Accessories
Accessories
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.
Jennifer Fisher Jewelry: From a Gold Dog Tag to Earrings
Jennifer Fisher was a stylist who made her first piece, a gold dog tag for her son, Shane, because nothing on the market matched her own style, then turned it into a line in 2006 after Uma Thurman wore one on a magazine cover. Notes on the hoops, bangles and necklaces built for daily wear.
Drop Earrings And Hoops
Drop earrings are the shape doing the most work this season, in three levels from statement to barely there. I sort the drops and hoops by how much movement you want, from rhinestone and pearl drops to plain hoops.
Carolina Bucci Jewelry: Florentine Gold Since 1885
Carolina Bucci is the fourth generation of a Florentine family that has worked in gold since 1885, when her great-grandfather opened a workshop to repair pocket watches. This edit moves from the bracelets through necklaces to the smaller rings and earrings that finish the range.
Acne Studios Jeans
Acne Studios brings Stockholm cool into a wardrobe of denim, oversized texture and slyly offbeat accessories. Founded in 1996 as part of a creative collective, the house grew from Jonny Johansson's red-stitched jeans into a full fashion practice. The clothes still reward a little friction, especially when clean Scandinavian lines meet an unexpected proportion or print.
AGMES Jewelry
AGMES makes New York jewelry with the clarity of small sculpture, using clean lines, recycled metals and forms that feel closer to architecture than ornament. Sisters Morgan and Jaclyn Solomon founded the label in 2016, drawing on modernist art, urban settings and the idea of the modern heirloom. The pieces are distinctive without asking for a maximalist outfit around them.
Christen Classic Shoes: Sandals and Boots by Nina Christen
Christen classic shoes come from Nina Christen, who shaped footwear at Bottega Veneta, Loewe, Celine and The Row before launching in 2024. I go through the sandals, boots and shoes.