Clothing

A.W.A.K.E. MODE

Natalia Alaverdian founded A.W.A.K.E. MODE in London in November 2012, after working as a fashion director at Harper's Bazaar Russia. The name began as plain Awake, picked up its dots when she decided the word was too generic, and was then filled in as All Wonderful Adventures Kindle Enthusiasm. The label has since earned two British Fashion Awards nominations and a place on the Paris Fashion Week schedule, and this edit walks through how that sculptural point of view shows up across tops, skirts, dresses and tailoring.

Moré Noir

Sisters Sandra and Karla, graduates of Central Saint Martins and Istituto Marangoni, founded Moré Noir in late 2016 as a swim and resort label. The name nods to their native Bulgaria and the Black Sea they keep returning to. This edit collects the dresses, skirts, tops and swimwear that bring ready-to-wear sensibility to a vacation wardrobe.

RÙADH Jeans: Rigid Denim by a Scottish-Born New York Designer

Jac Cameron, a Scottish-born denim designer who spent two decades at Abercrombie, Madewell, Calvin Klein and her own earlier brand AYR, founded RÙADH in New York around 2023 and gave the label its first public collection in late 2024. The name is Scottish Gaelic for red, colloquially used for redheads and, per Cameron, carrying older connotations of resilience, and every wash and style name in the collection traces back to a Scottish place or a family member, including a skirt named for the grandmother who taught her to sew.

Matteau: The Sisters Behind the Australian Label

Matteau is an Australian label launched in 2015 by sisters Ilona Hamer and Peta Heinsen. I go through its dresses, tops and shirting, and trousers and shorts.

Rosie Assoulin Dresses: Halters, Gowns and Midis

Rosie Assoulin dresses include a twisted lame maxi halter, a silk midi scarf dress and a linen jacquard gown. I start with her path, from Brooklyn to Roxanne Assoulin, Oscar de la Renta and Lanvin.

ELCE Seminyak: The Bali Swim Shop Behind the Brand

ELCE traces back to a small swim shop that Laura Sheather opened in Seminyak, Bali, in her twenties, long before she teamed up with Tara Mitchell to relaunch the label from Sydney. The pair kept the label's Bali roots and wanderlust attitude but rebuilt it as an Australian resortwear brand built around fluid, easy-to-wear cuts and a stated commitment to sustainable production.

SIEDRÉS Exclusive Nyra Velvet Maxi Dress and More Prints

The SIEDRÉS Exclusive Nyra Velvet Maxi Dress comes from an Istanbul label founded in September 2019 by Ceylin Türkkan and Emir Bilge. I go through the bold printed dresses, trousers, skirts and knitwear.

Tropic of C One Piece and Bikinis: Candice Swanepoel's Label

Tropic of C one piece swimsuits center on The C, the signature one-piece Candice Swanepoel launched with in 2018. I go through the bikini tops and bottoms and how the brand grew beyond swim.

With Nothing Underneath Shirts: Cotton and Linen Basics

Pip Durell, a former Vogue stylist and Tatler editor, launched With Nothing Underneath in London in 2017 after years of wearing men's cotton shirts to work because she couldn't find a well-made equivalent cut for women. The label started with a single shirt style in three colorways, sourced through a manufacturing agent in Porto, before growing into a wider wardrobe of tailoring built on that same menswear-inspired logic.

The New Arrivals Ilkyaz Ozel

İlkyaz Özel spent about a decade working as a freelance fashion stylist in Istanbul before launching The New Arrivals there in 2020, after also founding and running a separate label, Studio'11, from 2017. The brand built its name on eveningwear, especially slip and night dresses, filtered through what she describes as the duality of Mediterranean serenity and indulgence, relaxed daytime ease set against unapologetic nighttime glamour.

Cala de la Cruz: Colombian Resortwear, Dresses and Prints

Carolina López Cruz launched Cala de la Cruz in 2018 in Cali, Colombia, with her mother Liliana as partner, after training in textile design at Savannah College of Art and Design and fashion at Istituto Marangoni in Milan. The label runs on bold, illustrative prints and retro-leaning silhouettes made locally by small family workshops in Cali, often to order rather than in bulk.

