Stories by

Phoebe Gates

699 stories

Ulla Johnson Dresses

Ulla Johnson Dresses

Ulla Johnson grew up in Manhattan as the daughter of two archaeologists and launched her eponymous label in New York at the end of the 1990s, right after studying psychology and women's studies rather than fashion at the University of Michigan. Barneys New York bought her collection in 2000, and the label has since built its identity on natural fibers and craft techniques developed with artisan communities in countries including Peru, India and Kenya.

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Magda Butrym Dresses: Rosette Midis, Blazers and Shoes

Magda Butrym Dresses: Rosette Midis, Blazers and Shoes

Magda Butrym, born in Zabrze, Poland, worked for years as a stylist and ran a short-lived earlier label, Portofino, before launching her eponymous house in Warsaw in 2014. The label built its identity by working directly with Polish artisans, turning regional hand-knitted lace and hand-plaited leatherwork into signatures rather than trims.

Gucci

Gucci

Guccio Gucci opened his first shop on Florence's Via della Vigna Nuova in 1921, selling leather luggage after years spent watching wealthy travelers as a porter at London's Savoy Hotel. The house has since run through family ownership, a very public 1990s implosion, and a run of creative directors, Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, Sabato De Sarno and now Demna, each of whom rebuilt its image without ever discarding the leather-goods core Guccio started with.

Zimmermann: The Sydney Label Two Sisters Started in 1991

Zimmermann: The Sydney Label Two Sisters Started in 1991

Sisters Nicky and Simone Zimmermann founded their namesake label in Sydney in 1991, after Nicky began sewing garments in her parents' garage and selling them at Paddington Markets. The brand's breakthrough came when it put swimwear on the same runway as ready-to-wear at the inaugural Australian Fashion Week in 1996, a pairing that was unusual at the time and helped it build an international following.

DL1961 Jeans and Knitwear

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.

Michael Kors Collection Dresses and Knitwear

Michael Kors Collection Dresses and Knitwear

Michael Kors launched his own label in New York in 1981, after Bergdorf Goodman's fashion director spotted his talent while he worked at a boutique on West 57th Street and encouraged him to bring her a collection. The Collection line has stayed closest to that original premise ever since: glamorous, easy American sportswear built for how a woman actually moves through her day, not a costume.

Flore Flore

Flore Flore

Flòrian van Zuilen launched Flore Flore out of Amsterdam in the summer of 2021, after years working in fashion roles that took her from New York to Copenhagen. The label exists to solve one specific problem, the cotton basic that actually fits, and its team reportedly ran more than eighty fittings over about eight months just to finalize the proportions of its original T-shirt styles.

Leset Knitwear

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.

Silvia Tcherassi: From Barranquilla Interior Designer to Dresses

Silvia Tcherassi: From Barranquilla Interior Designer to Dresses

Silvia Tcherassi trained as an interior designer in Barranquilla, Colombia, before a T-shirt she made for herself caught a shopkeeper's eye. I go through her dresses, tops, skirts and trousers.

EB Denim

EB Denim

Elena Bonvicini started EB Denim around 2015 while still in high school in Newport Beach, California, cutting up vintage Levi's 501s into shorts and selling them out of her school locker room. The brand grew through a sorority trunk show at USC and a pandemic-era pivot into its own designs, still made in Los Angeles and still rooted in that reworked-vintage-denim logic.

The Park Dresses

The Park Dresses

Sarah Bonello, who spent years working in lifestyle PR, launched The Park in 2024 out of Los Angeles and New York with a simple premise: make getting dressed easier for busy women. The label built its name on classic basics and activewear designed to be building blocks for an existing wardrobe rather than one-off statement pieces, with an emphasis on circular, waste-minimizing production.

Emily P. Wheeler

Emily P. Wheeler

Emily P. Wheeler started making beaded jewelry for her mother as a child on Southwest road trips with her architectural-photographer father, and introduced her fine jewelry line in 2017. She trained at the GIA as a colored-gemstone specialist, and it shows in a palette built around saturated stones rather than pure diamond sparkle

Comme Si

Comme Si

Jenni Lee started Comme Si in New York in 2019 after leaving her marketing job at the shaving startup Harry's, unable to find a sock she considered both beautiful and responsibly made. The label is built on that one overlooked category: Italian-milled cotton, merino, cashmere and silk socks finished with a loop tab that regular wearers learned to spot on each other, a foundation the brand has since built out into all of the categories

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Eden Presley

Eden Presley

Gwen Myers started making jewelry in New York as a way to fill the hours at home with three young children, and named the label after two of them, Eden and Presley. What began as pieces for herself and friends grew into informal jewelry parties before it turned into an actual wholesale business, hand-set gemstones in 14k gold with a bold, maximalist streak.

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Maticevski Dresses

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.

Sydney Evan Jewelry

Sydney Evan Jewelry

Rosanne Karmes founded Sydney Evan in Los Angeles in 2001, naming it after her two children, Sydney and Evan, and her late father, Sy, after years working in fine jewelry manufacturing and running her own accessories showroom. She launched with a single pavé-diamond horseshoe necklace and diamond-set charm bracelets, a hard sell to retailers at first until Serena Williams wore a Sydney Evan moon pendant in InStyle and Neiman Marcus picked up the line in 2006.

