A picture showing a shibori silk dress and a cotton velvet jumpsuit at the new Toast store in the NoLIta neighborhood of New York. Photo: The New York Times
At the end of last year, the lifestyle brand Toast quietly opened its second store in the US on Elizabeth Street in New York’s NoLIta neighbourhood.
Suzie De Rohan Willner, its CEO and an unassuming and warm presence, had flown in from London opening week.
Standing by the newly installed store shelves, with glasses and close-cropped hair, she could easily be mistaken for a Toast customer. She also likes to wear Toast’s clothes, which are utilitarian and no-nonsense.
On the nearby racks hung smock dresses in earthy colors called basalt and scarab, barrel-leg ecru denim trousers and seaweed green hooded wax-cotton parkas.
“I always think that when you’re sitting in a concept store, you should be able to identify a brand from a distance, just by the colours and the silhouettes,” De Rohan Willner said.
“With Toast, I think you can do that by our colours that are inspired by nature, as well as the pops of colour that bring it all to life, as well as the craft pieces.”
Evidence of her vision was in practically every element of the space, including its hand-thrown stoneware mugs and its repair station, where customers can bring old Toast pieces to be mended free of charge.
De Rohan Willner – who previously was CEO of FitFlop, and has worked for brands such as Levi Strauss, Timberland, Dockers and Puma – joined Toast in 2015.
She slowly put into motion a plan to revitalise the fashion brand, which, at the time, one fashion writer for The Times of London described as “a bit hippy” and “too expensive”.
“With clothes that are loose-fitting and comfortable, there’s always a danger,” said Rosie McKissock, the brand director of Toast.
“We went back to basics,” De Rohan Willner said. “It’s always a joy to be able to do that, right? Just to say, ‘Let’s pare it all back.’”
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Toast’s founding ethos was strong. It was started in 1997 by two archaeologists, Jessica and Jamie Seaton, as a mail-order business out of their farmhouse in West Wales. They initially offered just nightwear and loungewear.
“A piece of toast is a very humble thing,” Jessica Seaton once explained in an interview with The Modern House.
But their romantic, hippie aesthetic – what today might be labelled cottagecore, with a touch of bohemian chic – caught on quickly. Catalogues from the brand’s heyday in the early 2000s feature wholesome-looking models in “saree apron trousers”, “kurta dresses” and Uggs.
Kate Berry, a creative consultant and editor-at-large for Domino, hosted a breakfast for the opening of Toast’s Brooklyn, New York, store on Atlantic Avenue last year. She remembered well the power the brand had early on and how it held weight in certain circles for its rustic style.
“When I worked at Martha Stewart in 2007, every art director had Toast catalogue images on their mood boards,” she recalled.
De Rohan Willner knew she needed to remind customers of Toast’s original philosophy while making the brand feel more contemporary.
According to De Rohan Willner, the Seatons, who sold their final stake in Toast in 2018, “had a beautiful appreciation of navigating the world in a slower way”. To her, the name conjured an image of a lazy breakfast at home on a Sunday, with a hot cup of tea.
The low-key brand, founded by two archaeologists in Wales, has expanded in New York. Photo: The New York Times
First, De Rohan Willner hired a new head of design, Laura Shippey, who had worked for eight years at the British brand Margaret Howell, followed by a stint at J Crew. For inspiration, Shippey looked to Japanese and European workwear, menswear-inspired silhouettes and vintage textiles worldwide.
De Rohan Willner then began “dialing up the craft”, she said.
Collections heavily feature hand embroidery, shibori, tie-dye, indigo and hand-printed fabrics, such as ikats and block printing. Toast also began to spotlight local artisans.
The brand now resells creatively repaired pieces and vintage and newly returned secondhand items, donating a portion of the sales revenue.
It also hosts clothing swaps and mending events at its stores, where consumers can bring in items they want repaired using various techniques, including sashiko, the Japanese practice of decorative reinforcement, and darning, patching and applique.
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In addition to its two US stores, Toast has a robust presence in Britain with 20 stores.
The brand had thrown a quiet dinner at the Elizabeth Street shop a few weeks before the opening. The walls were bare. Boxes of clothes still needed to be unpacked.
Even the event – during which humble dishes like white bean soup and braised kojinut squash cooked with local ingredients were served – kept a low profile and did not have a photographer shooting publicity and marketing images.
Actress Beanie Feldstein had stopped by during cocktail hour. Feldstein first discovered Toast when she auditioned for the film How To Build A Girl in London.
“The casting director in the audition was shaped like me and she was wearing these amazing overalls,” Feldstein recalled.
“I told myself that if I got the role, I would buy the overalls. And I did. And it’s actually how I met my wife, from that movie. Then the director and the writer, all of us bought the overalls.”
How many items of Toast clothing does Feldstein now own?
“Between me and my wife?” she asked, and paused. “A lot.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
