sustainable-luxury
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The White T-Shirt That Wants to Put Dubai in Italian Wardrobes
Carter & White started with Giza cotton and a problem the Gulf knows intimately: how to make refinement feel comfortable in punishing heat. Its route from underwear to yacht linens and Riviera boutiques reveals a distinctly Dubai way of building a luxury house.
Brilliant Earth
Brilliant Earth is a San Francisco-based fine jewelry company that built a business on a simple premise: customers should be able to know where their diamonds and gold come from. Founded in 2005 by Stanford classmates Beth Gerstein and Eric Grossberg, the company pioneered the market for ethically sourced engagement rings, natural and lab-grown diamonds, and recycled precious metals. It went public on the Nasdaq in 2021 (ticker BRLT) and operates an omnichannel model spanning e-commerce and dozens of US showrooms.
Beth Gerstein
Beth Gerstein co-founded Brilliant Earth in 2005 after a personal search for an ethically sourced engagement ring turned up nothing worth buying. An engineer by training (Duke BS at 19, MIT MS, Stanford MBA), she built a company that now generates $422 million in annual revenue and trades on Nasdaq (BRLT). Brilliant Earth is the rare luxury brand that treats supply chain transparency as a marketing advantage rather than a compliance headache - offering Beyond Conflict Free diamonds with traceable origins, lab-grown stones, and recycled metals. Under Gerstein's leadership, the company has donated over $2 million through the Brilliant Earth Foundation, partnered with Dr. Jane Goodall on conservation collections, and expanded to 28+ showrooms while maintaining 14 consecutive quarters of profitability as a public company.
Wendy Yu
Wendy Yu is the CEO of Cuyana, the San Francisco-based sustainable fashion brand built on the philosophy of 'fewer, better things.' A data-and-analytics-trained operator with a BS from MIT and an MBA from the University of Michigan, she worked her way through gaming, consulting, and digital marketing before joining Cuyana as Chief Digital Officer in 2018. When founder Karla Gallardo stepped down in 2025 after 14 years, Yu stepped into the CEO role - bringing her decade-plus of growth marketing and digital operations experience to the helm of a brand that has generated nearly half a billion dollars in lifetime DTC sales.