Onia

Onia

Carl Cunow and Nathan Romano, two native New Yorkers who met in high school, launched Onia in 2009 with just two styles of men's swim shorts made in New York. Barneys discovered the brand early, and Onia grew from a two-man swim operation into men's and women's resort wear built around fit and fabrication rather than the loudest print in the room

Tops and shirting

Tops and shirting reflect how far Onia has traveled from its two-style swim-shorts start in 2009, into a fuller resort wardrobe. The fit-first approach that got Barneys' attention early on still shows up in the cut.

More Tops and shirting

There is enough here to build out a full rotation, which tracks with a brand that spent its first years getting a small number of styles exactly right before expanding. Fabric does most of the work. Cunow and Romano built the business on fit and cloth rather than print, and the shirting is where that reads most plainly.

Swim

This is the category Onia was actually built on: men's swim shorts made in New York, expanded to women's swim only in 2015, deliberately in solids before prints. The brand's name, Hebrew for boat, is a fitting detail for a label that has stayed this attached to the beach.

Dresses

Dresses are part of the newer, broader resort wear identity Onia built after moving past swim exclusively, aimed at the same fit-and-fabrication priorities rather than trend-chasing prints.

Trousers and shorts

Shorts in particular trace back to Onia's founding product, though the range here has grown well past the original men's swim shorts into a fuller trouser offering for warm-weather dressing.

Skirts

Skirts round out the resort side of the label, an area Onia only began building seriously once its swim business was established. The logic is the same one that started with two styles of swim shorts in 2009: few shapes, done properly, meant to be worn somewhere warm.

Knitwear

Knitwear is one of the furthest reaches from Onia's swim-shorts origins, evidence of how much the label has widened since two nineteen-year-olds decided to go into business together at an engagement party.

More from the collection

The rest of the edit fills out a brand that has spent more than fifteen years adding categories deliberately rather than all at once, dating back to its 2009 launch in New York. Barneys picked it up early, which gave two founders with no fashion background a reason to keep going. The range has grown; the restraint has not gone anywhere.

Our honest take

Onia's origin as a fit-obsessed swim label still shows in how the rest of the collection is built: incrementally, category by category, rather than sprawling in every direction at once. That discipline is the label's strongest asset. It also means the collection can feel a little safe if you are after something more directional.