Suppose you are a woman. Suppose you are a woman who does things: directs movies, paints, runs a business, raises children, advocates for human rights, is a sound engineer, is a chef, etc. Now suppose you are in search of clothing that can take you through the day in comfort and style—low-fuss, nonbasic fashion that helps you flesh out your taste and express your personality. If you are that kind of woman, you are likely a customer of Rachel Comey.
The brand celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. That makes Rachel Comey something of a unicorn: a wholly independent, woman-led label that has expanded over the years from a microscopic business with a cult following into a flyweight empire—women’s daywear, denim, bags, shoes, jewelry, and more—with four stores split between California and New York and a fifth soon opening on Christopher Street in Manhattan’s West Village. The new store will be more than a shop, hosting rotating exhibitions curated by the arts nonprofit Soft Network, among others, and events as part of the brand’s ongoing book club and lecture series. Some labels sell a lifestyle; Rachel Comey assumes her clients have a lifestyle and that they want a wardrobe as dynamic and creative as they are. “She makes us look like interesting women doing interesting things,” says fan Zadie Smith. This has proved a recipe for success: Since founder and designer Comey made her tentative New York Fashion Week debut just days before 9/11, many buzzier local labels have come and gone. But Comey has thrived, refining her own particular jolie laide aesthetic, with its offbeat palettes and silhouettes and emphasis on texture. She knows her woman, and she has stayed in tune with her clientele, even as her brand has grown. Today, in a sea of quiet luxury replicants, she seems even more sui generis.
“I do wonder now if it’s better that I never had a ‘moment’ early on,” muses Comey. We’re at her studio in NoHo, which is a hive of activity: Downstairs, a styling session for the fall 2026 collectsion; up here, on the fourth floor, almost every inch of space is taken by patternmakers, bolts of fabric, designers scuttling about, and racks and more racks of clothes. This is still a scrappy operation. Comey, 53, has been reminiscing about her even scrappier years launching the brand. Raised in Connecticut, she studied art at the University of Vermont, then spent a few years trying her hand at things—working at a gallery, set design, styling. In New York City, she moved in a bohemian milieu that afforded her opportunities for creative experimentation. She had no formal education in fashion (and not much informal education) when she decided to produce a range of shirts. Initially, Rachel Comey was a brand for men; at some point, though, as Comey was shifting debt from one credit card to another and juggling day jobs, that changed. (One of her early stints was making mood boards for Louise Trotter, now of Bottega Veneta, when Trotter was in charge of womenswear at Gap.) “Six years—then we turned a profit,” Comey says. “After that, we started to grow—slowly. But that way, I got to learn.”
“Her sense of clothes as a vehicle for showcasing a woman’s identity, as opposed to dictating a woman’s identity—that felt radical,” notes Jen Mankins, whose much-missed Brooklyn boutique, Bird, was one of the first retailers to pick up the Rachel Comey brand. “It just felt smart.”
“You know you can always sell, like, a nice navy sweater. But if you want to throw something more experimental into the mix, that’s still Rachel,” says Laura Reilly, the founder of the fashion Substack “Magasin,” who adds that a whole new generation of Comey fans have been born online—and what they find in the brand isn’t much different from what charmed Comey’s original Gen X customers. “The way she’s held on to that sense of style without it ever feeling dated, it’s truly remarkable—novelty, now, is so expected and demanded, but she just stays true to her vision.”
Comey’s vision has at times been prophetic. She was ahead of the curve (ahem) in putting women of varying shapes on her runway, and her commitment to using models of a certain age is long-standing, e.g.: Before 40-something Stephanie Cavalli was opening Matthieu Blazy’s debut Chanel couture défilé, she was modeling for Rachel Comey.
Casting is just one example of the ways Comey has navigated the shifting terrain of 21st-century fashion largely on her own terms. She’s unpredictable in her choice of collaborators—octogenarian artist Joan Jonas, say—and pops on and off the Fashion Week calendar. When she does present, her events often have the feel of happenings.
“The PRs told me, you cannot leave Manhattan, and you can’t do a dinner—people are too busy,” recalls Comey of her decision, in 2013, to scrap her catwalk show in favor of an intimate supper-club-style presentation in Brooklyn’s difficult-to-reach Red Hook neighborhood. A seat at a Rachel Comey dinner—replete with cabaret courtesy of Justin Vivian Bond, or Tracee Ellis Ross on emcee duties—became a coveted invite, and not only for fashion insiders: You might find yourself seated across the table from Cindy Sherman, or Debbie Harry, or Maggie Gyllenhaal, or Zadie Smith. “We can get so siloed off—fashion over here, writers over there—I thought it would be interesting to let people mingle,” Comey explains. Some guests were pals; others, she confesses, were artists whom she admired and simply cold-called, operating on the principle that if you feel connected to someone’s work, chances are the regard is returned. Smith, for one, attests to this: “When I get dressed, my first priority is not to look sexy or pretty or skinny or young—I want to look cool,” she says. “And to me, Rachel’s clothes are a shortcut to that. They’re clothes for me to enjoy.”
Women who design for women: They get dinged for being too practical, too focused on stuff like pockets to conjure any fantasy. Rachel Comey, the brand, rebuts this claim. Not that Comey, the designer, doesn’t prioritize functionality. One reason she sees the 2014 opening of her first store, in Manhattan’s SoHo, as such a milestone is that it allowed her to better comprehend her clientele. “Seeing customers shopping in real-time, getting the sales reports…. It was like, mind blown,” she says. “Who is she? Where is she going? What is she doing? What does she need? How do I problem-solve for that—if she has to give a speech, and she’s standing a long time—what are those shoes?”
“But at the same time, I was also putting the pieces together in terms of where I wanted to go with the aesthetic,” Comey continues. “Part of my job, on top of the problem-solving, is to offer propositions that are surprising and delightful—a sharper shoulder, or a fabric that’s a little bit of a challenge—it’s ‘off’ in some way. Try this.”
Walk into the Rachel Comey store in SoHo and you will not encounter a utilitarian wardrobe but, rather, an audacious sense of color, pattern, form, and texture. In those first few years in New York, Comey also dabbled in costume design, and her collectsions retain a touch of theatricality— she’s not afraid of a dramatic flourish, and her clothes seem to be waiting for a strong character to step into them. This is a type of aspirational fashion. Smith mentioned a particular black sweatshirt she owns; she said that she throws it on just about every day, and, in so doing, transforms into “somebody who looks like they might be up to something interesting.” That’s the vision Rachel Comey retails: You are the woman you dream about being.
In this story: hair, Rei Kawauchi; makeup, Romy Soleimani.
Produced by Ian Crane.
