Accessories

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...

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

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.

Moritz Glik Jewelry

Moritz Glik founded his eponymous jewelry line in New York in 2003, after leaving a shoe company he ran in his native Belo Horizonte, Brazil and teaching himself jewelry-making once he arrived in the city in 1991. His signature invention, the Kaleidoscope Shaker, encases loose, uncut gemstones inside capsules of white sapphire crystal and gold so the stones move freely

Black Suede Studio Shoes: Montreal Loafers, Boots and Mules

Kris Avakian launched Black Suede Studio out of Montreal in 2018, after years spent inside his family's accessories manufacturing business, including a stint running quality control at their factory in Qingdao, China. The label's whole premise was closing a gap he saw in footwear: shoes with real quality and comfort at a level nobody else was hitting, a conviction strong enough that he later moved production to Brazil to get the craftsmanship right.

Loewe

A guide to Loewe, from an 1846 Madrid leather workshop to the Amazona, the Puzzle and the house's new chapter under McCollough and Hernandez. Bags, shoes, ready-to-wear, Anagram eyewear, jewelry and candles, grouped by type, with notes on what to buy first.

Lizzie Fortunato

Twin sisters Lizzie and Kathryn Fortunato started making jewelry as a Duke University side hustle in the early 2000s, then founded Lizzie Fortunato in 2008 from a Lower East Side apartment on the strength of a ten-thousand-dollar bonus check Kathryn handed her sister with instructions to follow her dreams.

Jacquemus Bags and Shoes

Simon Porte Jacquemus founded his label in Paris in 2009, at twenty, naming it after his mother's maiden name the same year she died, a loss he has described as the shock that pushed him to start designing. The house grew from a one-man operation into an independent fashion company with hundreds of employees, opening its first permanent store on Avenue Montaigne in 2022 after years of building a name through inventive presentations and a fast-growing digital following.

Ferragamo Shoes and Bags

Salvatore Ferragamo trained shoemakers in Hollywood before returning home to incorporate his company in Florence in 1927, chasing better artisans than he could find in America. He spent the following decades engineering the shoe as much as designing it, patenting the cork wedge and steel shank and improvising with raffia and nylon during wartime material shortages.

Roger Vivier Shoes

Roger Vivier opened his own atelier in Paris in 1937 after studying sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts, and by 1953 he was designing shoes exclusively for Christian Dior, the first time a couturier ever let a shoemaker's name share a label with his own. In 1954 Vivier is credited with engineering the modern stiletto heel using a thin steel rod for structure, and he went on to design the buckled pump later worn by Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour.

Gianvito Rossi Shoes

Gianvito Rossi launched his own footwear label in Milan in 2006, after years working alongside his father, the shoe designer Sergio Rossi, in the family's factories in San Mauro Pascoli. The house built its name on a handful of disciplined, unembellished silhouettes, chiefly the Gianvito 105 pump and the Portofino sandal, made with the same regional Italian craftsmanship he grew up around.

Dries Van Noten Shoes

Dries Van Noten launched his first menswear collection in 1986 in Antwerp, showing it in London with five classmates from the Royal Academy who became known as the Antwerp Six. What set him apart from the group was a refusal to chase a single signature look, instead building a reputation on pattern mixing, botanical prints and a stubborn independence from the usual industry calendar.

Balenciaga Shoes and Bags

Cristóbal Balenciaga opened his first atelier in San Sebastián in 1917, then moved the whole operation to Paris in 1937 once the Spanish Civil War made staying home impossible. What he built there was less about decoration than engineering: the sack dress, the cocoon coat, silhouettes cut with such structural control that Dior reportedly called him the master of the rest of them.

Valentino Garavani Shoes and Bags

Valentino Garavani opened his own atelier on Rome's Via Condotti in 1959 and formally established the house in 1960 with Giancarlo Giammetti, an architecture student he met that year who became the business partner running the commercial side. The 1962 haute couture debut at Palazzo Pitti in Florence made the house's name almost overnight, and its saturated signature red, nicknamed Rosso Valentino, has stayed a house code ever since.

Christian Louboutin Shoes

Christian Louboutin opened his first Paris boutique in November 1991, in a small arcade near the Louvre, after years spent designing shoes for Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent and a detour into landscape gardening. The whole enterprise turns on one stubborn idea, a lacquered red sole that turns the underside of a shoe into the signature, so a heel is recognizable from across a room before anyone sees the front of it.

Chloé Shoes and Bags

Gaby Aghion started Chloé in Paris in 1952, naming the house after a friend because a woman of her social standing was not supposed to have a job. The label made its name by treating luxury as something you could wear off the rack rather than have fitted at a couture house, and it kept proving that with the designers who passed through, from Karl Lagerfeld to Stella McCartney to Phoebe Philo.

Toteme

Elin Kling, a Swedish fashion journalist, and Karl Lindman, an art director who had worked with Interview magazine, founded Toteme in New York in 2014, the same year they married, before moving the company back to their native Stockholm in 2016. The name started as Totem until Kling suggested softening it with a final e, and the label built its identity on pared-back Scandinavian tailoring: poplin shirtdresses, boxy bouclé jackets and a signature fringed scarf detail.

STAUD Dresses and Bags

Sarah Staudinger, previously the fashion director at Reformation, launched Staud in Los Angeles in 2015 with business partner George Augusto, naming it after her own childhood nickname. The brand started as a made-to-order customization concept before pivoting to ready-to-wear once customers made clear they wanted the bags and dresses as designed, a shift that produced breakout accessories like the Bissett and Moreau bucket bags.

Saint Laurent: The Paris House Founded in 1961

Saint Laurent is the Paris house Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé opened on December 4, 1961. I go through the accessories and shoes worth a look.

The Row Bags and Shoes

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen founded The Row in New York in 2006, after Ashley spent a year trying to design an ideal, no-logo white T-shirt and the pair built it into a seven-piece debut collection that Barneys bought in full. They named it after Savile Row and, for its first three years, gave no interviews about it at all, betting the clothes could carry the label without their names on it.

Bottega Veneta Shoes and Bags

Bottega Veneta was started in 1966 in Vicenza by Michele Taddei and Renzo Zengiaro, two leathermakers who decided the House would never need a logo. The specific thing they built instead was intrecciato, the woven leather technique introduced in 1975 that turned a manufacturing workaround into the label's entire visual language.

Prada Shoes

Mario Prada and his brother Martino opened a leather goods shop called Fratelli Prada in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in 1913, selling imported English trunks and travel accessories to the city's elite. His granddaughter Miuccia Prada took over in 1978 and, working with Patrizio Bertelli, turned a nylon backpack into the idea that a utilitarian material could sit at the center of a luxury house.

Khaite Shoes, Bags and Accessories: Leather Pumps and Sandals

Catherine Holstein launched Khaite in New York in 2016 with backing from Adam Pritzker's Assembled Brands, after a first eponymous label she started as a Parsons student closed in the 2008 financial crisis and a five-year run designing for Gap, Vera Wang and The Elder Statesman taught her the parts of the business she'd missed the first time. The label opened on denim and cashmere knitwear before adding runway shows in 2019 and an in-house bags and footwear line the same season, and Holstein still designs under a name modeled on the Greek word for long, flowing hair.

Eugenia Kim Hats and Scarves: Raffia, Straw and Crochet

Eugenia Kim's hats and scarves bring sculptural brims, raffia, straw and crochet to warm weather dressing without tipping into costume. The label started in millinery, which is why the shaping and trims still read as considered rather than decorative filler. This edit separates the sunhat and visor shapes built for actual daylight from the scarves and bucket hats that finish a plainer outfit.