Engineering next-gen luxury: Behind the launch of Rae Temily’s namesake brand

Having dedicated much of her career to developing other people’s brands, Raechel Temily – Rae to everyone that knows her – eventually embarked on a journey to establish her own luxury label. Launched April 2025, the brand, fittingly dubbed Temily, emerged almost as a response to a market that seemed to have lost touch with the emotional core of design. As the founder and creative director, Temily saw this as a vital opportunity for a woman to design specifically for the female gaze, a contrast to an industry so often dominated by men.

With an atelier and main work studio in New York and fashion director, Olivia Buckingham, at the creative helm in London, Temily is focused on what she envisions to be the “next-generation” of luxury, specialising in Resortwear that finds its roots in “artistry, integrity, and community”. The label aims to appeal to women who “refuse to blend in” by merging artisanal craftsmanship with modern innovation to produce a curated collection of refined statement pieces.

Temily’s vision gained further traction with the strategic partnership of fashion incubator Tomorrow London. Cited as a “radical collaboration”, the agreement intends to fuel global growth and amplify Temily’s creative vision. At the time of the announcement, Tomorrow CEO, Stefano Martinetto, praised the Australian designer, stating: "Raechel's leadership, her clarity of vision, and her ability to merge ethics with aesthetics show exactly why more women need to be empowered in creative leadership.”

In an interview with FashionUnited, Temily elaborated on her definition of next-generation luxury in the current landscape, what her form of creative leadership entails, and her plans for future collaborations with other “fashion futurists”.

Temily is said to occupy a “sartorial white space” in luxury fashion. What gap did you see in the market when you launched the brand?

I actually don’t think there is a gap in the market. There is so much product out there. Is anything really missing? I think about it not as being a lack of something but more about an opportunity. This probably speaks to the way I approach life; which is more about seeing abundance rather than scarcity. So this is where the lens in which I see things comes into play.

When women feel powerful, poised, strong, the best version of themselves, it changes the way they walk into a room. It changes the way they move through the world.

I felt my opportunity lay within that. Not the scarcity of something missing. There is no gap. But actually the opposite: the abundance of opportunity that was on the other side of me being brave enough to make those clothes, the kind of clothes that make women feel something.

How did your own experiences as a designer shape the values and aesthetics that underpin Temily?

My previous experience in the contemporary resortwear space taught me an incredible amount about what women really want to wear, what matters when it comes to both the process of make and craftsmanship itself – which is very much an internal, unseen world for the most part – and what the signatures and codes of my work were as a designer.

One of the core values of every single piece that makes the cut – metaphorically and literally – from our studio into women’s wardrobes and their lives is not just how it fits and moves on the wearer, but believe it or not, how it photographs when being worn. In a cultural moment where we want to document our lives in a less curated, edited way, but with more grit and ‘in the moment’ spontaneity, every single piece needs to look great when snapped on an iPhone.

Does it have a strong enough silhouette? Is the shape flattering from more than one angle? What does the colour do in different lights? These things all factor in. There’s got to be an ‘it’ factor to every single piece, no matter how monastic some of the silhouettes might first seem.

“[I felt my opportunity] lay within the abundance…that was on the other side of me being brave enough to make…the kind of clothes that make women feel something,”

It has to be the kind of thing you spot a woman wearing on the other side of the street and feel compelled to go over and say “I never do this, but where did you get that dress from?”. Or the kind of outfit you spy on a friend of a friend as you doomscroll through their summer holiday photos, then go on a deep-dive investigative mission to find it because though they didn’t tag it, you can’t stop thinking about it.

That’s the power of a woman designing through, and for, a women’s gaze. You can call it statementwear, but that label pigeonholes it in a way that implies it involves a lot of feathers or busyness. They are clothes that make people look twice. These are clothes you notice.

