.
Pilates Girl Essentials
Pilates girl essentials are the leggings, sports bras and layers that work on the reformer and out of the studio. I picked pieces from P.E Nation and Sporty & Rich, plus a sports jacket from Rodd & Gunn.
Valentino Garavani Shoes and Bags
Valentino Garavani opened his own atelier on Rome's Via Condotti in 1959 and formally established the house in 1960 with Giancarlo Giammetti, an architecture student he met that year who became the business partner running the commercial side. The 1962 haute couture debut at Palazzo Pitti in Florence made the house's name almost overnight, and its saturated signature red, nicknamed Rosso Valentino, has stayed a house code ever since.
Chloé Shoes and Bags
Gaby Aghion started Chloé in Paris in 1952, naming the house after a friend because a woman of her social standing was not supposed to have a job. The label made its name by treating luxury as something you could wear off the rack rather than have fitted at a couture house, and it kept proving that with the designers who passed through, from Karl Lagerfeld to Stella McCartney to Phoebe Philo.
STAUD Dresses and Bags
Sarah Staudinger, previously the fashion director at Reformation, launched Staud in Los Angeles in 2015 with business partner George Augusto, naming it after her own childhood nickname. The brand started as a made-to-order customization concept before pivoting to ready-to-wear once customers made clear they wanted the bags and dresses as designed, a shift that produced breakout accessories like the Bissett and Moreau bucket bags.
Bottega Veneta Shoes and Bags
Bottega Veneta was started in 1966 in Vicenza by Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro, two leathermakers who decided the House would never need a logo. The specific thing they built instead was intrecciato, the woven leather technique introduced in 1975 that turned a manufacturing workaround into the label's entire visual language.
Isabel Marant Bags
Isabel Marant started sewing at fifteen after asking her father for a machine, then trained at Studio Bercot and apprenticed under Michel Klein before launching her own label in 1994 out of a Paris squat courtyard runway show. Her first boutique opened in 1998 on rue de Charonne and remains the flagship today, the same neighborhood logic she's built her entire aesthetic around: Parisian, unbothered, dressed like you didn't try. She's the designer credited with putting the wedge into the sneaker around 2010, a shoe that a decade later is still copied more than it's matched.
Etro Dresses and Bags
Gimmo Etro started this Milan house in 1968 as a textile company, not a clothing label, built on a private collection of antique paisley shawls he and his wife Roberta had spent years assembling. The paisley did not become the brand's signature until 1981, after a trip to India, and it took until the early 1990s for Etro to sell a full ready-to-wear wardrobe at all.
Gabriela Hearst Shoes and Bags
Gabriela Hearst grew up on her family's ranch in Paysandu, Uruguay, and after more than a decade working in New York design, launched her eponymous label for fall 2015 built explicitly around sustainability and a long-term view of clothing. The house has stayed close to that premise, from a partnership with the Uruguayan knitting cooperative Manos del Uruguay to a 2017 runway show run on roughly 30 percent deadstock fabric, while Hearst herself went on to lead Chloe from 2020 to 2023 as its first Latin American creative director.
Ferragamo Shoes and Bags
Salvatore Ferragamo trained shoemakers in Hollywood before returning home to incorporate his company in Florence in 1927, chasing better artisans than he could find in America. He spent the following decades engineering the shoe as much as designing it, patenting the cork wedge and steel shank and improvising with raffia and nylon during wartime material shortages.
Givenchy Bags and Dresses
Hubert de Givenchy opened his own Paris couture house in 1952 at just 24, after training under Jacques Fath, Robert Piguet, Lucien Lelong and Elsa Schiaparelli. His debut collection of interchangeable separates in raw cotton shirting, anchored by the white Bettina blouse, made practicality itself the news, and the house's identity was cemented a year later when he met Audrey Hepburn and began dressing her both on screen and off.
Balenciaga Shoes and Bags
Cristóbal Balenciaga opened his first atelier in San Sebastián in 1917, then moved the whole operation to Paris in 1937 once the Spanish Civil War made staying home impossible. What he built there was less about decoration than engineering: the sack dress, the cocoon coat, silhouettes cut with such structural control that Dior reportedly called him the master of the rest of them.
The Row Bags and Shoes
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen founded The Row in New York in 2006, after Ashley spent a year trying to design an ideal, no-logo white T-shirt and the pair built it into a seven-piece debut collection that Barneys bought in full. They named it after Savile Row and, for its first three years, gave no interviews about it at all, betting the clothes could carry the label without their names on it.
Métier Bags
Métier was founded in London in 2017 by Melissa Morris, who came to bags through sculpture, merchandising and a frustration with losing essentials inside them. The brand prototypes are tested to simulate years of use, with storage and movement treated as design problems rather than afterthoughts. These are bags for people who want their logistics to look composed.
NEOUS Shoes: Sharp Heels and Textured Bags From London
NEOUS shoes and bags are made for people who like a little architecture in their wardrobe, from a London label founded in 2017. I go through the textured shoulder bags and the sharp shoes Vanissa Antonious designs.
RUE de VERNEUIL Bags
RUE de VERNEUIL treats the everyday tote as a small piece of Parisian architecture. Founded in 2014 by Vincent Ribat, a former interior designer, the label draws on the American tool bag and the quiet order of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Its appeal is practical rather than performative, with sturdy textiles, leather trim and shapes that make room for actual life.