In celebration of our summer theme, Playtime Fest, press play on “I Wonder” as you read this article!

When it comes to brands with a minimalist aesthetic, there can be their own niche challenges. They have to find ways to remain fresh and relevant in the fast-paced kid’s market that often finds itself full of prints and seasonal colors. For 15 years now, that’s precisely what Gray Label has been doing. They have been and continue to prove the strength of their unique concept and commitment to quality essentials.

As the brand celebrates this milestone, we wanted to slow down and speak with its Founder and Creative Director, Emily Gray, to learn more about how it all started and what we can look forward to over the next 15 years of Gray Label. Join us as we immerse ourselves in the calming, cool universe of Gray Label!

Emily, Founder & Creative Director of Gray Label, with her three children

After becoming a mother in 2011, Emily Gray found it challenging to find the kind of children’s clothing she was looking for. She was drawn to pieces that were simple, comfortable, beautifully made, and easy to combine. She wanted clothes that didn’t shout, that allowed children to be children. At the time, the children’s fashion market was full of prints, colors, and decoration. Emily began to feel that there was room for something calmer and more timeless in it, and that was the beginning of Gray Label.

Gray Label has been built around essential pieces in organic fabrics. Minimal in design and calm in tone, their collections are made to be worn, loved, and passed on. They don’t design with one season, one gender, or one child in mind, but rather create pieces that belong in the everyday life of all children. There is a double meaning behind the brand’s name. It comes from Emily’s own last name, but it also reflects the feeling of the brand. Gray is neither loud nor extreme. It lies between black and white. For Emily, that has always felt very close to the essence of the brand: balanced, understated, pure.

Minimalist essentials offer something incredibly versatile because they are easy to wear, easy to combine, and last beyond trends. They provide a calmness to children’s wardrobes. As a parent herself, Emily knows they don’t need endless options. Families need the right pieces made well. There is also a sustainable aspect to simplicity. When a piece is not tied to a print, a theme, or a specific season, it has a much longer life. It can move from one child to another, from one family to the next.

Though Gray Label is centered around a minimalist aesthetic, it has never been about making things plain. Emily wanted to remove what was unnecessary so that the quality, fit, and feeling could take center stage. For her, children are already so full of life, imagination, and expression, and their clothes don’t need to compete with that. She wanted to create pieces that support them, rather than define them.

When Gray Label launched in 2011, it was very quiet in comparison to what else was prevalent in the children’s market. Made with organic cotton and soft tones, it had no clear gender division and very few prints. Some people immediately connected with it, especially parents who wanted something more considered and less trend-driven for their children. Others needed time to understand that children’s clothing could be minimal while still feeling warm, playful, and beautiful.

Since then, there has been a lot of change in the kid’s market. Sustainability has become much more visible, and even expected. Parents are more conscious about what they buy, where it comes from, and how long it will last. At the same time, the word “sustainability” is used sometimes too loosely now. That makes it harder, but also more important, for brands like Gray Label to be specific and honest about their practices.

They’ve began to speak about sustainability with more clarity, and grown even more conscious of their role. Not only is Gray Label a brand that produces clothing, but it is also helping to shape a different way of consuming. For them, sustainability isn’t just about using organic cotton. It’s also about making fewer, better pieces, and designing clothes that last. This has been at the brand’s foundation since the beginning. Now, the world has started to move closer to what they’ve always believed in.

When it comes to the design process, every Gray Label collection starts with children’s everyday life. They ask themselves questions like what do children actually wear? What do parents reach for again and again? Which pieces are missing and which can be improved?

The foundation of Gray Label is their Essentials collection. These are the pieces that are always there, forming the core of children’s wardrobes. They then design two small seasonal collections per year that place the Essentials in a new light. Each seasonal collection is usually built around two new colors. These colors set the tone and bring a fresh feeling to the collection, while the silhouettes and overall language remain true to the brand.

Color is one of the most important parts of Gray Label. Because the brand’s shapes are minimal, color has to carry a lot of the emotion. Colors are never chosen simply for being fashionable. They have to feel right within the full palette and work with what is already there. They have to be wearable for boys and girls, babies and older kids, and across different seasons.

