There wasn’t necessarily a shortage of designers pumping out square-toe black kitten heels in 2019. But according to requests flooding luxury sourcer-cum-trend-expert Gab Waller’s inbox that year, the only label making them was Swedish brand Toteme.
Clients couldn’t stop asking for Toteme’s heels, and eventually, its collarless wool coats with attached matching scarves and its slouchy leather clutches with a T-shaped lock. They were in just as much high demand as Chanel, Prada, and Saint Laurent. As Waller shopped Toteme for her clients, she fell in love with it herself. Its pieces embodied a holy trinity of fashion adjectives for Waller: “elegant, sophisticated, and polished,” she says, in its clean-cut trousers and anonymously nice leather bags and endless variations on cozily beige sweaters. Everything looks nice, but there’s still a sense that it can be worn in real life. Now, “There is one cutout ribbed knit top from Toteme that I'm truly not exaggerating when I say it is in my top 10 worn pieces in my wardrobe,” she tells me.
