'Who's she?': Meet the visionaries behind the companies setting a new standard for women’s golf wear

While often overlooked as frivolous (and even with a smirk “feminine”), fashion is a powerful tool. With one well-cut blazer or high-waisted trouser, you can stand taller, look the part and move with the “in-group” to receive professional and social benefits—in the board room, at the clubhouse, on the course, wherever. The study of the systematic influences of clothing on our psychological processes is deep and even has a very academic name, “enclothed cognition.”

Clothing has long been a barrier for women getting into golf, particularly women who shudder at eye-searing, hot pink polyester polos and ill-fitted, stolen-from-the-boys khakis. That all seems to be changing now. Post-pandemic, women make up nearly one-third of the golfers in the U.S., and they are eager to find clothing that is specifically tailored to their games and identities while also appealing to their unique fashion senses—in other words, clothes that don’t feel like “golf costumes” or “afterthoughts.”

The women behind the most exciting and emergent brands hail from all over. Many have journeyed to global fashion epicenters like Hong Kong and Italy on their quests to master the trade and innovate the form. Some have been playing golf since they could crawl; others identify as proud newbies. All have one goal in common: to ensure today’s girls and newcomers will never have to abandon golf over concerns about being able to blend in. Now they can stand out.

Goldie Byrd

If the next Bond girl played golf, she’d easily sport a signature cherry red mini from Goldie Byrd, the California-based athletic and lifestyle apparel brand founded by Arielle Solheim and Julia Roper. The pair met by chance at a group dinner in Napa Valley in 2021. Solheim hails from golf royalty; she’s the great-granddaughter of Karsten Solheim, founder of Ping and the Solheim Cup. Roper solidifies the duo’s industry and marketing expertise. She studied business and marketing at the London College of Fashion and added a master class in European chic. Both share a passion for vintage designer brands, namely Chanel, and old-timey style icons (cue: Bond women) to design functional golf wear that still feels sexy, simultaneously evoking the sporty romance of Palm Springs in the 1970s or the timeless insouciance of the Parisienne through gilded hardware and faux belts—the cool girl’s uniform both personifying and transcending fashion.

Draw & Fade Modern

Taylor Olson had a golf club in her hand before she could walk, yet always felt like she didn’t belong. Draw & Fade Modern seeks to change that, not only through cozy, stylish, performance-enhancing knitwear and accessories but through activism. The brand holds a few practical tenets, including removing gender labels from tee boxes to focus on ability, as well as upgrading score-posting sites to more easily accommodate women hitting from the middle and back tees. Olson’s collection of luxe performance knits is made using sustainable fibers in ethical factories and sold at an affordable price point. As someone who hasn’t always seen herself in the sport, she knows firsthand how crucial representation is. Her “Icons” series features female golfers of different races, designed in collaboration with artist Max Machado, striding across silhouettes. Her pieces are soft and svelte: après ski appeal without sacrificing function.

Honors

The Nashville-based trio behind Honors brings a whole new meaning to the term “capsule wardrobe.” Amy Anderson, Huntley Rodes and Jenna Walter developed a collection of carefully tailored pieces where every pocket, zipper and seam is relentlessly tested and meticulously placed. The brand boasts an edited color palette—loud in its minimalism—of upscale neutrals including ebony, cream, navy and sandstone that women can wear from the office to the course and anywhere in between, steeped with the instant je ne sais quoi of a model off-duty. Their hallmark item is for throwing on after a round: the trendy, relaxed-fit blazer you can roll in your bag without wrinkling that reads, in vine-green embroidery, tucked along the inner pocket: “my other jacket is green,” a cheeky Masters wink that exemplifies the brand’s sophisticated, smart, quiet luxury honoring the game.

Midspring

Golf has always been at the heart of Meredith Carmody and Shannon Arniel’s fairytale friendship. The two grew up in Connecticut playing junior golf together before moving to New York as young adults, gaining experience in fashion, finance and business before deciding to solve their decades-long frustration with golf apparel in Midspring. The preppy and polished brand’s name is a “triple entendre,” they joke, evoking the dawn of the golf season when the “world comes into bloom again,” as well as the hopeful, resurgent moment women’s golf is having. It’s also a nod to the season they both became mothers, on the same day one year apart. This inherent synergy shines in their interchangeable collection: pastel pink and green florals, balanced with neutral blues and classic white, always “feminine, functional and flattering”—what they refer to, meditatively and fervently, as their “three pillars.”