Another skill I honed in my previous resortwear design incarnation was the importance of house codes and signature silhouettes that are instantly identifiable. Once you know Temily’s, you can spot it across the room, without ever seeing a label or a tag. That’s another ultimate make-or-break decision maker when it comes to what makes it out into the real world.

The brand merges artisanal craftsmanship with innovation. What challenges and opportunities did you face bringing those two worlds together at launch?

I’m incredibly stubborn and determined when it comes to getting things done. Once I have an idea in my head of what I want to do - and I can really see it - I won’t stop working on it until it becomes a reality. No is just not an option, as all of my design team and makers will attest to, with varying levels of laughter, eye rolls and stories that attest to my absolute singular vision.

A great example is with Summer Bones. I saw it in my head more than 15 years ago. I had an inspiration reference image that reminded me of that idea pinned to my corkboard in Bali about a decade ago. Making it a reality was an exercise in tenacity though, one which involved many lessons in garment construction, from fabric treatment trials, to making custom trims (I mean, I made my own custom boning to get the exact width and flexibility needed to keep it both soft yet uphold the integrity of the triangular cut-out under the arm).

In between all of those [New York, ed.] Garment District adventures, I had several makers tell me it just couldn’t be done. In the end it tooks six months of trial and error, and two sets of incredibly patient makers who went on the – seemingly never-ending – mission with me to bring it to life, as well as multiple suppliers who worked on the tiny details, from the custom branded aglets to the delicate silk binding to the fusing and lining. I then sampled it not once or twice, but three times before I finally cracked the code. But I just wouldn’t give up.

The end result is deceptively simple - it’s like liquid and very pared-back - but a feat of quietly clever garment engineering. When we launched on Moda Operandi, it sold out overnight. I’m not joking when I say I cried with relief.

How did the relationship with Tomorrow London first take shape? How do you anticipate this “radical collaboration” to evolve?

I firmly believe that the people we are meant to do life with will always appear exactly at the right moment. I call it cosmic choreography – a phrase I coined which our fashion director, Olivia Buckingham, wants us to put on a t-shirt but I’m trying to think about how to do that in a chic way. Watch this space.

We source our cotton from Marrakesh. It is hand-loomed, not machine-made, on traditional foot-powered looms by a team of 40 weaving artisans in a zero waste atelier. The incredible duo behind it, Nicholas Minucciani and Randall Bachner, make it almost exclusively for their own brand, Marrakshi Life. It was Nicholas – who has become a dear friend of mine over the time we’ve worked together and who also works with Tomorrow – who first made the introduction.

What I find so compelling about Tomorrow, and in particular their pied-piper who both holds and leads their collective vision, Stefano Martinetto, is the way that they are very much fashion futurists. They don’t see scarcity, they see opportunity. They aren’t gatekeepers, but truly are radical collaborators. In my mind, the very definition of that is that through alignment of vision and values more things are possible. They bring talent together, have an appetite for risk, trust their instincts and act on them. That spirit – understanding how to work within the system yet not feeling confined by it – is a natural alignment with the way I approach work and life. We both say the quiet part out loud.

Tomorrow’s ability to bring some of the industry’s biggest heavyweights and icons together at the same table, sartorially speaking, with the most promising emerging talent is alchemical artistry. This is actually quite rare. While what they do is built on understanding the importance of the economics of fashion as a business. It’s the ‘secret sauce’ of having their own distinct point-of-view which is what sets them apart. In that sense, Temily’s future growth is in very good hands.

The luxury sector is becoming increasingly fragmented. What strategies are you employing to differentiate Temily amid shifting consumer values?

Cutting through the noise and setting a luxury brand apart from the crowd today – separate to heritage built on the legacy of previous storied generations, born in another time – is fundamentally hinged on its cultural relevance. That’s just a fact.

