Women's Fashion Brands A

Welcome to the A section of the Women's Fashion Brands directory. In this area of the fashion brand directory you will find women's fashion brands from leading apparel companies and fashion designers that begin with the letter A: 13 brand profiles in all, gathered in the grid below. When browsing this directory you will find some of the most stylish clothing and hottest fashion labels in the world of ladies fashion - and in this letter, an unusually complete cross-section of what a women's brand can be.

If you know of an important women's fashion brand that begins with the letter A and is not listed in this section, please let us know. And if you prefer to search by clothing category rather than by a specific clothing brand, the Clothes Guide linked from this page organises the same wardrobe by garment instead of by name.

Thirteen Brands, Six Kinds of Fashion Business

The A letter divides naturally. There are the American casual giants: Abercrombie & Fitch, selling near-luxury casual luxury from New Albany, Ohio, and American Apparel, the Los Angeles basics manufacturer whose 2017 closure and $88 million Gildan purchase this directory records in full. There is sport: adidas, the Badge of Sport, with its women's performance range and its pages lifestyle line. And there is streetwear's first wave: Akademiks, exploded onto the scene in 1999 at the intersection of art, music and fashion, and Apple Bottoms, Nelly's 2003 denim label built around curves and an apple pocket.

The designer tier is just as varied. Alexander McQueen carries the letter's couture weight - Givenchy's former chief designer, 36 London collections, the shipwreck and chess-game shows - while Anna Sui works the researcher's method, Victorian cowboys to Finnish prints, and Agatha Ruiz de la Prada paints in saturated colour from Madrid. Alice + Olivia represents the contemporary tier, Stacey Bendet's New York label launched at Barneys in 2002, and Antik Batik the artisan tier, Gabriella Cortese's Paris label built on bandhani, batik and embroidery hours.

Finally, the American classics: Albert Nipon, whose ultra-feminine dresses reached $60 million in 1984 sales before the company's fall and sale to Leslie Fay; Ann Taylor, begun in 1954 with a dress and a dream in New Haven; and Anne Klein, the sportswear pioneer's label, still arguing that versatility is a wardrobe's core. Read together, the 13 profiles are a short history of the women's fashion business itself - sport, street, contemporary, couture, craft and classics, all filed under one letter.

The A pages point readers onward - to company profiles in the names directory, to brand news and financial pages, to the women's fashion brands directory pages 2 and 3, to the Fashion Designer Directory and the other letters of this directory from B to Z - those editorial links are carried in the pages here, woven into the copy or listed under More to Explore. The letter grid below carries the 13 profiles in A-Z order, and the alphabet bar above carries the other letters of the women's brands directory.

Every profile in this letter follows the brands rule for this directory: the facts are the brands' facts - founding years, designers, sales figures, closures and purchases as stated - with shopping guidance built around them and nothing invented in between. Start with the name you came for, or read the letter whole: A is a good letter to browse, because almost every way of selling women clothes is represented in it exactly once.