Rather than creating big seasonal themes in a traditional way, Gray Label creates seasonal moods that live within its universe. Their collections are then brought to life by their long term production partners in Turkey and Portugal. These partners understand the quality, softnesses, and simplicity they are looking for.

As the Founder and Creative Director, Emily acts as a gatekeeper. She is mostly responsible for creation, design, keeping the team aligned, and, most importantly, protecting the brand’s identity. She ensures everything they do still feels true to who they are.

Clothing has always been Gray Label’s foundation, but over time they’ve naturally expanded into different product categories. Each addition has made sense within the daily life of children, and within Gray Label’s world. They started to look at other pieces that complete a child’s wardrobe, such as underwear. This category is very close to their essentials: its simple, intimate, worn every day, and needs to feel right against the skin. They introduced underwear into their collection before, and are bringing it back next year in a way that is aligned with where the brand is today.

In 2014, Emily moved the office out of her own house into a building across the street, where they also opened a small shop. Named Gray Label Atelier, it was very intimate, almost like an extension of the studio. This space gave people the chance to come in, feel the fabrics, see the colors, and experience the brand in real life.

As Gray Label grew, they had to separate the office from the store. In 2019, they opened a shop in the heart of Amsterdam’s 9 Streets, one of the city’s most beautiful shopping areas.

This became a very important step for the brand. Before then, most people discovered Gray Label through wholesale or online. The store provided a place where local customers and international visitors could directly discover it. This allowed people to understand the calmness of the collection, to see how the colors work together, and to connect with the brand in a more personal way. This also gave Gray Label direct contact with their customers, which is incredibly valuable. They learn a lot from seeing what people touch, what they ask for, what they come back for, and how they build a wardrobe for their children.

The store also carries a curated selection of products that naturally fit within their universe. This is made up of footwear, accessories, and selected items from other brands that share Gray Label’s sense of quality, simplicity, and care.

For Emily, the Gray Label store is not just a point of sale – it’s a physical expression of the brand itself.

Playtime has been an important part of Gray Label’s journey, especially in terms of their international wholesale business. Trade shows are very different from selling online or through a showroom. They offer the opportunity to meet people in person. Buyers can touch the fabrics, see the colors, understand the collection, and feel the brand. For Gray Label, this physical experience is important.

Playtime has always attracted a strong international audience, which has helped Gray Label connect with beautiful stores around the world. It is also a place where they can get a sense of the market. Emily and her team see what is happening, speak with buyers, and hear what they are looking for.

The Gray Label Team at Playtime Paris

As the brand celebrates 15 years, Emily reflects on how it and the market have evolved. The kid’s market has changed a lot since she started Gray Label. Today there are so many more brands, more drops, and more digital content. While this can be exciting, it also creates a lot of noise. As the market keeps moving faster, Emily believes even more in slowing down.

Emily finds that today Gray Label feels more mature. Not louder, but rather more grounded. They’ve opened a store, the collections have expanded, they’ve built a wholesale network, and reached families in many different countries, all while maintaining the brand’s essence. Their team remains quite small and close, with eleven people divided into sales, e-commerce, marketing, finance, and production, in addition to the four who work in their store.

When she thinks about Gray Label’s next 15 years, Emily has many new dreams for the brand. She would love to open stores in other key cities so more people can step into Gray Label’s world and experience its calmness in real life. She would also like to grow further in the United States, where she sees potential. Having its own foundation is another dream she has. Gray Label has never been about putting children into boxes, so something related to the mental resilience of young people and children would connect to what the brand has always stood for.

Emily wants the next 15 years to be about meaningful growth, and to focus more on Gray Label as a brand beyond age. This is already part of it, but she wants to take it further in how they tell the story. Gray Label isn’t just for babies or children, but for the whole family to live together in Gray.

Thank you so much to Emily for sharing the beautiful story of Gray Label with us! They will host an event for their 15 year milestone this October. It will be an opportunity for bringing people together to celebrate Gray Label’s world and open the next chapter by showing where the brand is going.

Buyers can get their pass here to meet Emily and discover Gray Label’s latest collection at Playtime Paris June 27-29.

If you want to dive deeper into other brands’ stories, check out more features here.

All images courtesy of Gray Label