One Woman Shows
They open the laptop before coffee. They pack boxes after dinner. They answer the kind email and the rude one. They make the thing, market the thing, ship the thing. They do it all.
Vali
Solo brands carry a clear fingerprint: one vision, one pair of hands, one gut making the calls. They feel like a person—an extension of their character. Over the past year, we’ve met many solo founders. Here are some of their stories.
Anna Rosa — Anna Rosa Liesenfeld
A textbook example of “small by design” is Anna Rosa’s label, which bears her full name. Her friends loved the bracelets she made in her free time, so she started selling them at a local market—the response convinced her to turn the hobby into a brand. Within minutes of talking with her, I could tell she ran on pure passion—her energy was infectious. She walked me through her creative process, what she’d learned, and the ups and downs of her journey as a small-business founder.
Then came a curveball: she was sued for copyright infringement after using the Smiley motif in one bracelet. Like me, she’d assumed no one actually owns a symbol so omnipresent. By then she had already ordered a batch of pearls with the motif—suddenly unusable. Instead of quitting, she experimented with the sad-face emoji and has since shifted her focus to other details in her designs. :)
Eliza — REH
Eliza is a designer working at the intersection of craftsmanship and industrial production. Her brand, REH, has taken shape slowly—by design. No rush—she wanted to get things right from the beginning. It took her years to establish two distinct production lines: one for clothing and one for stoneware. From our conversation, it was clear she doesn’t just want to design pretty things. She follows a holistic approach that goes beyond design. What happens between the first sketch and the final delivery matters just as much.
Beata — aporeei
Beata Modrzyńska designs at her own pace. Trained at HEAD – Genève and based in Warsaw, she founded her label in 2019 and runs it as a slow, made-to-order practice: each piece takes about 13 days to come to life—cut, sewn, finished, and sent. Her signature is unmistakable: clean cutouts, curved lines, and soft, biomorphic shapes. She works with what already exists—about half of her materials are upcycled or deadstock—and adapts each design to the fabrics at hand. In her experimental upcycling line, she starts with used tablecloths, old garments, and leftover cloth to create pieces whose construction openly reveals the act of reclamation. The familiar is organically deconstructed; recurring curves become holes, ornaments, and practical finishes. Production takes place in Switzerland and Poland so she can stay close to the process and quality. Her stance is clear in her own words: “It’s not about being fast but about acting consciously all the way through. Good things take time—so how about slowing down a bit?”
Viktoria — Studio ORÁ
Meet Viktoria, a former stage designer turned ceramic artist. Her pieces are playful takes on everyday objects—think a salt shaker shaped like a little cowboy boot or a vase that smiles when you catch it at the right angle. In her small, water-powered studio just outside Vienna, Viktoria creates unique ceramics that blur the line between homeware and art. Nothing could stop her passion until life did. Now she’s on maternity leave, so releases are postponed for now. You don’t scale brands like this and why would you? This is the brand: Studio ORÁ – beautiful everyday objects (available when life allows it).
