Sea — a $30mn fashion label with staying power

It was at a very different time that Monica Paolini and Sean Monahan founded their New York-based clothing label Sea in 2006, just before the permeation of smartphones and social media. In hindsight, their whimsical approach appears dazzlingly naive in its intent: “We thought we could just start this brand and live by the sea,” says Paolini, the label’s creative director, of its nautical origins. “Looking back, it was another world.”

Close to two decades later, the pair, both 48 — they first met as children at a Memorial Day picnic in their suburban hometown in upstate New York — have successfully navigated fashion’s choppy waters to develop a label that quietly attires a devoted band of women from the States to Scandinavia to South Korea.

“When we started out things still felt very connected. We were literally going door-to-door to buyers and stores showing them the clothes, often modelled by Monica,” says Monahan. Things quickly took off when they were picked up by retailers including Barney’s (the now closed New York department store), Montaigne Market (then in Paris, now in Saint Barth) and Milk Boutique in LA, joined — crucially for visibility — in 2013 by Net-a-Porter.

Buffered in their early days from the domestic gloom of the 2008 financial crash by a buoyant market in Japan, their first big hit came in the late aughts, when Alexa Chung was photographed modelling a leopard-print Sea dress in a magazine editorial. “It sold like crazy,” he says of the jersey jacquard baby-doll that bolstered the business. “We went from producing in the 10s and 100s to the 1,000s. We thought: ‘This is going to be easy.’”

Despite a rapidly shifting market, Sea’s early appeal hasn’t waned. Currently sold in 300 retail outlets (half of those outside the US), with a quarter of sales direct-to-customer, it has remained profitable. Arguably, much of its considerable, slow-burn success — revenue is forecast to be more than $30mn this year — derives from the fact that it has retained that original, founding freshness.

“We’ve never shown our collections on a runway. We have always just stayed concentrated on the needs of the customer,” says Monahan. “It’s important that it feels like a product made for them.”

This approach continues to yield timeless clothes that feel romantic and tinged with nostalgia — but also new, slightly unexpected, and even a little off: a sports sweater with a hand-crocheted collared hood or a practical barn coat caped with lace. Sitting at the more obtainable end of the designer market — prices range from £360 for a pintucked top to a £665 for a richly embroidered dress — its core customer is aged between 35 and 45. Its use of antique textiles and studious approach to craft helped lay a path for similarly scholarly and artisanal American brands including Bode, Dôen and Rhode. 

“Everything with a personalised touch seems to become a bestseller,” says Paolini. A recent hit was a quilted jacket hand-sewn with the silhouette of tea cups from spring ’24. “That’s always the challenge, what’s the next thing that we can do to really make things feel special?” Sea’s riffs on antique lace and handmade embroideries are driven by Paolini’s fascination with domestic craft traditions and what she terms “the way women once spent their time in the home”. She is also an obsessive, life-long collector of vintage clothes. The brand’s Canal Street studio has a vault of Victorian blouses, antique lace tablecloths, American textiles and workwear.

Sea’s forthcoming pre-autumn and autumn collections include a series of broad-stripe, puff-sleeve rugby shirts in bold, primary hues (£350-£420). They all feature the brand’s “little boy” mascot: a big-haired, vital fellow in shorts, with a swing in his step, who first popped up on barn coats and merino cardigans for pre-autumn ’24. He was originally inspired by the motifs found on an unfinished Victorian quilt Paolini sourced at one of her favourite vintage haunts — the art historian Paula Rubenstein’s namesake store on the Lower East Side.

The recent discovery of a late 1950s varsity jacket stitched with brass charms gave rise to the botanical and numerical trinkets that Paolini calls “little treasures” added to barn coats and cardigans for autumn/winter 2025. While the rare animal motifs on an antique French tablecloth inspired the collection’s rich appliqué work. This might be garlanded on garments alongside embroidered or crocheted collars, and Paolini’s renderings of the elegant, antique, monogrammed French tags that were once used to label laundry. Everything is imbued with irreverence and naïveté and optimism — even denim hems feature broderie anglaise cut with the childlike countenance of a monster.

“There is a real delicacy and poetry that you can feel when you wear Sea’s clothes,” says the Paris-based painter Nina Koltchitskaia, an occasional collaborator who has become a friend, and one of the high-profile women including Jessie Bush and Helena Christensen who frequently wear their clothes. “You can feel the honesty and sincerity of their friendship in the collections.”

“Everyone thinks we’re married,” says Paolini (although best friends, they have never been a couple). “I don’t know why it works, because we’re incredibly different — but we constantly push one another to do better.”

Since 2019, Monahan has divided his time between Paris and New York, working on strategy and developing collaborations, while Paolini leads the 40-strong team from their Canal Street studio, developing designs, prints, embroideries and tonal palettes — which are frequently drawn from the inspirational stream of paintings she posts on their Instagram — and leading production.

“We’ve known one another so long it makes it possible to work whilst away from one another,” says Monahan. The pair are in constant communication, spending much of their year travelling together, shuttling between their major markets (after the US, their biggest markets are Japan, Korea and the UK), meeting buyers, hosting pop-up stores and dinners — and sourcing from a trove of second-hand stores and antiques markets en route.

Monahan and Paolini travel to Delhi at least four times a year to produce their four extensive annual collections, which include children’s, swim and sleepwear (the main line alone can feature up to 200 pieces). While Paolini is the creative wellspring, Monahan serves as an exacting, all-seeing eye, clarifying, crystallising and tempering her taste for exuberant flourishes with elements of athleticism and utility. “He acts as a guide,” she says.

As a business, Sea has evolved into an increasingly familial affair: Monahan’s wife is the brand director, while Paolini’s husband runs logistics and operations. This summer they will unveil a much-expanded store in a palatial, turn-of-the-century loft building on Broome Street in SoHo. “People want to feel more physically connected to brands,” says Monahan of the move. And for now, it’s an elegant stand-in for that stubbornly elusive house by the sea.

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