Stories by

Phoebe Gates

698 stories

Altuzarra Dresses and Tailoring

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.

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Ashna Mehta Jewelry: The Designer Behind Bag Bijoux

Ashna Mehta Jewelry: The Designer Behind Bag Bijoux

Ashna Mehta is a third-generation diamantaire from the Rosy Blue family, one of the largest diamond manufacturers in the world, and she founded her own jewellery brand in 2022. Her signature is Bag Bijoux, diamond charms engineered to clip onto a Birkin or Kelly and convert into pendants, developed with her sister Aria.

Amina Muaddi Heels and Shoes

Amina Muaddi Heels and Shoes

Amina Muaddi was born in Romania in 1986 to a Jordanian father and a Romanian mother, studied fashion communication at IED in Milan, and worked as an assistant stylist at L'Uomo Vogue, Vogue Italia and American GQ. She then spent a year learning shoemaking from artisans in Riviera del Brenta, co-founded Oscar Tiye, left it, and launched her own label in August 2018.

Anya Hindmarch Bags

Anya Hindmarch Bags

Anya Hindmarch started her label in London in 1987 at nineteen, with no design school behind her, after a year in Florence learning the leather trade from the craftsmen who worked in it. She sold her first five hundred bags through a magazine offer and used the proceeds as start-up capital.

Aliita Jewelry

Aliita Jewelry

Aliita was founded in Milan in 2015 by Cynthia Vilchez Castiglioni, who grew up in Maracaibo in Venezuela and studied fashion marketing at IED before working at Vionnet, Miu Miu and Jil Sander. The name is both an anagram of Italia and a Wayuu word for an important object, after the Guajiro people of Zulia where she was raised.

Alexis Bittar Jewelry

Alexis Bittar Jewelry

Alexis Bittar started selling vintage jewellery on St Mark's Place in Manhattan at about thirteen, and by 1990 was hand-carving Lucite in his one-bedroom apartment with no design training at all. Bergdorf Goodman's fashion director Dawn Mello discovered him in 1992, which is the placement that made the career.

Aisha Baker Jewelry

Aisha Baker Jewelry

Aisha Baker is a Dubai high-jewellery house founded in 2017 by the Emirati entrepreneur Aisha Bakhtiar with the designer Hoonik Chang, who trained in jewellery at Central Saint Martins. The pieces are built as narratives, with fairy-tale and fantasy themes running through collections released in tiny editions.

Annette Ferdinandsen Jewelry

Annette Ferdinandsen Jewelry

Annette Ferdinandsen trained as a sculptor at the Rhode Island School of Design and found jewellery while studying studio art, which is the most useful fact about her work. Her father and grandfather were both model makers for Danish sculptors, so casting and carving are a family inheritance.

Almasika Jewelry

Almasika Jewelry

Catherine Sarr founded Almasika in January 2014 and debuted it at Colette in Paris, after more than a decade in the diamond and fine-jewellery industry including several years at De Beers and at LoveGold. The name joins almasi, Swahili for diamond, with sika, a word for gold across several West African languages.

All Three: New York Shirts, Tops and Trousers to Layer

All Three: New York Shirts, Tops and Trousers to Layer

All Three is a New York label founded by Tal Waksal in 2024, making what it calls evolving essentials: shirts, tops and trousers designed to be layered and worn constantly. It is new enough that the public record is still mostly the clothes themselves.

Armenta Jewelry

Armenta Jewelry

Emily Armenta traded at Morgan Stanley, then wrote the business plan for her jewellery company as a class assignment during her MBA at Rice, and launched it in Houston in 2001. The work is built on mixing oxidised silver with gold and setting micromosaics, ancient beads and enamel patinas into it.

Ay Que Calor Swim: Colombian Resortwear by Maygel Coronel

Ay Que Calor Swim: Colombian Resortwear by Maygel Coronel

Ay Que Calor swim is Colombian resortwear designed by Maygel Coronel, from halter triangle tops to ruched strapless shapes. I start with the swim, then go through the tops, skirts and dresses.

