Clothing

Shona Joy Dresses: A Guide to Occasionwear

Shona Joy is the Sydney label that grew out of hand-painted designs sold at weekend markets, and it now dresses a lot of wedding parties. I like how it makes occasion dressing feel relaxed instead of stiff.

Sheer Cover-Ups and Tiny Bikinis: The Beach Blur Look

Sheer cover-ups, tiny bikinis and blurred neon accessories make up the Beach Blur look for a sun-washed day. I pulled the pieces that give that feel, from mini skorts to an oversized poplin shirt.

SAMSOE SAMSOE Outerwear: Where to Start

Samsøe Samsøe is the Copenhagen label that began as a jewelry shop and grew into calm, wearable everyday clothes. I like it for coats that do their job and still have a little personality.

Sabina Musayev Dresses: A Shopper's Guide

Sabina Musayev is an Israeli label whose designer grew up in a Baku family of tailors and still starts every piece with a fabric. I love clothes that carry decoration for a reason, so this edit begins with the dresses.

Runaway The Label Dresses: Best Buys Right Now

Runaway The Label is the Sydney resortwear brand Premal Patel launched in 2014 after his menswear label Premonition. I think of it as a packing list for plans that keep getting better, and this edit is the dresses and separates I would pack.

ROLLA'S Jeans & Shorts: Where to Start

ROLLA'S is a Melbourne denim label from two designers who spent years working for global denim names. I like its loose, vintage-minded take on jeans, and this edit covers the jeans, shorts and layers.

Ripley Rader Pants: A Shopper's Guide to Fit

Ripley Rader is the Los Angeles label that grew out of a jumpsuit its founder made herself, and it is now best known for wide-leg pants. I like the clothes for how they move, and the sizing that is meant for everyone.

Sanderlak Jeans and Outerwear

Sanderlak is the second act of one of the most missed labels of the last decade.

Heirlome Dresses

Heirlome was founded in 2022 by Stephanie Suberville and her husband Jeffrey Axford on the idea that a skill can be an heirloom. Suberville left Monterrey for Parsons in 2004, spent two decades in New York fashion, and built the label out of what she describes as a constant state of nostalgia for Mexico. Every collection begins with an artisan rather than a trend.

Colleen Allen Tailoring and Dresses

Colleen Allen trained in menswear, worked under Raf Simons at Calvin Klein and designed at The Row, then launched her own womenswear label in February 2024. Within two years she had a CFDA nomination, an LVMH Prize finalist spot and a front row that included Charli XCX and Greta Lee. The clothes are tailored with menswear rigour and cut with something much stranger in mind.

Wiederhoeft Jeans and Dresses

Wiederhoeft treats a fashion show as a piece of theatre, which is exactly what its founder was trained to do. Jackson Wiederhoeft won Women's Designer of the Year at Parsons in 2016, spent three years on women's runway collections at Thom Browne, and launched the label in October 2019 with a ten-look story ballet called Spooky Couture. The press calls them the high priest of corsets made in New York, and the corsetry is genuinely the reason.

Amsale Dresses and Bridal

Amsale Aberra was born in Addis Ababa, the daughter of an Ethiopian diplomat, studied political science in Boston and then fashion at FIT, and worked as a design assistant at Harvé Benard. Unable to find a simple wedding dress for her own 1985 wedding, she made her own, placed an advertisement in Modern Bride and built a house out of the response.

Another Tomorrow Tailoring and Dresses

Another Tomorrow was founded in 2018 by Vanessa Barboni Hallik, who spent fifteen years at Morgan Stanley and left as a managing director in emerging-markets finance. She built a luxury label around traceable materials and per-garment digital IDs, then went and got a sustainability degree at Columbia to go with the Cornell economics one.

Altuzarra Dresses and Tailoring

Joseph Altuzarra was born in Paris to a French father and a Chinese-American mother, studied art history at Swarthmore, and learned to cut by apprenticing with Nicolas Caïto, who had run the Rochas atelier. He worked at Proenza Schouler and as Riccardo Tisci's first assistant at Givenchy before launching his own label in New York in 2008.

Conner Ives Bags and Dresses

Conner Ives is the American designer who moved from Bedford, New York to London in 2014, studied at Central Saint Martins, and turned his graduate line into an independent label in 2021, the same year he was named an LVMH Prize finalist. The label runs two tracks side by side: hand-cut demi-couture built from vintage garments and deadstock scarves, and repeatable ready-to-wear made from recycled fabrics in London factories, both circling back to his signature patchworked T-shirt dress, pieced together from four or more secondhand tees he sources himself from UK wholesale warehouses.

Meridian Swimwear Swimwear

Sisters Jordan LaGuardia and Terese Ostendorf LaGuardia launched Meridian Swimwear out of Brooklyn in 2022, bringing backgrounds in art direction and luxury womenswear design, including Terese's work at the label LESET, to a category they felt was missing their own point of view. The brand describes its look as relaxed minimalism crossed with retro nostalgia, filtered through the New York City sensibility where both sisters started their fashion careers.

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

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.

SLOAN Tailoring and Dresses

Sloan was founded in 2020 by Julia Sloan, a Parsons graduate who studied strategic design rather than fashion design and spent eight years as creative director of a Mexican luxury house. The brand runs on an at-home production network of female artisans in Mexico who earn continuous income without leaving their households. The clothes are essentials, and the structure behind them is the actual innovation.

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.

Alfie Tailoring and Dresses

Alfie is what happens when a design student refuses to sell the postcard version of French style. Alice Fresnel launched the label in Paris in 2020 with deadstock fabric, a five piece collection and no plan beyond seeing how far it went. It grew through pop-ups and word of mouth, and it now reads as the most honest version of Parisian dressing in circulation.

Ashlyn Tailoring and Knitwear

Ashlyn is a New York label built by a patternmaker rather than a stylist, and the difference is visible in every seam. Ashlynn Park trained in Seoul and Tokyo, won Japan's SO-EN Award, then cut patterns at Yohji Yamamoto, Alexander Wang and Calvin Klein 205W39NYC before founding her own line in 2020. Five years later the Met owns her work and the CFDA named her American Emerging Designer of the Year.

FFORME Dresses

FFORME was founded in 2021 by two businesswomen rather than a designer, which is still unusual enough to be worth saying out loud. Nina Khosla and Laura Vazquez hired Paul Helbers, a menswear veteran of Margiela, Louis Vuitton and The Row, and he built the first collection on a sewing machine in Brittany during lockdown. The double F stands for fundamental and foundational, and the brand has never really strayed from that.

ALAÏA Shoes and Bags

Azzedine Alaïa trained as a sculptor in Tunis before he ever cut a pattern, and it shows in everything the house has made since. He worked briefly at Dior, then Guy Laroche and Thierry Mugler, opened his own atelier in a Paris apartment on rue de Bellechasse in 1979, and built a body-first vocabulary that the industry has been borrowing ever since.