MOTHER

Lela Becker and Tim Kaeding started MOTHER in Kaeding’s basement in January 2010. The name is deliberately double-edged — nurturing on one reading, a swear word on the other — and came out of the two of them talking about their own mothers: what they wore, who they ran with, how they got into trouble. The first collection put vintage-inspired fits into a market that was then almost entirely black skinnies.