Amoy New York’s Founders On Creating Sustainable, Timeless Fashion

The summer that Isabella Chan and Katie Xue were designing Amoy New York’s best-selling Jane dress, the ladies found themselves a theme song of sorts. They kept listening to December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night), by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

The song, which was originally released in December, 1975, fit the mood they were trying to achieve for the collection, especially with this dress, which was named for the woman who inspired them to design it, none less than Jane Birkin, namesake of that Birkin Bag.

The Jane dress has a lightly flared long sleeve, it feels very much like what it is: a sophisticated blend of past and present. Amoy New York is a brand whose look is rooted in a vintage aesthetic, but when considering design and sustainability practices, is thinking and working much further into the future than 2025. “Sometimes,” Xue told me, “we’ll look at silhouettes and try to bring them into the present a little bit.”

The 1980s and 1990s produced a lot of collections that inspire this pair of young designers, a lot of work by Roberto Cavalli, maybe especially the 1996 Gucci by Tom Ford collection, the one that featured the luxurious, abstractly printed blue silk. But when thinking about inspiration, it is Stella McCartney’s work that resonates most. For the quality of design, of course, but also because of ethos.

“Stella McCartney’s graduation show,” Chan explained, “and that kind of feeling of reigniting fashion for the woman. I think that was a really important thing for us, we want female designers, you know? We want women designing for women. Male designers are amazing. Obviously, there are many, many men that are amazing. But I think that Stella McCartney show, I think the world saw that women have a different take on women’s clothing. And that was pretty special for us, especially because we design for ourselves in a way, and that’s kind of what she does.”

“I think it’s funny,” Xue said, “our actual design process kind of looks like meditating. In our room, thinking deeply about what we’re feeling about the world around us. And then, translating that into designs.”

“It’s a meditation,” Chan agreed, “but it’s a meditation on action, you know? How are we going about our day? What are we doing? What are the moments we’re investing into?” Chand smiled before she finished. “And how are we dressing for these moments?”

As someone who talks to a lot of people who work in clothing and costume, I always pay attention to the practices and processes being adapted as the fashion industry figures out how to become more sustainable. When I see an emerging brand, like Amoy New York, doubling down on a commitment to creating a sustainable brand instead of becoming one, it makes me feel better about the future of the industry I love most.

“When I was in undergrad, my concentration was on fashion business and sustainability,” Xue told me. “Dreaming up this brand, sustainability really was a core tenet. That’s why we made timelessness a central focus, because we felt like sustainability isn’t only about using sustainable fabrics and minimizing carbon emissions and all those things. It’s about making sure that the wearer gets the longest wear out of their items. So that was a big part of it. With our original Jane dress, we made it out of recycled polyester made from ocean-bound plastic water bottles. That was our big start in the sustainability field. But I think there’s always more to do.”

This led Xue to return to school, she’s currently working towards a master’s degree in Sustainability Management. “Ultimately,” she told me, “I chose to go there because there’s so much more to learn and more to do as a brand. And I feel like it’s a never-ending goal for us to try and make it better.”

The company is always working to limit carbon emissions in their supply chain; sourcing as much locally as they possibly can, preventing any Amoy garment manufactured is not traveling from country to country during the production stage. They are dedicated to working with mostly deadstock fabrics. “We feel like clothes should be sustainable at the end of the day, but especially in the sense that you should always want to wear them again,” Xue explained.

Chan didn’t have the sustainability exposure that Xue did, but she saw how much it mattered to her partner. Now she completely understands, and would not have their company operate any other way. “That extra work of making sure your supply chain is sustainable is a huge deal,” Chan told me, “there are so many aspects to a garment that can be controlled in a very specific way. Before, you didn’t know where your fabric was coming from, what its content is, all these things. Now you can track so many aspects of the fabric. And, like Katie said, it’s a never-ending journey of improving. There isn’t, like, an end-all point of sustainability for anybody. And, yeah, we allocate as many resources as we can for that part of our process”

Xue thinks they started at the right time. “I think if this were 10 years earlier,” she explained, “it would be impossible to find fabrics, impossible to find manufacturers. Now we find it that manufacturers may not always make things sustainably, but they’re almost always willing to try. I think there are more options in the marketplace for organic cotton, deadstock fabrics, and I think it’s becoming easier to manage and source as we move further along.”

Everything that Chan and Xue do with and for Amoy feels conscious and purposeful. I cannot articulate properly how much this writer appreciates that. All the details are thought out. This pair of ladies are in their mid-20s, young women yes, but focused in a way that phrase does not convey. They have ideals but are very grounded in the way they go about living them. I saw this very clearly when I asked them about the response they get when people understand that they were friends before they were business partners.

