Great addition to Jay Street: The made-in-NYC fashion designer Marina Cortbawi and her company Merlette have taken the space at 16 Jay that was TRNK (thanks to J. for the heads up). This is a showroom, not a retail store — they relocated from Brooklyn to make it easier for fashion buyers to swing through. Later in the year they will be open to the public by private appointment.

(That’s her design team, Jenna Michel, Melanie Gordon and Morgan Bilodeau, modeling above, and her husband, Ivo Lamers, and interior designer Paul Somers in the doorway below.)

Cortbawi, who was raised in Sydney, was international sales manager for Oscar de la Renta and director of international sales at Carolina Herrera when she recognized a market gap: her customers were covered on evening wear, but wanted everyday clothes that were also suited to travel. She enrolled at Central St. Martins and the London College of Fashion for fashion design and founded Merlette in 2016.

“I know a lot of people who’ve started a brand based on their own style, but I was really looking out for the customers that I knew having worked at Oscar and Carolina,” she told Marie Claire in an interview in 2021. “I design for freedom — which I also happened to be craving in my own life. If you saw me in my previous jobs, I’d be wearing tight pencil skirts and high-heeled Manolo Blahniks, but not anymore.”

“I also love the duality between masculine and feminine; with Merlette, there are free-flowing silhouettes and feminine tiers, but clean lines as well.”

The company produces for two seasons a year and has distributors and buyers around the world, but especially in Korea and Japan, where the line is especially popular. They also sell direct-to-consumer on their website and have a new store in Montecito, Cali. Their former studio was in Williamsburg, and the young family lived in Brooklyn till recently; they just moved to Santa Barbara.

The lines are fashioned exclusively from natural fibers: denim, cotton jersey, voile, twill. “Everything is easy to wear,” said Lamers, “and you can just pull it out of your suitcase and go.”