Hanifa Spring/Summer 2020 - Pink Label Congo

In 1976, heiress, artist and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt teamed up with Mohan Murjani to launch “Gloria Vanderbilt by Murjani,” widely considered the first designer jeans. Instead of the boxy workwear cut of traditional denim, her dark blue jeans were tailored to fit a woman’s curves, so tight they were described as “like the skin on a grape.” Each pair carried her signature embroidered on the back pocket and a little swan on the front, a nod to her first acting role in The Swan and to her place among Truman Capote’s “swans,” his circle of glamorous society women.

The timing was perfect. A $1 million TV ad campaign launched in 1978, and the first commercial reportedly sold out 150,000 pairs in a single day. Debbie Harry starred in an ad, the jeans showed up on Three’s Company, Mork & Mindy and Dynasty, and at the line’s peak around 1980 it was bringing in more than $200 million in sales. Putting a famous name on the back pocket opened the door for every designer jeans label that followed. Even Calvin Klein admitted: “I think Gloria Vanderbilt was in it before me.”

Vanderbilt, the great-great-granddaughter of financier Cornelius Vanderbilt, was also the mother of CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. He remembered counting the women he saw wearing jeans with his mother’s name on them. Her jeans are still sold today.

Drew White walked into Bodega, Boston’s sneaker boutique hidden behind a convenience store front, as a marketing intern in 2010. Mentored by Bodega designers Marvin Bynoe and Randy Price, he worked his way up to leading the shop’s collaboration designs, including New Balance’s 997S “No Days Off” and the baseball-inspired Nike Dunk High “Legend.” In 2024 he went independent, and one of his first projects was the Kids of Immigrants x Nike Air Max Sunder, which he worked on with the Los Angeles brand’s founders.

Kids of Immigrants chose the Sunder, a 1999 Nike runner that never caught on in its time, out of about five candidate models. Their version came in two mirrored colorways, “Sun Up” in orange and “Sun Down” in purple, with glitter-flecked Air bags and criss-crossing lines on the upper like the latitude and longitude lines on a globe. The packaging included space for wearers to write their name and where they’re from, and the campaign starred the co-founders’ own immigrant parents. White has since launched his own studio, A-FEELING, which debuted with a Saucony collaboration in 2026.

The other three shoes all have great stories of their own. The Concepts x Nike SB Dunk Low “Lobster” came from Concepts, another Boston sneaker institution. Designer Rob Heppler pitched it as a nod to Boston’s love of lobster, the luxury dish listed at “market price,” inspired by childhood trips to a lobster shop with his aunt. Concepts founder Deon Point admitted he first thought the idea was “hideous,” then had to “eat my words” when he saw the sample. The original red pair dropped in 2008 with a lining printed like a lobster bib, a rubber band around the toe like a lobster claw, and packaging that included a bib and claw crackers. Blue followed, then an ultra-rare yellow made in just 36 pairs, and the series ran six colorways deep.

Sean Wotherspoon, co-founder of the vintage shop Round Two, designed his Nike Air Max 1/97 for Nike’s 2017 Vote Forward contest, where the public picked the winning design. A lifelong thrifter, he wrapped an Air Max 97 upper in multicolored corduroy, set it on an Air Max 1 sole, lined it in velour because he’s vegan, and added vintage “Have a Nike Day” graphics. The fans voted it the winner, and it released on Air Max Day, March 26, 2018.

Salehe Bembury got his start designing shoes at Payless, then worked at Yeezy and became Versace’s vice president of sneakers, where he created the chunky Chain Reaction. He turned down Nike to go independent with New Balance, and his 2002R “Water Be the Guide” (2021) was inspired by Havasu Falls in Arizona, a hike of about five hours to reach. Bright teal suede and mesh stand in for the water, burnt orange panels for the surrounding rocks, and fuzzy shearling “N” logos finish it off.

On February 12, 1947, Christian Dior presented his first collection at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris. He called his two lines Corolle, after the petals of a flower, and En 8, for the figure-eight silhouette. But it was Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of American Harper’s Bazaar, who gave the moment its name. “It’s quite a revolution, dear Christian,” she exclaimed. “Your dresses have such a new look!” The phrase stuck, and Dior’s debut has been known as the New Look ever since.

After years of wartime rationing and boxy, practical clothes, the New Look was a shock: rounded shoulders, a full bust, a tiny cinched waist and huge, swirling skirts. Its icon was the Bar suit, a fitted cream silk jacket with padded hips over a black pleated wool skirt. Some designs used around 15 metres of fabric for a single woollen day dress, at a time when fabric was still rationed in many countries.

Not everyone was charmed. In Britain, the Board of Trade publicly opposed the look, and in America women picketed with signs reading “Mr. Dior, we abhor dresses to the floor.” Coco Chanel sniped that “Dior doesn’t dress women. He upholsters them!” But fashion’s appetite for glamour won out. The New Look defined the silhouette of the late 1940s and 1950s, and the Bar jacket remains a Dior signature to this day.