Studio Nicholson at W Department

Studio Nicholson was founded in London in 2010 by Nick Wakeman, who trained in textile design at Chelsea School of Art and had already built one label and sold it to a Japanese group before she started this one. The name is her mother’s mother’s. Her own account of it is short: “Nicholson was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, she was a formidable and impeccably dressed woman.” The first collection came out of Wakeman’s own wardrobe, which for years had been men’s shirts, jeans, and jackets altered to fit her. Menswear followed in 2017, and the two sides of the house now sell in roughly equal measure.

The method is fabric first. Wakeman designs cloth with the mills rather than choosing from what they offer, and she has put the balance at roughly four fifths Italian and one fifth Japanese. A garment is fitted four or five times before it is allowed into a collection. What comes out of that discipline is a small vocabulary used over and over: volume held by the cut instead of by the body, wide and high-waisted trousers, clean boxy denim, outerwear drawn the way a building is drawn. She takes as much from architecture and from concrete, marble, and stone as from anything in clothing, which is visible in the palette long before it is visible anywhere else.

Wakeman’s own line for what she does is that she likes clothing, not fashion, and that she never wants fuss. It has produced a house that behaves unusually for a London one. Japan came first and stayed central. There are now stores in East Asia as well as at home. Bags arrived only in 2024, and the first Paris show was in 2026, which for a label of this age is a very late entrance and reads as deliberate.

Studio Nicholson at W Department

We hold the Studio Nicholson pieces: the Doublet bag in black palmellato leather and in clay suede, the Minos trouser in coated linen, the Dash jacket in unlined cow suede, the Achille dress in a Japanese typewriter cotton, the Sonny trouser in cotton and linen, and the Votan in microrib lyocell. The clothes are cut on women’s sizing, the Sonny is unisex, and the Doublet is a bag.

The trousers are the reason for the selection. A wide, high-waisted trouser is what this house is for, and the two we took answer the same question in two different cloths: one coated so that it holds a line all day, one blended so that it never needed to. The house sizes in UK numbers, except the Sonny, which is sized Small and X-Small. That is a separate run and not a translation of the other one, so call us if you are choosing between pieces.

Continue Exploring

All Studio Nicholson. Trousers, outerwear, a dress, and the Doublet bag.
Trousers at W Department. Every trouser we carry, across the roster.
The Fabric Care Guide. How to keep suede, coated cloth, linen, and lyocell.
How to Build a Wardrobe. Our writing on building slowly rather than seasonally.
Lemaire. Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran’s Paris house, also carried at W Department.
The Library. Our writing on the houses we buy, plus the monthly playlist.
Visit W Department. 54½ Lincoln Avenue on The Plaza, open daily, 11 to 5.