About Our Founder
Emma Gage launched MELKE in 2020, creating joyful collections of knitwear, separates, dresses, and accessories through small-scale production practices. MELKE empowers the wearer through colorful, “seriously unhinged” designs.
Focused on individuality and freedom, each piece expresses Emma’s fluid approach to slow fashion. Refusing to allow high standards for sustainability get in the way of her exuberant vision, she creates made-to-last collectibles with an unrestrained love for the planet and its people.
Gage was invited to join the CFDA in 2022 as an interim member and debuted at New York Fashion Week with the presentation of its fall winter 2022 collection, Falcon's Fame.
Emma is a New York based fashion designer focusing on designing and creating awareness around sustainability and ethical fashion. Most recently, she worked as a designer at Happy X Nature, a brand focusing on sustainability and waste reduction, in NYC. Along with her work in design, she works closely with organizations to combat human trafficking, the education of children, as well as combatting the institutionalization of children. Through her work, she is able to blend both non profit work and fashion together to create artistic expression for people as well as economic empowerment.
A Marist College graduate with a BFA in fashion design, she has won four major design scholarships - she is a two time winner of the YMA Fashion Scholarship as well as the Kate Spade and Company Foundation Scholarship - her designs and work focus on luxury and high fashion within the realms of sustainability.
Emma assisted with the creation of a start up label, running production, design, sample making and much more. She has also worked extensively with Betsey Johnson, Nicholas K, volunteered at two New York Fashion Weeks (2014 and 2015), spoke about human trafficking and the apparel industry at the 2015 Nexus Global Youth Summit, and is a tireless advocate for garment workers rights. She is also currently a co-chair on an advisory board focused on rescuing young women and girls from human trafficking and forced prostitution.
