Sarah Burton, Alexander McQueen

Last October, Burton departed the label she oversaw for 13 years with a show that was a glorious tour de force, underscoring her strengths: scalpel-sharp tailoring and exquisite artisanal effects.

You likely won’t know her because – as always with the storied French house – the team comes first. But her impeccably made clothes resonate with intimacy and intelligence.

For Trotter’s 2023 debut for Carven (founded in Paris in 1945 by Marie-Louise Carven), she played to her own strengths and that of the house: fashion and functionality, writ large.

Rachel Scott, Gaëlle Drevet, Aurora James, Emily Adams Bode Aujla, Catherine Holstein

“I struggle with the concept of a woman designer,” says Diotima’s Rachel Scott, “because then that’s all you are. Men can be geniuses, but women are ‘collaborative.’  ” The New York–based Scott’s work is almost always described in the context of Jamaica, where she’s originally from, and in relation to the communities she works with for some of her crochet. “But I actually think that’s more indicative of what it is to be a designer: people working together.” Scott is part of a cohort of designers whose fantasy is to dress our reality, our everyday. Such is the case of Emily Adams Bode Aujla, who helped redirect contemporary menswear with her distinctive nostalgic and lived-in sensibility, which she’s since expanded into womenswear. Ditto Aurora James of Brother Vellies, whose work with African craftspeople for her New York–based accessories label, and subsequently through her nonprofit organization, Fifteen Percent Pledge, helped draw a blueprint for creating sustainable, community-first impact through fashion. See also Catherine Holstein’s Khaite and Gaëlle Drevet of the Frankie Shop, who have given new shape to the wardrobe of the contemporary woman. Both separately and together, these designers have defined today’s generation of American womenswear as both expansive and considered.​

Words: José Criales-Unzueta

Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini, the Attico

Gilda Ambrosio (left) and Giorgia Tordini had no work experience in fashion studios when they launched The Attico with a collection of retro slip dresses and boudoir-ish robes in 2016. Despite the attention they’d garnered on social media, the skepticism that greeted their debut suggests that the fashion industry is more than a little bit sexist. “It’s a paradox,” they say. “Who more than women know what women want, feel, and need?” Eight years later, their line—comprised of everything from vintage-inflected party frocks to tomboy cargo pants and sweeping duster coats—is stocked in 250 stores worldwide; last September, they staged their first-ever fashion show on a street in Milan’s chic Sempione neighborhood; and Dua Lipa and Hailey Bieber have both been seen wearing pieces from the label’s spring collection.

Words: Nicole Phelps

Donatella Versace

Beyoncé in sculpted chain mail at the premiere of Renaissance; Amal Clooney in glittering bronze paillettes at the Fashion Awards in London; Anne Hathaway—up next in The Idea of You, early this summer—seen here in this liquid gold tank dress: Nobody understands evening glamour quite like Donatella Versace (even if the woman herself prefers tailored black jackets and pants of the sort she’s selling in the new Versace Icons collection, which, she told Vogue, was “a little reminder about who is in charge”). Donatella has led Versace for over a quarter century—few women designers working today can lay claim to that kind of longevity (with the exception of her fellow Milanese visionary, Miuccia Prada; see page 170). Perhaps it’s because of her close relationship with her late brother Gianni that she doesn’t see the world—or the design studio—in strict binaries. “Obviously, anyone who identifies as a woman understands a woman’s body differently than a man does,” she says, “but all designers have different strengths. For me it’s about a strong and confident point of view. We have to ensure that female voices are listened to, promoted, and championed.”

Words: Nicole Phelps

Victoria Beckham, Isabel Marant

One is a former pop star who’s now an established designer; the other is a rock star of a designer. What got them there was their own look and attitude projected with confidence on to their clothes.

Alberta Ferretti, Gabriela Hearst

They might seem like poles apart—the romantic (Ferretti) and the realist (Hearst)—but where they meet is the strongly held belief to always put women first.

Phoebe Philo

She’s back—and how. It’s fashion (and a business approach) on her terms: Make it special and unique, and in smaller, more sustainable numbers. Yet again, she catches the moment.

Rei Kawakubo, Comme Des Garçons

When Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo burst upon the scene in 1981, the fashion world had never witnessed anything like it: Her clothes didn’t depend on darts and seams, and employed fabrics—rumpled and frayed, some glowing with the sheen of cheap polyester—entirely new to the Paris runway. And they were almost always black. Perhaps more than any other woman designer, she has radically rethought assumptions about femininity and upended conventional ideas of “sexiness.” If we now accept without question a genderless playbook that flaunts unfinished hems, asymmetry, and overblown silhouettes, we can thank Kawakubo—who has long since graduated from that early didactic black to prints and pieces that embrace, with a heavy dose of irony, proto-feminine polka dots and brocade blossoms. “I never intended to start a revolution,” Kawakubo (seen here in Paris in 2023) once said, in a rare public statement. She just wanted to create, she said, “what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.”

Words: Lynn Yaeger

Tory Burch

In the dozen or so years that Tory Burch has been doing fashion shows, there have been few minidresses. Pencil skirts and full skirts with sweeping Claire McCardell–like volumes, yes, but rarely anything above the knees. That changed for spring 2024. “I’m not personally wearing the short hoop dress,” modeled here in pink viscose jersey by her friend Emily Ratajkowski, Burch says, “but I wanted to really believe in it and love it, and I spent a lot of time challenging myself.” Hoops of this sort were once used for crinoline rings; Burch said she likes the idea of turning what, once upon a time, held women back into something freeing. “Where women are today,” Burch says, “they’re coming into their own idea of their own sexuality, their individuality, and when you think about the landscape of how you address those needs, you need to have diversity.” Thus, it wasn’t all minis on her spring runway: Burch also showed leg-elongating pants in a coated jersey and nylon taffeta zip polos—pieces as utterly unencumbered as that little pink dress.

Words: Nicole Phelps