If You’re Shopping for a Leather Jacket, Consider Buying One From This Upstart NYC Label

Elizabeth Kuzyk has always thought of herself as “a scrappy kid.” Growing up in Canada, she spent weekends sewing beads onto the collars of her T-shirts and altering vintage blazers she would find at rummage sales. That stylish, self-expressive knack for craft eventually led Kuzyk to New York, where she enrolled in Parsons to study fashion design. After graduating, she spent time in the ateliers of Zac Posen and Vera Wang, learning just how precious and precise one can be with a garment.

Today Kuzyk is focused on her eponymous label, where she’s taking the lessons she learned from chez Posen and Wang and applying them to one simple, staple wardrobe item: jackets handmade in nubuck leather, suede, and hide. The boxy, classic-cool styles are made entirely in New York, inspired by the shapes of jackets worn by Amelia Earhart, James Dean, Patti Smith, and Lauren Hutton.

Kuzyk’s collection is sold direct to consumers, but hers is no Instagram-born, mass-marketed brand—prices start at $900 and go up to $2,700. The point is to marry the luxury of slow fashion with the immediacy of e-commerce. “I saw all of these exciting direct-to-consumer brands emerging, and I noticed that the timeless legacy pieces were largely disappearing,” she says. “I wanted to reintroduce wearable luxury and also remind consumers that we really only need a few key pieces in our wardrobes.”

Her understanding of wearable, everyday garments with a distinct point of view came from a stint alongside Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez at Proenza Schouler. Kuzyk’s jackets are, in spirit, not unlike the most appealing Proenza Schouler collections: effortlessly cool and fashionably versatile.

Kuzyk’s output looks and feels like some fantastic, surprising haul of perfectly preserved vintage—a cropped leather bolero from the 1930s, a Western-style cowboy jacket circa the 1950s, or a suede hippie look from the 1970s, any of which might become a style staple for Kate Moss or Kaia Gerber. The designs have a sophisticated quality with just a touch of nostalgia, ensuring they don’t feel too trendy (which is hard to find in the vast, Insta-targeted direct-to-consumer market). With her straightforward approach, she’s created a chic, covetable little line of handcrafted jackets with potential to become classics.