Khaite Shoes, Bags and Accessories: Leather Pumps and Sandals

Khaite Shoes, Bags and Accessories: Leather Pumps and Sandals

Catherine Holstein launched Khaite in New York in 2016 with backing from Adam Pritzker's Assembled Brands, after a first eponymous label she started as a Parsons student closed in the 2008 financial crisis and a five-year run designing for Gap, Vera Wang and The Elder Statesman taught her the parts of the business she'd missed the first time. The label opened on denim and cashmere knitwear before adding runway shows in 2019 and an in-house bags and footwear line the same season, and Holstein still designs under a name modeled on the Greek word for long, flowing hair.

Collage of runway looks, campaign shots and street style outfits that capture the Khaite mood

Shoes

Khaite's footwear only arrived in 2019, alongside its first runway show at St. Ann's Warehouse, which makes it a relatively recent addition next to the brand's founding denim and knitwear. It has since become central enough to the label's identity that Holstein is now regularly credited with building one of the few genuinely successful accessories businesses to come out of a New York label this decade.

Boots, pumps and woven flats

The shoes lean on the same restrained, American-sportswear vocabulary Holstein set out with in 2016, favoring clean lines over embellishment. That consistency is presumably intentional, given how much of Khaite's reputation rests on Holstein's insistence on a coherent point of view across every category.

Raffia sandals and moccasin pumps

There is enough range here to see how quickly the footwear line grew from a 2019 side addition into a full category of its own. Khaite is still a rare example of a young American label building real authority in shoes, a category usually dominated by European houses.

Accessories

Accessories followed the same 2019 debut as the shoes, arriving once Holstein had established the clothing well enough to expand without diluting it. The pacing was deliberate: bags and footwear only entered after the ready-to-wear business had a stable identity to build on.

Belts, gloves and statement eyewear

Holstein's own account of starting Khaite centers on wanting a fuller American sportswear wardrobe that did not yet exist, and the accessories extend that same brief past clothing. The result reads more like an edited system than a grab bag of add-on categories.

Bags

Bags are arguably the category that turned Khaite from a promising denim-and-knitwear label into a full luxury house, and they carry the same unfussy design language as everything else. It helps that Holstein came to the category only after years of design stints at brands built around volume and repeatable fit, at Gap and Vera Wang among them.

Structured leather and raffia bags

The range shown here traces how far the bag line has grown since its 2019 introduction, without losing the plain, structural quality that defined the brand's earliest denim and knitwear. That restraint is Khaite's actual signature more than any single shape.

Tops and shirting

Knitwear and cashmere were literally the founding categories of Khaite in 2016, and Holstein's two years designing knits at Gap gave her the fit and grading instincts that still show up here. It is the part of the collection most directly traceable to the brand's actual origin story.

Dresses

Dresses came later than the founding denim and knitwear, but they carry the same American-sportswear logic Holstein has talked about since Khaite's earliest interviews: functional cuts reimagined rather than overtly decorated. The point of view stays consistent even as the silhouette changes.

Sculpted jackets and satin skirts

Khaite has expanded well past its 2016 denim-and-cashmere debut without losing the specific, unfussy identity Holstein set out with, and this section shows just how far that expansion has gone. Holstein's 2022 CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year award came specifically for having grown the label this far while keeping its point of view intact.

Tailored bottoms and gold-tone jewelry

What stands out across the wider assortment is how little Khaite has strayed from the original brief: American sportswear categories, rebuilt with better materials and fit than Holstein felt were available when she started. It is a narrow thesis stretched impressively far.

Cashmere knits, denim and outerwear

By this point in the edit the through-line is obvious: everything traces back to Holstein's stated goal of making a fuller, better-made version of the American wardrobe basics she couldn't find for herself. The label has grown considerably since 2016, but the founding logic hasn't really moved.

Discipline over spectacle

Khaite's rise from a shuttered 2008 label to a CFDA-winning house is a genuinely unusual second act, and the brand has earned its reputation by staying disciplined rather than chasing spectacle. The flip side of that discipline is a sameness across categories that can make a very large assortment like this one feel more repetitive than it should. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Khaite Jeans and Khaite Jeans Guide.