Temily is a brand that can meet the cultural moment. It’s actually not just something you can see, but something you can feel. It’s palpable. It’s not just the clothes, who’s wearing them, or where. Though this matters, it’s more nuanced than that. It’s the feeling of community. Of belonging. The frisson of discovery. The knowing that you’ve stumbled across something special. The awareness of something which is truly rarified; something made by human hands, with storied relevance. Craft over commodity. The placement of a piece in a particular moment in time.

I think that the most powerful strategy I can put in place is to put Temily into the hands and hearts of women with incredible lives to live, and then watch the way they walk through the world wearing them.

Sustainability and regeneration are central to your materials. How do you balance ethical sourcing with the demands of scale and luxury craftsmanship?

The word ‘sustainability’ should really be taken out of the fashion industry’s vocabulary when it comes to referencing goals for positive, lasting change. It’s a word that is now rooted in such virtue-signaling that it’s not just cringe, it’s wildly misleading. In its simplest form, sustainability is just the ability to keep doing something over and over. It doesn’t actually speak to impact.

The chasm of space between intention and impact is a moral quandary for the entire fashion industry. In the spirit of radical accountability, we must all look deeply at our processes and take a future-focused approach. Temily takes a 360-approach to impact minimisation. We are committed to ethical sourcing and work with artisans, makers and producers that share our values and vision. Traceability and transparency are at the heart of this.

We develop and sample in NYC’s fabled Garment District. The characters we've met, shared gifts with, cried with and learned from are the quiet, unsung heroes of our clothes.

“The chasm of space between intention and impact is a moral quandary for the entire fashion industry. In the spirit of radical accountability, we must all look deeply at our processes and take a future-focused approach,”

I visited our Chinese maker and sat with their seamstresses on the factory floor to perfect the gathering on a strap (spoiler: it had to be pinned onto a board before being sewn to make it even), neither of us knowing the other’s tongue but speaking through a shared language of clothes. We could call this ‘audited working conditions’, but really we all just piled into a car afterwards to find good coffee and talk about an ancient silk treating technique – which involves dying it and then burying it in the earth.

Our regenerated nylon is sourced from Italy and subject to compliance regulations stricter than a Swiss boarding school. Our metallic silk is custom-milled using just silk and metallized fibres to avoid the use of virgin polyester.

The other day I met with a maker from England to talk about custom milling a four-ply cotton gauze which I can picture in my head, even though it doesn’t yet exist. She works with Indian farmers who have found ways to grow rain-fed cotton, which is one of the most water-intensive crops in the world. We bonded over her story of buying a hemp farm to learn the entire process of plant to textile, eventually blending it with recycled cashmere to create a proprietary fabric for outerwear. Our cotton gauze is in motion, and it will be the second cotton we bring into the Temily world.

The single most impactful thing you can do to minimise harm though is to reduce waste. Knowing this, we offer repairs on all garments. Put a heel through the back of that gown? You can send it back to our atelier to replace the panel. We encourage our customers to hold onto their items, as we are creating a tech-powered path for future in-house resale.

We are aware that none of this is enough. Each season is an opportunity to deepen our awareness and apply those learnings. Where reality bites is, while we’d like to believe they do, people don’t buy clothes because of eco-credentials, however lofty or well-intentioned. They buy clothes that light them up. In that sense, the clothes have to do the talking. So all of these things have to be table stakes.

What does ‘next-generation luxury’ mean to you, particularly in the context of a post-pandemic, digitally-driven market?

In its simplest form, next-generation luxury is the ability to bridge two worlds which exist on a delicate axis.

One is about tapping into the true heart of what luxury is: things that are made by the hands and hearts of real humans. It’s honouring artisans rather than co-opting their ancestral arts heritage for quick hits; it’s collaborating with true creators rather than pumping out branded product for the sake of profit; it’s putting your hands in the dirt where the materials our clothes come from, creatively and literally.

