Clothing

Significant Other Dresses and Swimwear

Significant Other was founded in 2019 in Adelaide, Australia, by Julia Ritorto and Kathryn Forth, both designers who came out of the established Australian label Acler. The brand kept its headquarters in Adelaide even as it built a following well beyond Australia, working from a design philosophy built around ease and confidence rather than a single signature print or silhouette. It's a personal favorite of mine

Marlies Grace Bags and Dresses

Verena Martin founded Marlies Grace around 2022 and named the label after her late mother, Marlies, whose own parents ran a fashion store in Soest, Germany. Martin built a point of view on nostalgia and European reference points rather than any single trend cycle.

Aje Dresses

Aje was founded in 2008 in Noosa by Adrian Norris and Edwina Forest, after Norris could not find resort-to-city clothing to stock in Strada, the boutique he had opened there. The name is a contraction of Adrian joins Edwina, and it is pronounced age.

Third Form Dresses and Knitwear

Merryn Kelly, a graduate of Sydney TAFE's fashion design program, founded Third Form in 2014 after working in design roles at Zimmermann, Shakuhachi and Lee Jeans. The label built its name on a contemporary, slightly edgy take on Australian womenswear, enough to earn a Vogue Australia nod for its cult following and a spot on Forbes' list of new Australian fashion names.

Elie Saab Dresses

Elie Saab opened his first atelier in Beirut in 1982, at eighteen, after a brief stint studying in Paris and against the backdrop of Lebanon's civil war. His signature was set early and never really wavered: Western silhouettes layered with Middle Eastern embroidery, beading and crystal work, the kind of dressmaking that turned him into the go-to name for red carpets and, in 1999, Queen Rania of Jordan's coronation gown.

Lafayette 148 Knitwear

Deirdre Quinn started Lafayette 148 in 1996 with clothing manufacturers Shun Yen Siu and Ida Siu, naming the label after the SoHo address where the three of them began with, as Quinn has told it, a desk and a phone in the middle of a garment factory. The brand built its own production facility in Shantou, China, making it one of the few fashion houses that is genuinely vertically integrated from design through manufacturing.

Temily Dresses

Rae Temily spent around fifteen years working behind the scenes for other labels, including co-founding the resortwear brand Kalita, before launching her namesake house in New York in April 2025 exclusively through Moda Operandi. Her debut collection, The Body Electric, was built around a satin maxi dress called Summer Bones, and reportedly sold out three separate times, with its first colorway gone in about three hours.

Rabanne Bags and Dresses

Paco Rabanne, born Francisco Rabaneda Cuervo and trained as an architect, founded his house in Paris in 1966 with a debut collection of dresses built from metal and plastic plates linked like chainmail, a look Coco Chanel reportedly dismissed by calling him a metal worker rather than a couturier. The house's futurist, industrial materials went on to dress Jane Fonda in Barbarella, and after Julien Dossena was named creative director in 2013 the label sharpened that archive into contemporary ready-to-wear before dropping Paco from its name in 2023.

Balmain Dresses and Knitwear

Pierre Balmain opened his own house in Paris in 1945, after training under Lucien Lelong, and built it on sculpted tailoring and a nipped waist that landed just ahead of Dior's New Look. Olivier Rousteing took the label somewhere louder starting in 2011, layering heavy embroidery, sharp shoulders and a streetwear-literate edge onto Balmain's couture bones over his fourteen years there.

Rachel Comey Knitwear

Rachel Comey, a University of Vermont sculpture major who moved to New York in the late 1990s, launched her label with a menswear show staged on a Tribeca street in September 2001, days before hand-painting shirts for David Bowie got her noticed and got her fired from her day job at Theory. She expanded into womenswear in 2004, and the brand has kept its downtown-arts-scene, hand-crafted, slightly off-kilter identity while staying fully independent for over two decades.

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.

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.

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.

Lemaire Bags

Christophe Lemaire founded his label in Paris in 1991, put it on pause for a stint at Lacoste, then relaunched it in 2007 before Sarah-Linh Tran joined as co-artistic director in 2010 and the two rebranded it simply as Lemaire. After years spent refining wearable, unfussy silhouettes rather than headline grabbing ones, the house is now known for a crescent shaped bag and a design language people describe as quiet luxury.

Versace Dresses and Knitwear

Gianni Versace founded his namesake house in Milan in 1978, showing his first womenswear collection at the Palazzo della Permanente and opening a boutique on Via della Spiga the same year, after six years designing for other Italian labels including Genny and Callaghan. His siblings ran the business alongside him, brother Santo on the financial side and sister Donatella eventually as creative director, a role she held after Gianni's death in 1997 and that shaped the house for decades.

Quiet Luxury

Old money aesthetics are having a full moment and nobody's being subtle about it. think understated fits that still scream wealth.

Matthew Bruch Jeans and Dresses

Matthew Bruch launched his namesake label for spring/summer 2020 after graduating from Pratt Institute's fashion design program and working for several other lifestyle brands. He built the line around a specific gap he saw in resort wear, easy vacation staples and swimwear designed with more restraint than the ruffled, printed norm, produced in New York from Italian and French fabrications.

DL1961 Jeans and Knitwear

DL1961 started in 2008 in New York, launched by the Ahmed family after decades running a premium denim manufacturing business behind the scenes. What sets the label apart is XFIT Lycra, a patented cotton-wrapped stretch thread developed in-house that the brand has spent years refining for fit and recovery, alongside a water-conscious production process it introduced in 2013.

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.

Leset Knitwear

Lili Chemla launched Leset in New York in 2019, pitching it at department stores who reportedly struggled to categorize it: not quite loungewear, not quite traditional ready-to-wear. The label built its identity around matching sets and refined basics rather than seasonal statement pieces, launching exclusively on Net-a-Porter that same year.

Maticevski Dresses

Toni Maticevski, a Melbourne designer who trained at RMIT and worked briefly for Donna Karan and Cerruti, launched his namesake label in Melbourne in 1998. He built a reputation on draping and sculptural, demi-couture silhouettes, an approach that earned him the 2016 Australian Fashion Laureate and a retrospective at Bendigo Art Gallery.

Proenza Schouler White Label: Jackets, Dresses and Knits for the Week

Proenza Schouler White Label turns the main line's sharp shapes into clothes meant for an actual week rather than a single dinner reservation. Jackets, dresses, and knits share a New York-inflected edge without asking for special occasions to justify them. This edit treats the label as a wardrobe to build from, not a single standout piece.

Erdem Dresses and Knitwear

Erdem Moralioglu, a Royal College of Art graduate raised in Montreal, founded his eponymous London label in 2005 after a debut at Fashion Fringe won him prize money and a Harrods order. The house has spent two decades refining a very specific idea of femininity: sweeping, floral, historically literate, never literal about it.

Chan Luu Jewelry

Chan Luu started her namesake line in 1996 out of a Los Angeles garage, after two decades working retail floors and buying desks around the fashion industry. The label built its name on handmade jewelry produced with artisans in Vietnam and India, the kind of wrap bracelets and beaded pieces that made her a fixture on 2000s red carpets long before hers was a household name.