Dear Collett,
Long before I became the founder of Collett, I knew I wanted to live a life of luxury. It took a while for me to get there and really feel like I had made it. It was because I was focusing on the wrong things.
The first time I felt like I had been exposed to luxury was when I was able to purchase my very first Kate Spade handbag. I was 24 years old, in my first sales job, and I had a big commission check so I went straight to Saks to get that bag. I treasured that bag. I had earned it, and I carried it proudly.
Over the years I continued to focus on brands that made me feel a certain way. I was investing in things I would have forever. They felt timeless. They felt like quality. What I was actually chasing was a feeling I couldn’t name yet. I would find myself running my fingers over the leather, checking the seams, watching how it sat on my shoulder. It wasn’t the logo that kept me coming back. It was that feeling.
It took me two decades to notice the pattern. The word luxury had been stretched so thin around me that I nearly missed what I was actually responding to. It sits on hangtags, in ad copy, in brand names that have never once been near a pattern room. Nearly every apparel brand claims it now. Almost none of them define it. I didn’t define it either, not for a long time. I just kept upgrading logos and hoping the feeling would get bigger with them. It never did. The feeling was never about the logo. It was about the leather, the seams, the way a strap sat across my shoulder.
That is the kind of luxury we are designing at Collett.
Not a logo. A seam finished the same way on the inside as it is on the outside — the part no one else will ever see, done right anyway. Fabric that moves with a swing instead of fighting it. A hem that still sits exactly where it should after twenty washes, not two. A waistband tested against how a body actually moves, not just how it looks flat on a table.
These are decisions made in the pattern room, months before anyone sees the piece, and almost no one will ever consciously notice them — which is exactly the point. The absence of a problem is not something a customer thanks a brand for. It is something she simply gets to keep experiencing, day after day, without knowing why it feels easy.
This is why Collett talks about Considered Design rather than luxury as a category. Considered Design means every element in a piece serves a purpose. Nothing is added because it looks expensive. Nothing is left unresolved because it was inconvenient to fix. A brass button is placed where it will actually be touched. A lining is chosen for how it feels against skin over four hours of movement, not because it photographs well in a flat lay.
None of this is about price. A high price tag can be attached to a poorly constructed garment as easily as a well-made one — arguably more easily, since price is the cheapest way to imply quality without doing the work quality actually requires. I know that firsthand. I paid full price for logos more than once before I understood what I was actually chasing.
It’s a piece built to leave the course with you. Off the ninth green and into lunch, into a meeting, onto a flight home, without ever having to think about what you’re wearing. That’s the whole point. The clothes should disappear into your day, not compete with it. No adjusting a hem between holes. No pulling a waistband back into place after sitting down at lunch. No second-guessing whether an outfit reads as intentional in a boardroom you walked into straight from a tee time.
The feeling of composure without effort is what Collett is actually building toward. The Sporting Class does not dress to prove anything. She dresses so she can stop thinking about her clothing and get back to whatever she came to do.
So when I say Collett is a luxury brand, I do not mean the price reflects a logo’s worth. I mean every visible detail earned its place through a decision made in service of how you move, how you feel, and how you carry yourself — not how loudly the garment announces itself. That kind of luxury isn’t decided at the price tag. It’s decided months before anyone sees the piece, in the difference between something that looks composed and something that actually holds its composure through a full round, a full day, a full life.
✦ ✦ ✦
I chased that feeling for twenty years in a handbag. Now I get to build it into a golf skirt.
✦ ✦ ✦
Luxury golf clothing happens when details matter.
-Beth
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