ALÉMAIS

ALÉMAIS

Lesleigh Jermanus spent about sixteen years designing for Australian labels including Marcs, Nicholas and Zimmermann, was made redundant in March 2020 as the industry shut down, and started ALÉMAIS at her kitchen table that August with her husband Chris Buchanan. The label is built on prints, embroidery and a different artist collaboration every season.

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Aje Dresses

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.

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Amrapali Jewelry

Amrapali Jewelry

Amrapali was founded in Jaipur in 1978 by Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera, two school friends with history degrees, no jewellery background and about four hundred rupees of savings. They started out selling carved wooden boxes, then toured rural Rajasthan buying antique tribal silver to take apart and rebuild.

Aeyde Shoes

Aeyde Shoes

Aeyde was founded in Berlin in spring 2015 by Luisa Dames and Constantin Langholz-Baikousis, who met in 2011 working at Zalando, where Dames ran the private-label division and its production across India, Bangladesh and China. They launched with about twelve pairs of shoes made in family-owned factories in Italy's Marche region.

AMIYA Brand: Aimee Song's Luxury Knitwear Label

AMIYA Brand: Aimee Song's Luxury Knitwear Label

The AMIYA brand is the luxury knitwear label from Aimee Song, who spent more than fifteen years building Song of Style. I go through the knitwear pieces and the story behind the label.

Aram Aykaz and Arma: A Dutch Leather and Shearling House

Aram Aykaz and Arma: A Dutch Leather and Shearling House

Arma is a Dutch leather and shearling house founded in Badhoevedorp in 1985 by Aram Aykaz, whose father had traded leather skins and shearling in Armenia since the early 1950s. Aykaz started as a cleaner at a leather company, learned the trade, and eventually began designing garments from his own fabrics.

Aleon Bags

Aleon Bags

Aleon is a luggage brand founded in 2017 in Davis, California by Carol Elms, who came out of the airline industry and built the line around aerospace-grade aluminium rather than moulded plastic. The name joins aluminium and eon, for cases meant to last a lifetime.

Anabela Chan Jewelry

Anabela Chan Jewelry

Anabela Chan was born in Hong Kong, trained as an architect at the Bartlett and worked at Richard Rogers' practice, including on the Ground Zero project, before spending years as a print and embroidery designer for Alexander McQueen. She went back to study at the Royal College of Art, graduated in 2013, and launched a fine-jewellery house built on laboratory-grown gemstones and recycled metals.

A.Emery

A.Emery

Anna McLaren interned at The Row, spent 2014 to 2017 designing womenswear at the Australian retailer Witchery, and launched A.Emery in Melbourne in 2017 with six sandal styles, all of them entirely black. It is still self-funded.

With Nothing Underneath Shirts: Cotton and Linen Basics

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.

Frédérique Dessemond: The Founder Behind Ginette NY Jewelry

Frédérique Dessemond: The Founder Behind Ginette NY Jewelry

Frédérique Dessemond, a Marseille-born, Sorbonne-trained art history graduate, started Ginette NY in New York in 2002 after years of customizing vintage furniture and clothing rather than making jewelry from scratch. Her breakthrough was the Disc, a plain polished gold circle threaded on a fine chain and engraved with initials, which turned fine jewelry into something meant for daily wear rather than special occasions.

Paris Georgia Clothing: Basics From Two New Zealand Friends

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.

Conner Ives Bags and Dresses

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.

Keane Jewelry

Keane Jewelry

Keane is the Brooklyn label started in 2017 by Colin Keane Lynch, who trained in glassblowing in Venice as a teenager and later at Rhode Island School of Design before a stint working retail in fashion, where he began experimenting with glass on the side around 2012. The brand still makes its jewelry and objects the same way, hand-blown glass paired with precious metals, in a studio near the Manhattan Bridge, with collections that have referenced everything from his father's home county of Kerry in Ireland to the psychedelic revolution and Japanese wagashi sweets.

Pascale Monvoisin Jewelry

Pascale Monvoisin Jewelry

Pascale Monvoisin spent around fifteen years as a flight attendant for Air France before a batch of turquoise bought on a stopover in Jaipur turned into her first ring and, by 2009, her own Paris jewelry house. Every piece is still designed in her Paris studio and produced by artisans in that same Jaipur workshop, now grown from one craftsman into a full production unit.

The New Arrivals Ilkyaz Ozel

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.