Ester Manas

Ester Manas was founded in 2017 in Brussels by Ester Manas and Balthazar Delepierre, two graduates of Belgium's La Cambre design school. The brand's foundational thesis was unique among contemporary designer brands: build a couture-level house specifically around inclusive sizing — every silhouette engineered to fit across the size 36 to 52 range, with no separate plus-size category, and no garment that requires different patterning for larger sizes. The Ester Manas vocabulary settled around several signatures: the wrap-and-tie dress (the brand's defining product, engineered with adjustable construction so it fits multiple bodies), draped jersey separates, deconstructed denim with internal tie-string adjustment, and a recurring use of stretch-resilient knit constructions that follow the body rather than constrain it. The brand has shown at Paris Fashion Week and won the LVMH Prize semi-finalist position in 2020. The brand is independent and operates from a small Brussels studio. Production is largely Italian. Distribution is through SSENSE, Net-a-Porter, MATCHES, Dover Street Market, and a curated set of luxury retailers — virtually all of which carry the brand's full size range, an unusual practice for the high-fashion sector. Manas and Delepierre remain creative directors. Few designers have so completely committed to engineering inclusive sizing as a core design constraint rather than a post-hoc afterthought.