It started with a walk. Somewhere around 2018, I was in Paris for Fashion Week, walking through the Marais the way I always do when I'm there — half looking at the windows, half just feeling the city. I'd shown in Paris a few times by then, and every time, I felt the same pull: that this particular week, in this particular place, was full of people who would actually understand what I was doing. My work has always been a little avant-garde, a little independent — not built for a trend cycle. Paris has always felt like the place where that's not just tolerated, it's welcomed.

Somewhere in there, Patricia crossed my mind — my sales rep, who I've worked with for over fifteen years now. I knew Patricia was always game for anything, and I remember thinking she'd make a great partner in crime for something like this. Nothing formal yet, just a thought that stuck. And then, the way things do, it went quiet for a while. I got pulled into so much good work back home — especially Round Top, Texas, where I've shown twice a year for years now. There's something really special about that show. The same faces, twice a year, a real sense of continuity and camaraderie. I love it.

But running an independent boutique is also, in its own way, a solitary thing. There aren't many of us left — independent, by-appointment, doing our own thing without a corporate structure behind us. I'd feel it most on quiet days in the atelier: a real hunger for other creative people. Not competitors. Peers. People building something with their hands and their point of view, the way I am.

Around the same period, I'd done a sustainable fashion show in Milan with the World Sustainable Organization, alongside a woman I'd become close with, Esmée — we later traveled together to Egypt to see firsthand how sustainability was being approached there. We had this instant camaraderie, the kind you don't plan for. We started talking, in that loose way you do with someone you trust, about doing something together. She was based in London, and I think that's really where the word "Global" first entered the conversation — even before either of us knew exactly what we were building. Over time, she was drawn more fully into the modeling world in London, and fashion took a back seat for her. So the idea sat with me. And eventually, sitting in my boutique, missing that creative company, I decided to just build it myself.

What I kept coming back to was this: how do you create a collaborative of like-minded artists — people who actually support each other, rather than just share a booth or a hashtag? I'd already seen what that could look like through Round Top. I wanted to bring some version of that energy into the fashion world, but built around collaboration instead of competition.

House of Story is the name of my own company — it's been my LLC for three years now. So when this collective started to take real shape, House of Story Global felt like the obvious next step. I want to be clear about something, though: I never wanted to play on my own name. I'm not big on "what's your story?" as a tagline — it's a little too cute for what this actually is. But there's something true underneath it: everyone does have a story. This is meant to be a house for a lot of them, not just mine.

Once I'd decided this was real, the first step was finding a location — and that part wasn't glamorous at all. I went through an agency that rents out spaces for boutiques and pop-ups in the Marais, and it took months of back-and-forth. Communication was terrible half the time, and more than once a space I'd been eyeing was suddenly gone before I could commit. It taught me a lot of patience. The space I finally found is smaller than what I originally pictured — but honestly, I've come to see that as the right call, not a compromise. For a first show under House of Story Global, going smaller meant I could actually be present with each designer and each detail, instead of getting overwhelmed managing too many moving pieces at once. That felt like the right creative-director instinct for a first outing.

And that's really the vision underneath all of it. It doesn't have to be only fashion. It can be art activations, runway shows, model calls — a broader creative collaborative that just happens to have fashion at its center right now, because that's where I live. But the shape of it can keep expanding.

This September, that vision becomes real: House of Story Global comes together in that space in Le Marais for Paris Fashion Week SS27, September 30 through October 4 — with C'est Jeanne, In Heroes We Trust, ONE432, and Yanawara New York alongside Katharine Story as presenting partners, and a rotating pop-up all week featuring Moirai Mohair, Llama and Chaguar, Sophie Tiné, and Margaux Sur Mer.

This is just another outlet for me — another way of living the art of my life, the same way the boutique is, the same way every collection is. It's not a departure from what I do. It's an expansion of it.

Next week, I'll tell you more about how I found these designers and how this collaborative actually came together piece by piece — the story keeps unraveling from here.

— Katharine