“People love to scare you when you’re working with your best friend, they’re like, be careful,” Chan said as she gave me a pointed look. It was a bit of a caricature, the look she gave me, but I knew she and Xue had experienced that specific stare many times, and probably mostly from people who believed in them and who wanted to offer helpful advice.

“There have been so many different warnings over the years,” Xue said. I would have rolled my eyes thinking back on that type of conversation. Xue did not, and neither did Chan.

“People tell you, don’t work with your best friend,” Chan went on to explain. “But we’re like, okay, so we have to work extra hard at our friendship then. We have to work extra hard at communication. And we’re very open.”

When something seems off, or one of them isn’t in the best mood, they talk about it. Take responsibility for their own behavior and work together to find a solution. They do not mind working. I suspect that they like working a great deal, I believe they love what they do. Love is serious, and seeing the thoughtful way these women approach it, I know they understand exactly how serious it is.

“I talk about this all the time,” Xue said. “People will be like, don’t work with your best friend. Don’t work with family. Don’t work with a stranger. Okay, so don’t work with anybody. Problem solved.” She laughed and then continued. “We just try to manage it with respect and care, the same way you manage every relationship in your life.

I’ve written before about the dynamics that must exist for a creative/business partnership to be productive and happy. This seems like a good time to remind my readers that this type of relationship is in many ways a marriage, and requires just as much work for the pair of people participating to both feel fulfilled. Seeing a pair of young businesswomen understand this innately, actively looking for ways to develop as a team as well as individuals, it is honestly quite refreshing.

Chan laughed a little when I asked them about this, the marriage and business partnership analogy. “Absolutely,” she told me, we talk about this all the time. When you’re taking your relationship to the next level in this very literal way, we had to talk about it. We’re like, okay, we’re friends first. We had to set a lot of boundaries.”

“Over the years,” Xue shared, “we would run into people in random places, and they’ll be like, your business partner is your marriage partner.”

Thinking about this part of our conversation, I felt I understood completely how they feel, and I’d bet many of my lovely readers will also get it. It is hard, especially while doing work that matters personally, to be on the receiving end of a lot of well-intentioned, but ultimately bad advice. Whicgets tossed at young people, often it’s by those who love them, who want them to do well. Unfortunately, affection doesn’t mean the advice is always good. Or useful, or even apply to the world today.

Luckily, these two ladies come from down to earth families who want them to succeed, so those closest to them encouraged them to make wise decisions, make choices that would serve them well. Like having a contract drawn up and signed before they began. Excellent advice, that.

It has to be helpful that they had similar experiences growing up. The ladies are both born creatives, both felt a connection to clothing from a young age, both felt that what we wear is something important. They shared the experience of growing up internationally, in both China and the US, of attending boarding school. They did not meet until they were both attending University, in New York City, where serendipitously they became friends just before Covid-19 shut the world down.

We all had “pandemic” friendships of one sort or another, but Chan and Xue found that all the time together made them certain that they wanted to work together. They began picking small projects to try, and the success of those endeavors resulted in the founding of Amoy New York in 2021. It is a young brand, but one that is thriving in our current, admittedly strange, global economic situation.

A big shift for the brand came in the last year, when Olivia Jade to not just wore Amoy, but to choose to post about doing so on her socials, tagging the brand so her followers could discover the label. They had reached out to her team, sent some pieces, and a few months later the brand found itself tagged on Tik Tok. “Personally,” Xue said, I had been watching a lot of her YouTube videos, and I just wanted to get Amoy on her. When you gift things, you don’t always expect someone to wear them. It was a very happy moment for us.”

“A lot of the time,” Chan told me, “these collaborations end up being very organic, even though we reach out or they reach out. There’s some sort of connection, but when people dress themselves, what you wear in the morning, it’s how you feel and nobody is going to put something on that they don’t feel good in. I mean, we don’t know what’s gonna happen, and they wear what feels right.”

This sort of experience feels like an endorsement to the young designers, and without traditional apparel design training, it also offers them a sense of validation.

As much as they love seeing Amoy New York being worn by celebrities and famous names, what Isabella Chan and Katie Xue love most is seeing young women like themselves out in the world, choosing to wear their work.

“Honestly,” Chan said, “it’s even cooler to see a stranger than a celebrity sometimes. Like, seeing someone on the street, you’re wondering how you find us?”

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