At the other end of the sartorial see-saw is being able to tap into the power of technology to drive the industry towards a better future. Allowing us greater traceability and supply chain transparency. Minimising wastage through software which plans, cuts and manages every single piece of material required to make a garment. The type of fabric engineering that textile technologists – such as the ‘Godfather of Premium Denim’ Adriano Goldschmied – are doing in their field. It’s The LVMH Innovation Award nominees and winners – who all deserve more attention, resources and recognition than they perhaps get.

“[One world] is about tapping into the true heart of what luxury is: things that are made by the hands and hearts of real humans,”

Being grounded in artisanal practices, having an ethical and moral compass which is straight as an arrow, and embracing a tech-powered future is no easy task. But that’s where the answer lies.

Many Resortwear brands rely heavily on wholesale or DTC models. How do you envision Temily's approach to channel diversification?

A brand’s ability to not just grow but to sustain healthy growth is rooted in an omni-channel approach. Each channel is interwoven in each other.

A friend of mine who works as a luxury brand consultant underlined that point the other day when she told me that one of the most successful luxury brands we all know and covet finds that when they open a bricks-and-mortar retail store their e-commerce sales in that location surge. Their audience tries clothes in-store, and perhaps buys on the spot, or they don’t. More importantly, it offers their customers an opportunity to experience their brandworld. To feel inspired by their point of view, their taste, their curation.

On a more micro level, I think there’s a pivot towards small community events for friends and fans such as trunk shows, salons and intimate presentations where women have the opportunity to touch fabrics, try things on and get one-on-one guidance with looks, talk about what works for their bodies, their style, their wardrobes and their lives. It’s the VIP personal stylist experience, rebranded and served up for real customers, not just the industry’s appointed tastemakers.

Tomorrow’s Martinetto described Temily as a ‘universe’. What does this look like in your long-term creative roadmap?

The Temily brandworld is incredibly intentional.

From custom-created front-opening bra clasps made in Milan to custom-milled fabrics and custom-dyed colour palettes that go through months of iterations in our development department; through to envisaging every detail from Japanese-made bible paper wrapped cheese wedges that we gifted to departing guests at our NYC launch with Moda Operandi, the immaculate attention to detail shines through in every touchpoint of Temily.

“I see the work as sacred and this permeates every single aspect of what is created, energetically, creatively and physically,”

It is deliberately monastic, pared back, ceremonial. You walk into our downtown NYC studio or our Paris showroom with Tomorrow and you’ll hear Gregorian chanting echoing through the rooms. There is an altar at the foot of our shared work bench. I see the work as sacred and this permeates every single aspect of what is created; energetically, creatively and physically.

In more material terms, in the year before launch, I’ve also quietly worked away creating the visual brandworld – from packaging to hardware and monograms through to art direction and brand codes – with one of the most talented brand identity agencies I’ve ever had the pleasure of crossing paths with: Work By Holiday. Remember that name. Those boys are the real deal.

Are you exploring adjacent categories beyond Resortwear or considering other forms of collaboration in the near term?

We have three to four categories lined up to roll out over the next two years. We have partnered with incredible best-in-class creatives that have documented commercial success in each of their categories to co-create with us as we get each one started. This embodies our spirit of radical collaboration; that more things are possible together.

While I have a crystal clear vision of Temily’s aesthetic and a clear brand architecture, which is just coming into view as we move forward into our second season, I love seeing other creatives interpret and apply that brand DNA across new materials in their own unique ways.

“We have three to four categories lined up to roll out over the next to years,”

The first two will be denim and sunglasses. I’m absolutely pinch-me excited about our partners on both. Other than sharing that, I’m a big believer in just quietly creating something and then sharing it once it’s a real, living, breathing thing. So, while we are only just publicly moving into our second season and have just been live for nine months, trust that behind the scenes, things are happening.

As you continue to expand, how will you ensure Temily stays rooted in its founding ethos?

The founding ethos is to follow the sound of the drum that beats in all of us. To live a life of absolute intention and devotion; both in the celestial and terrestrial worlds.

As above, so below. Every day I bow down with the same prayer: I am listening.