Introduction
Laura Kim studied fashion design at Pratt Institute, graduating with a BFA in 2004 after internships that included TSE Cashmere, Donna Karan and Oscar de la Renta. She began interning at Oscar de la Renta in 2003, joined full-time in 2004 and eventually rose to Design Director, overseeing collection development across ready-to-wear, fabric, knitwear and accessories. After Oscar de la Renta’s death in 2014, Kim helped carry the studio through its immediate transition and presented the house’s Pre-Fall 2015 collection to buyers and press.
Kim left Oscar de la Renta in 2015 and founded Monse with Fernando Garcia, whom she had met in the house’s studio after his arrival in 2009. Monse debuted that September with Spring 2016, building an independent identity from reconstructed shirting, menswear fabrics and relaxed evening dressing. Alongside the new company, Kim briefly consulted for Carolina Herrera and entered senior design leadership there in 2016 before leaving during the summer.
On 2 September 2016 Kim and Garcia returned to Oscar de la Renta as co-creative directors while continuing to lead Monse. The dual-house arrangement lasted until February 2026 and encompassed nearly a decade of parallel work across two distinct fashion systems. Kim now works full-time on Monse, where her role spans collection design, business attention, direct client relationships and the house’s increasingly feminine use of lace, corsetry, evening fabrics and reconstructed tailoring.
Design ethos
Kim’s design practice combines exacting studio discipline with a fascination for disrupting familiar construction. At Monse, a shirt collar, trouser waistband or tailored lapel becomes a movable component: it can be doubled, twisted, dropped, exposed or transferred to another garment. Her long experience inside a formal luxury studio gives those interventions a strong technical base, allowing apparent dislocation to remain controlled in cut and finish.
Material and proportion provide a second axis. Crisp poplin, pinstripe wool, denim, lace, leather and evening fabrics are placed in deliberately unstable relationships, with hard tailoring meeting drape or utilitarian pieces crossing into formal dressing. The collections often preserve enough of the source garment to remain immediately recognisable while changing how it sits on the body.
Since the end of the Oscar de la Renta mandate, Kim has spoken more openly about femininity inside Monse. Softer colour, lace, corsetry and eveningwear now sit closer to the core of the brand, while stacked waistbands, reconstructed shirts and asymmetric tailoring continue to anchor the work. The shift expands the emotional range of the clothes without severing the construction logic established at Monse’s launch.
Disclaimer
Career history
2026
Kim and Garcia completed their Oscar de la Renta creative work in February 2026 and moved to Monse as their sole principal fashion focus. The new phase concentrates their design attention around one house and coincides with direct retail growth, closer client contact and an expanded feminine and eveningwear vocabulary.
2025
Monse released a four-item Wicked: For Good capsule in November 2025. The project connected the brand’s fashion vocabulary with a film property through a compact retail collaboration.
2025
Monse reworked Sperry’s Authentic Original boat shoe into platform-lug and translucent-jelly forms for its Spring/Summer 2026 runway. The collaboration reached retail in March 2026 and became the label’s clearest footwear-category expansion to date.
2025
Monse designed the bright-blue flight suits worn by the full six-person Blue Origin NS-31 crew on 14 April 2025, with Lauren Sánchez participating in the design context. The flame-resistant stretch-neoprene uniforms were created for a suborbital mission and extended Monse’s uniform language into a functional special project.
2025
Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia announced their departure from Oscar de la Renta on 17 September 2025, with Fall 2026 set as their final main season. Their atelier work ended in February 2026, closing the creative mandate while some shareholder and board-level connection to the company continued.
2025
Monse opened its first permanent retail space at 15 Rivington Street in New York by early May 2025. The boutique added direct selling, private fittings, custom requests and VIC services to a business that still maintained significant wholesale distribution.
2024
SHEIN X MONSE combined a mass-market capsule with a mentorship programme led by Kim and Garcia for five independent designers. The project expanded Monse’s collaboration model into teaching and high-volume retail while remaining separate from the house’s core collection structure.
2022
The Equinox collaboration translated Monse’s growing athletic vocabulary into performance-oriented bra tops, cropped garments and cutout leggings. It extended an existing collection direction into a dedicated capsule without creating a permanent activewear line.
2021
The Fall 2021 Monse event was staged alongside the HBO Max Gossip Girl premiere and linked the runway to screen costume culture, live streaming and a short pre-order window. It marked the brand’s return to a physical fashion event after the pandemic presentation reset.
2020
Pandemic disruption changed Monse’s calendar, sales timing and material use across several seasons. Existing Fall 2020 stock was sold through a live rooftop event, Resort 2021 moved online, later public images were delayed closer to retail, and deadstock or existing fabrics became more important as direct e-commerce grew.
2020
Monse worked with Paris footwear brand Both on Gao boots for Fall 2020. The project brought the label’s hybrid construction language into footwear several years before its later Sperry collaboration.
2017
Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia designed costumes with choreographer Lauren Lovette for the New York City Ballet work Not Our Fate. The project carried Monse’s lacing, monochrome palette and garment construction into clothing designed for movement on stage.
2016
Laura Kim returned to Oscar de la Renta as co-creative director on 2 September 2016 and remained in the role until February 2026. The mandate ran alongside Monse and ended after the house’s Pre-Fall and Fall 2026 work was completed.
2016
Oscar de la Renta appointed Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia co-creative directors on 2 September 2016. They directed the house in parallel with Monse until February 2026, maintaining two separate collection systems and creative identities.
2016
Monse entered a decade-long dual-house period when Kim and Garcia returned to Oscar de la Renta in September 2016. Oscar supplied operational support and held a reported financial interest in Monse, while Monse retained separate collections, clients, leadership and an independent design identity.
2015
Laura Kim has remained a principal creative author of Monse since its foundation. Her work links the debut reconstruction of shirting and tailoring to the current mix of lace, corsetry, eveningwear, sportswear and direct client-focused design.
2015
Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia established Monse in New York in 2015 after leaving Oscar de la Renta. The company developed through friends-and-family financing, a small founder-led studio and early wholesale relationships before its public runway debut in September.
2015
Laura Kim began consulting for Carolina Herrera in October 2015 and moved into a full-time senior design role at the end of February 2016. She resigned in July and ceased practical studio attendance by late August; the proposed Creative Director transition was never completed.
2003
Laura Kim entered Oscar de la Renta as an intern in 2003 and joined full-time in 2004. Over the following decade she rose to Design Director, supervising broad studio development across ready-to-wear, fabric, knitwear and accessories before leaving in 2015.
You’re in
When the archive opens, you’ll be among the first to know.
That’s all.