Chan Luu Jewelry

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.

Left On Friday: Swim, Tops and Dresses by Two Lululemon Veterans

Left On Friday: Swim, Tops and Dresses by Two Lululemon Veterans

Laura Low Ah Kee and Shannon Savage, both longtime Lululemon product executives, launched Left On Friday out of Victoria, Canada and Venice, California in May 2018 after a hot-tub conversation about the lack of swimwear built to actually move in. They developed a proprietary Italian fabric, later expanding from swim into wider activewear, and went on to design uniforms for Canada's national beach volleyball team at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Citizens of Humanity Jeans

Citizens of Humanity Jeans

Jerome Dahan and Michael Glasser started Citizens of Humanity in Los Angeles in 2003, right after a lawsuit win over their previous denim venture handed them the capital to do it again on their own terms. The label built its name on fit and finish rather than logos, running its own laser and ozone finishing lines so a single wash comes out consistent across thousands of pairs.

Ten Thousand Things Jewelry: 18K Gold Pieces From a New York Duo

Ten Thousand Things Jewelry: 18K Gold Pieces From a New York Duo

Ron Anderson and David Rees, both self-taught jewelers who came out of fashion retail rather than formal design school, founded Ten Thousand Things in New York in 1991, taking their name from a line in the Tao Te Ching. The label helped bring personal, wearable fine jewelry back into fashion at a moment when magazines were dominated by oversized costume pieces, a shift cemented early when Kate Moss wore its small cross pearl earrings in her first Calvin Klein campaign in 1992. Here are some of my personal favorite items from the collection...

Fleur du Mal Dresses and Shoes

Fleur du Mal Dresses and Shoes

Jennifer Zuccarini launched Fleur du Mal in New York in 2012 after stints co-founding Kiki de Montparnasse and designing intimates at Victoria's Secret, taking the brand's name from Baudelaire's collection of poems. Her pitch was lingerie meant to be worn on an ordinary day rather than saved for an occasion, which is why the label expanded into ready-to-wear and swim without ever losing its underpinnings logic.

Yvonne Leon Jewelry: Gold and Gemstone Pieces Made in Paris

Yvonne Leon Jewelry: Gold and Gemstone Pieces Made in Paris

Yvonne Leon grew up around a family of jewelers in Paris, spending childhood afternoons at her parents' vintage jewelry shop before studying at the fashion school Esmod and working as a stylist and editorial assistant, including time at Vogue Paris. She launched her own fine jewelry line in the early 2010s, building it around the dessous d'oreille, an ear jacket earring she reworked from a piece her father originally designed for her mother, and expanded it into a bestiary of animal charms sourced from her own flea market habit. A brand of my wishlist dreams

Golden Goose Shoes

Golden Goose Shoes

Alessandro Gallo and Francesca Rinaldo started Golden Goose in a garage in Marghera, near Venice, in 2000, when they were both in their early twenties. The brand's entire identity rests on a single idea introduced in 2007, the Super-Star sneaker, hand-distressed until it looks like it has already lived a life before you bought it.

Ben-Amun

Ben-Amun

Isaac Manevitz, an Egyptian-born designer who had worked for costume houses like Trifari, started Ben-Amun in New York in 1980, naming it for his eldest son and the pharaoh Tutankhamun. The brand never pretended to be fine jewelry: it built its name on hand-finished pieces in electroplated gold, Czech glass and Majorca pearls, made to photograph and move like the real thing, which is exactly what got a Ben-Amun cuff onto Jackie Kennedy Onassis's wrist in 1989.

Rachel Gilbert Dresses

Rachel Gilbert Dresses

Rachel Gilbert launched her namesake label in Sydney in 2007 at 24, after training at the Whitehouse Institute of Design and working as a designer for Nicky Hilton's label Chick in New York and for Morrissey back in Australia. She built the brand on hand embellishment at a moment when Australia's occasion-wear market barely had any

FRAME Jeans and Knitwear

FRAME Jeans and Knitwear

Two Swedish former magazine colleagues, Erik Torstensson and Jens Grede, launched FRAME out of Los Angeles in 2012 with a single pair of jeans. Neither had designed clothing before, so they built the brand the way marketers build a brand, obsessing over one perfect mid-blue skinny jean before anything else existed.

ROAME Pascal Strapless Maxi Dress and the Melbourne Label

ROAME Pascal Strapless Maxi Dress and the Melbourne Label

The ROAME Pascal Strapless Maxi Dress sits with dresses, tops, trousers and skirts from the Melbourne label founded by Hollie Sweet. I go through the dresses first, then the shirting, trousers and skirts.

Posse Clothing: Danielle Mulham's Sydney Linen Tailoring

Posse Clothing: Danielle Mulham's Sydney Linen Tailoring

Danielle Mulham founded Posse in Sydney in 2016 after a trip to Bali connected her with local artisans who taught her linen tailoring techniques, turning a personal wardrobe project into a label. Posse built its name on pared-back, resort-driven separates, the kind of quiet, considered dressing that got a real spotlight when Sofia Richie Grainge wore its Emma vest and skirt at her 2023 wedding.