Significant Other

Significant Other

Significant Other was founded in 2019 in Adelaide, Australia, by Julia Ritorto and Kathryn Forth, both designers who came out of the established Australian label Acler. The brand kept its headquarters in Adelaide even as it built a following well beyond Australia, working from a design philosophy built around ease and confidence rather than a single signature print or silhouette. It's a personal favorite of mine

Dresses

Dresses are the clearest expression of what Ritorto and Forth carried over from their years designing at Acler: clean construction that still reads relaxed rather than stiff. The brand describes wanting pieces that let a woman feel at ease in her own skin, which is a fairly unusual thing for a dress label to prioritize over pure statement making. It shows in silhouettes built for actual movement, not just a still photograph.

Tops and shirting

Shirting extends that same Adelaide sensibility, unfussy pieces meant to move between daytime and an evening out without a wardrobe change in between. The founders have talked about designing for a life that runs from sunlit hours into after dark celebration. It is a modest, workable premise rather than a flashy one.

Swim

Swim makes sense for a label headquartered in Adelaide, a city built around beach culture, and it draws on the same design team's experience at Acler with resort adjacent categories. The pieces stay in line with the brand's broader promise of ease over spectacle. It is a smaller category, but a logical extension of the brand's home base.

More from the collection

The remainder of the assortment covers what a six year old Australian label adds as it grows into new categories beyond its original dress focused start. Significant Other has expanded well past its home market into international retailers while keeping its design team and headquarters in Adelaide. This is the wider net a still growing label casts each season.

Our honest take

Significant Other's strength is a competent, unshowy design hand carried over directly from Acler, rather than a from scratch reinvention. That inherited discipline means the clothes rarely misfire, even if the brand has not yet built a single instantly recognizable signature the way some of its Australian peers have. It is a dependable label more than a distinctive one, and there is something genuinely useful in that kind of consistency.