Paris Georgia Clothing: Basics From Two New Zealand Friends

Paris Mitchell Temple and Georgia Cherrie, friends since their teens in New Zealand, launched Paris Georgia in 2015 as a small line of basics sold alongside their vintage resale shop, The Mercantile. They dropped the word Basics in 2018 to become a full label of luxe minimalism, known for curve-skimming cuts and strategic cut-outs, after debuting a full collection at stylist Maryam Nassir Zadeh's New York showroom.

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.

Zulu & Zephyr: Bondi Knit Tops and Skirts From Two Sisters

Sisters Candice Rose-O'Rourke and Karla Rose founded Zulu & Zephyr in Bondi Beach, Australia, in the summer of 2012, building the label's design brief around reviving their mother's 1970s prints and textures. The name pairs two deliberately contrasting ideas, Zulu for strength and Zephyr for a relaxed, floating quality, which the sisters point to as the tension the brand designs around.

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.

Maygel Coronel: Fitted Jersey Dresses From a Cartagena Label

Maygel Coronel is the Colombian designer who founded her namesake label in Cartagena de Indias in 2017, after training in patternmaking in Bogota and Cartagena and studying fashion design at the Accademia della Moda in Naples. She built the brand on second-skin construction, sleek bodysuits and swimwear designed to fit a range of bodies, an idea she developed herself after being told a fitted swimsuit line would only work for one body type.

Vidur Adlakha: The Designer Behind La Fuori Dresses

Vidur Adlakha founded La Fuori in 2019 in New York after training at NIFT Mumbai and the Fashion Institute of Technology. I go through the label's floral midis, embellished maxis and silk dresses.

Juillet Swimwear: Broderie Anglaise Bikinis and One-Pieces

Juillet Swimwear was co-founded by Whitney Wilkerson and Lindsay Rae Hofmann in Los Angeles in September 2017, after Hofmann's earlier work in brand consulting and celebrity dressing. The label has stayed narrow on purpose, contemporary swimwear cut with the kind of finishing usually reserved for eveningwear, which is presumably why it turns up on January Jones, Hailey Bieber and Bella Hadid rather than only in beach photos.

DES_PHEMMES Dresses: Milan Label Built on Draped Silhouettes

Salvo Rizza founded DES_PHEMMES in Milan in 2019, after years spent inside Giambattista Valli's Paris ateliers working his way up to studio coordinator. The label runs his couture training through a deliberately raw, nineties-leaning lens, all Juergen Teller grain and archival Prada attitude rather than red-carpet polish.

Sonia And Maurice Mosseri: Founders of Still Here Denim

Sonia and Maurice Mosseri, high school sweethearts from Brooklyn, started Still Here in 2018 after Sonia began hand-painting vintage denim inspired by her father's patched-up childhood Levi's. They funded the first production run with their wedding gift money and built the label into an eight-figure business without outside investors, all on the idea that a well-worn pair of jeans is basically an heirloom.

SLVRLAKE

Louise and Gary Edgley, a UK-born husband and wife who had both worked in fashion retail and buying, founded SLVRLAKE in Los Angeles in 2018. They built it around a narrow idea: premium denim, manufactured ethically in Los Angeles, with clean cuts and no distressing or heavy branding, after years of testing before the first collection shipped.

La Porte Swimwear: One-Piece Swimsuits From a Chicago Label

La Porte swimwear comes from Chicago designer Johanna Davenport Calica, who named the label for the French word for door. I go through the one-piece swimsuits and the tops and shirting that round out the line.

House of Dagmar Clothing: Stockholm Knitwear, Shirting, Dresses

Three sisters, Karin Söderlind, Kristina Tjäder and Sofia Wallenstam, founded House of Dagmar in Stockholm in 2005, naming it after their grandmother, a tailor whose craftsmanship shaped their sense of quality. The label built its name on knitwear and clean tailoring that pairs Scandinavian minimalism with a genuine trend instinct, an early adopter of sustainability within Swedish fashion.

SIR. Dresses: Silk Minis, Gowns and the Bondi Label Story

SIR. dresses come from a label Nikki Campbell and Sophie Coote started in Bondi in 2014. I go through the silk minis, gowns and maxis, then skirts, shirting and swim.