Collection 001

The debut collection from Alice Michelle began with a single tablecloth discovered in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. Alice was on a work trip, sourcing at a fabric show on behalf of the Manhattan-based fashion brand where she was leading apparel design. While wandering into the Bazaar, her eyes quickly zeroed in on a bright blue suzani-embroidered tablecloth tucked into a towering stack, nearly lost among many. She didn’t hesitate. She already saw the outline of a shirt she would design for her partner, Cam.

Years earlier, in college, Alice had first fallen in love with design by repurposing old fabrics into one-of-one garments for herself and her friends. Making artful pieces with her hands, made to be worn out into the world, Alice discovered her pieces serve as a container for unique expression and connection. 

So Alice brought the tablecloth home but after cutting the fabric she realized a miscalculation. There wasn’t enough material for buttons. Improvising, she replaced the buttons with hook and eye closures. The solution was practical, but it also felt right. The result was distinctive and personal. 

The Cam shirt was a gesture, made quietly and with care. But in its elegant boldness and subtle uniqueness, it caught people’s attention. The shirt became a moment of expression and connection—for Cam and the strangers who stopped to ask about it, and also for Alice: a lifelong creator seeking to bring beauty and meaning into the lives of the people she loves most.

That was the beginning of Alice Michelle, a brand grounded in personal history, artistic collaboration, and embraced transformation. 

For the brand’s first collection, Alice returned to the tablecloth that started it all—and invited her mother, Jill, into the process. A lifelong painter and educator, Jill’s paintings are a foray into the modes of representational painting. Her practice, like Alice’s, is rooted in translation: the gesture of the hand, the feeling in the form.

Together, they reimagined the floral motifs embroidered into the original suzani – geraniums, plum blossoms, pomegranates – this time as bold ink studies. One of the featured prints comes from a painting Jill made over a decade ago: a geranium that Alice has carried with her from apartment to apartment, city to city. 

Alice then translated those paintings into wearable forms, playing with scale, transparency, and layering to create garments that hold both restraint and exuberance. 

Each piece carries the quiet intimacy of collaboration and the vibrant energy of rediscovery. Each piece is layered, personal, and intentionally different from the next. Garments that feel as lived-in as they do elevated. Art you can wear. Made with care. Made to be remembered.