When Jesse Finkelstein and Katie King started JF & Son (the name goes way back to Jesse’s great-great-grandfather’s company), they weren’t producing clothes—they were creating mind-blowing textiles. “We started just making swatches with embroidery or beading that we  shopped around. Designers would pick out things and either purchase them for inspiration or buy yardage,” explains Jesse. From the get-go, the company had its own production facilities, first in Delhi, then in Shanghai, and, coming soon, in the U.S. of A—in a town in Georgia that once had Jockey plants.

When Jesse and Katie  decided to start making their own clothes, the systems were already in place, but that didn’t mean the garment creation went off without a hitch. “We forgot to put zippers in,” says Katie, who studied costume design as an undergrad and then went back to Parsons to focus on fashion design. Now that they’ve found their groove, they’ve grown a downtown following that appreciates their just-embellished-enough aesthetic and the fact that they’re constantly making new things. “I love beading on swatches, but I don’t necessarily love beading on clothing,” Jesse says. “It has to be really good for us to like it. It can’t just be sparkly.”

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