Fashion designer Emilia Wickstead founded her eponymous womenswear label in 2008. Born in New Zealand, she was raised in Auckland by her mother Angela, who ran her own successful made-to-measure fashion line. Moving to Italy at the age of fourteen, Wickstead spent her teenage years in Milan before moving to London to study at Central Saint Martins, graduating in 2007. After working with American Vogue and at fashion houses such as Giorgio Armani and Narciso Rodriguez, she returned to London to establish her own label, opening her first store in Belgravia in 2009. Since 2022, the brand’s flagship store has been on London’s Sloane Street.