Stories by

Phoebe Gates

700 stories

ELCE Seminyak: The Bali Swim Shop Behind the Brand

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.

Read Editorial
SIEDRÉS Exclusive Nyra Velvet Maxi Dress and More Prints

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.

Matthew Bruch Jeans and Dresses

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.

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

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.

Rabanne Bags and Dresses

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.

Savette Bags

Savette Bags

Amy Zurek founded Savette in New York in 2020, after studying art history and fashion design at Parsons, then working at The Row and building Khaite's handbag line from scratch alongside founder Cate Holstein. She named the label after her mother's maiden name and built its design language around two women, her mother's classic taste in leather goods and her grandmother's eye for sculptural jewelry.

UGG

UGG

Brian Smith, an Australian surfer studying business at UCLA, founded Ugg Imports in Santa Monica in 1978 with Doug Jensen, betting that the sheepskin boots Australians wore after cold surf sessions could find an American market. The company sold just 28 pairs its first season, and Smith kept building the brand himself, including selling boots out of the back of his van at Malibu, before selling it to Deckers Outdoor Corporation in 1995.

SLVRLAKE

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.

Balmain Dresses and Knitwear

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.

CANO Jewelry

CANO Jewelry

CANO began as a family obsession, not a fashion label: in Bogotá, Guillermo Cano trained as a goldsmith in Germany before opening a boutique in 1968 to recreate the pre-Columbian gold pieces his grandfather Nemesio had unearthed decades earlier. Its defining fact is a license, not a trend: CANO is the only jewelry house authorized by the Banco de la República's Gold Museum to reproduce pieces from its collection, using the same lost-wax casting the original goldsmiths used.

Rachel Comey Knitwear

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.

The Frankie Shop: Gaëlle Drevet's Oversized Trousers, Coats

The Frankie Shop: Gaëlle Drevet's Oversized Trousers, Coats

The Frankie Shop is a New York label that Gaëlle Drevet, a French-American former journalist, opened as a Lower East Side concept store in 2014. I go through the trousers, coats, tops, skirts and jackets built on her oversized menswear logic.

Erdem Dresses and Knitwear

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.

Read Editorial
Haute Victoire

Haute Victoire

Yasmina Benazzou spent over two decades as global creative director at the carpet house Tai Ping before signing up for an evening jewelry-making class in New York at 45, which led her to found Haute Victoire. The name means high victory in French, chosen because launching the label felt like a personal win after years spent designing something else entirely, and her debut collections were worked in 18k gold set with Tahitian pearls, Persian turquoise and stones pulled from flea-market brooches.

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

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.

Tabayer Oera Diamond Rings and Jewelry in 18K Gold

Tabayer Oera Diamond Rings and Jewelry in 18K Gold

The Tabayer 18kt yellow gold Oera diamond ring comes from Oera, the collection that launched the brand in 2021. I go through the Oera, Loop and Signet pieces and the Miami founder's story.

Lié Studio: Copenhagen Jewelry and Bags From Twin Sisters

Lié Studio: Copenhagen Jewelry and Bags From Twin Sisters

Lié Studio was founded in Copenhagen in November 2021 by twin sisters Amalie and Cecilie Moosgaard, former runway models who had walked for Gucci, Valentino and Prada before building their own label with business partners at Brand Institute. The specific thing that makes the brand what it is: a small set of core minimalist gold and silver jewelry pieces, designed by two people who by their own account were not natural jewelry buyers before they started making it themselves.

ILA Dresses and Jewelry

ILA Dresses and Jewelry

ILA was founded in Houston in 2007 by Vikas Sodhani, an MIT engineering graduate who left the dot-com industry, apprenticed at a diamond-cutting facility in Mumbai, and taught himself to design jewelry from there. The label is named for his sister Ila Sodhani, who joined as design collaborator, and it still makes every piece by hand in that same Houston studio, drawing on a family already steeped in the diamond trade.

House of Dagmar Clothing: Stockholm Knitwear, Shirting, Dresses

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.

High Sport Knitwear

High Sport Knitwear

Alissa Zachary launched High Sport in the early 2020s in New York and Los Angeles after years of merchandising at The Row and consulting for Khaite, and the label opened with a single item, a cropped, pull-on kick-flare trouser made to look tailored while wearing like a legging. That one silhouette became an unlikely editor obsession and the brand has since built out a small range of Italian-made knitwear around the same logic.

Lemaire Bags

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.

Victoria Beckham Dresses and Knitwear

Victoria Beckham Dresses and Knitwear

Victoria Beckham launched her eponymous ready-to-wear label in September 2008 with a ten-dress debut at New York Fashion Week, a pivot from pop stardom and tabloid muse status that the industry initially met with real skepticism. The label spent years losing money, took outside investment from NEO Investment Partners in 2017, and only turned its first operating profit in 2025, all while building a reputation for precise, body-conscious cutting that eventually earned her a spot on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar in 2022.

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

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.

JW Anderson

JW Anderson

Jonathan Anderson, a Northern Irish designer who trained at London College of Fashion and worked as a visual merchandiser at Prada, founded JW Anderson in London in 2008. The label made its name on a deliberate blur between menswear and womenswear silhouettes, an idea Anderson later called a shared wardrobe, and it built a cult following well before he was named creative director of Loewe in 2013.

Stephanie Windsor Jewelry

Stephanie Windsor Jewelry

Stephanie Windsor, born Stephanie Levy in Montreal, moved to Manhattan in 1987 and got her start working for Norma Kamali at the height of Kamali's 1980s run before later co-chairing design marketing at Parsons. She went on to run her own accessories showroom and was tapped to exclusively curate Barneys New York's antique and vintage fine jewelry and pre-owned watches, a role that shaped the eye behind her own label spanning Georgian through Art Deco periods.

Jenna Blake Jewelry

Jenna Blake Jewelry

Jenna Grosfeld launched her namesake fine jewelry label, Jenna Blake, in Los Angeles after building a personal collection of antique pieces for two decades. The work is handcrafted in LA and takes its cues from Art Deco and mid-century jewelers, including Boucheron and René Boivin, reworked in color and scale for a stack-it-all-on approach rather than a single statement piece.

Sauer Jewelry

Sauer Jewelry

Jules Sauer, a French teenager who fled Europe in 1939, arrived in Brazil and opened his own gem-cutting business, Lapidação Amsterdam, in Rio de Janeiro in 1941, later becoming known as a gemstone hunter for his role in certifying Brazilian emeralds internationally. He opened the brand's first standalone store on Avenida Atlântica beside the Copacabana Palace in 1956, and the house's Constellation ring won a Diamond International Award in 1966 and is still produced today.

Co

Co

Stephanie Danan and her then-partner Justin Kern started Co in Los Angeles in 2011, Danan arriving from a decade-plus career producing film rather than clothes. The label built its name on a distinctly West Coast idea of minimalism, polished basics and cinematic ease that read quietly rich rather than logo-driven, and it moved into denim in 2015 through a collaboration with veteran designer Francois Girbaud.