Lucky fashion brand ideas: making a new name in 2021

AAKS

Akosua Afriyie-Kumi launched her line of vibrant hand-woven accessories after moving from Ghana to the United Kingdom and studying fashion design.
AAKS

“I always wanted to start my own brand, but I didn’t know which direction to go in,” says Afriyie-Kumi.
AAKS

My light-bulb moment – to focus on craftsmanship ideas and turn them into something someone in London or New York or Spain would appreciate.”
AAKS

Afriyie-Kumi began to formulate the idea for new brand. “I started looking for weavers in the South,” she recalls of her return to her native roots.
AAKS

Brand has caught the attention of an international audience. Mere months after the label’s launch, multi-brand retailer Anthropologie reached out to Afriyie-Kumi to carry her wares, and now AAKS can be found in various stores worldwide.
Julia Heuer

Trained as a textile designer, Julia Heuer first learned about the Japanese dyeing technique of Arashi Shibori when she was an exchange student in Copenhagen.
Julia Heuer

She was drawn to its simplicity and nearly instant gratification. “It’s exactly how I like to work,” says the Germany-based creative.
Julia Heuer

“You just need a tube for wrapping the fabric and you can dye it in hot water,” she describes. No expensive industrial-sized equipment is needed..
Julia Heuer

The designer’s fall collection, titled Funny Animals, draws inspiration from the array of natural prints found on all manner of creatures.
Julia Heuer

Heuer’s offbeat pieces combine digital prints and hand-painted fabrics, and there’s a moment of truth when you see how these effects are realized after the fabric has been given the Shibori treatment.
Julia Heuer

“You have to see if the print works after pleating,” she says. “When they work together, they create new brand idea and give the resulting product a certain dynamic that makes it feel immediately right.”
Blu HummingBird Beadwork

Ellis started her brand in 2014, and her creations incorporate both contemporary motifs (cartoon characters, the Toronto Raptors logo) and ones linked to her ancestry – her Moon Medallion pieces are particularly popular.
Blu HummingBird Beadwork

Bridging generational traditions and practices with contemporary concepts is something Ellis finds deeply gratifying about her beading.
Blu HummingBird Beadwork

“Beading is medicine,” says Brit Ellis, founder of accessory line Blu Hummingbird Beadwork. “It teaches and connects us.”
Blu HummingBird Beadwork

“My Indigeneity is tied to the past, present and future,” she says. “It’s all intertwined. So I memorialize the things that are of interest to me.”
Larkspur & Hawk

“My love of foiling came from my love of antique jewellery,” says New York-based curator turned jewellery entrepreneur Emily Satloff, who founded her line of fine baubles in 2008.
Larkspur & Hawk

Satloff collects what she describes as more “esoteric” jewellery from as far back as 250 years ago.
Larkspur & Hawk

She was so bewitched by the effects – describing the interplay of light and colour as a “halo”—that she eventually decided she wanted to find a way to interpret the under- recognized technique in an updated way.
Larkspur & Hawk

“There is a misunderstanding of whether it’s fine or fashion jewellery, and it’s all fine,” she notes. “We use fine materials, and the pieces are handmade.”
Osei-Duro

Founded by Maryanne Mathias and Molly Keogh in 2011, this line of contemporary essentials was inspired by Mathias’s travels to various regions of Africa and India – locales she visited while on hiatus from her former fashion label, Hastings and Main.
Osei-Duro

“After getting frustrated with the design industry and wanting a break, i ended up travelling around the world and designing capsule collections in textile-rich countries,” she says.
Osei-Duro

The brand primarily offers hand-printed batik clothing – pieces that are made by local artisans in Accra.
Osei-Duro

(Mathias is based in her native Vancouver, and Keogh resides in Ghana.) Batik is an ancient wax dyeing technique that cultures across Africa, India and Asia have been employing for centuries as a means of creating artful garments and accessories.
Osei-Duro

“We have experimented with so many different techniques over the years – natural indigo, plain dye, hand-weaving, factory-dyed fabrics, knits and more – and through feedback and experience, we found that batik was the aesthetic that shone through.”
Osei-Duro

“Our brand is so process-driven; it’s one of the most exciting elements about it,” says Mathias. “The story behind the clothes can almost tell itself.”