A Santa Barbara house, silk first.

Catherine Gee launched in 2015 as an all-silk collection with one idea at its centre: a slip dress cut well enough to wear anywhere. The dress is still in the line. So is the silk; nearly everything the house makes is still cut from it.

In 2016 the label won the WWD and Galeries Lafayette Crème de la Crème emerging designer prize in Paris. The blouses came next: the Daria, with its French cuff, became the piece clients bought in one print and then another, and the one Forbes would later call the best there is.

Catherine came to design by way of art. Her father painted and her grandfather photographed; she grew up in rural Tennessee and spent years in Buenos Aires inside its polo culture, which is where the equestrian prints come from. She designs for a woman who is modern and ambitious yet laid back, who buys quality over quantity, and who likes a deliberate injection of colour and print.

“Fashion is a dialogue about what you want to say about yourself, and what people perceive in you.”

Today the collection is carried by some four hundred specialty boutiques across the United States and this site is the house's flagship.