Sierra Madre

Bonny Riddle and Michelle Anderson met by chance at a yoga class in 2019. Riddle had been working in finance, where she often felt shut out of golf meetings. Anderson came from a family of female golfers and a background in fashion. The two met for coffee and found a natural partnership. As the name suggests, Sierra Madre blends a nature-driven color palette with an earthy femininity to its Western-inspired golf wear that manages to feel fun and fresh yet grounded in the game. The retro, vintage vibe takes inspiration from 1960s and ’70s LPGA style icons like Judy Rankin, Renee Powell and Jan Stephenson. Creative accessories round out the collection of buttery soft performance apparel staples: namely a magnetic hair clip that ingeniously doubles as a ball marker, or a colorful pompom bag charm that encapsulates the brand’s powerfully fun and feminine spirit.

Featherie

Fifteen-year-old Kate Korngold remembers one cold, rainy day in her home state of New York when she refused to let the weather stop her from playing golf. The longest golf pants she owned were capris, so she played in snow pants. When she complained to her parents, they told her she must be mistaken. But after hours scouring the internet, it became clear: girls' golf apparel needed serious improvement. She partnered with a local designer who helped adapt her sketches into a technical, practical, sleek clothing line. Named for the golf ball that was once the peak of performance, Featherie similarly seeks to transform the sport. The brand specifically caters to junior girls; however, due to the shower of appreciative (and slightly envious) moms who love the joyous, streamlined designs, the brand is expanding its size range to accommodate all busy, dynamic women, like Korngold, who is a competitive golfer, business owner, fashion designer—and still in high school.

Williams Athletic Club

Originally from the United Kingdom, Susi Proudman worked for Marks & Spencer, Lululemon and Nike before starting her own apparel label, Williams Athletic Club, in 2023. Though the name may sound like a boys’ club, W.A.C. is rather the opposite. “It’s designed to be a little bit of a bait-and-switch,” Proudman says, one way of being sure she’s given the time of day in a male-dominated industry. This intentional “surprise and delight” characterizes the stylish, season-proof brand striking a chord with women from their 20s to 70s—a wider age range, happily, than Proudman anticipated. Inspired by women golfers of the 1920s and ’40s, “core neutrals” from sable to toffee swathe the timeless, feminine silhouettes. Expect versatile pieces like bodysuits and amphibious calf-length pleated skirts and blazers, all with sumptuous fiber blends of Tencel, silk, linen and cotton for lush performance.

Fore All

Jen Clyde and Michelle Money met on a movie set. Clyde was the wardrobe stylist, and Money had an acting role. The friends worked together through Money’s reality TV career before losing touch for a decade. Clyde, then in business development, was left off an important meeting under the presumption that she couldn’t play golf, so she called up Money, who had begun dating her now-husband Mike Weir. The two decided to learn the game together, along the way creating enthusiastic, vulnerable content of their swing fails. They realized immediately that the apparel offerings didn’t fit their vibe, so they hatched Fore All, recognizable for its Vans-inspired black-and-white checkered print and forest-y color palette inspired by vintage ’40s and ’50s photographs. The brand has a membership club that anyone can access with the purchase of their emerald “Meg Blazer”—ensuring there’s a winning chartreuse jacket for all.

A. Putnam

While Ali Putnam was growing up, her parents kept a house in Italy. Putnam remembers summers spent sipping sparkling mint drinks, taking long bike rides and accepting homemade cookies from the neighborhood nonnas—all the while harboring a dream of working in fashion. Over the years she fine-tuned her expert eye for tailoring and design, inspired by the easy, romantic European sensibility of her second home. Now an Ohio-based mother of five boys, Putnam considers her golf brand to be her “baby girl.” It certainly receives that level of care, love and attention. The “resort to sport” line features silky button-downs, celadon knitwear and pleated scallop-hemmed “tulip” trousers you can easily transition from the course and beyond. The latest collection, photographed across the pond in the Royal Gardens of Austria, offers a more whimsical approach to golf wear—think beachy wicker visors and breathy, watercolored florals.

Jayebird

Katie Byrnes had been dreaming of starting a women’s golf brand since she was a kid growing up in Arizona. In 2018, she moved to Hong Kong for her husband’s work, giving her the opportunity to study fashion “backwards,” touring factories, chatting with patternmakers and testing fabrics like a “kid in a candy store.” The result is Jayebird, a fashion-forward line of contemporary silhouettes with a vintage sensibility that is made for golf and designed for living, featuring high-end Italian technical fabrics dipped in a flirty-yet-restrained classic color palette enlivened by the occasional daisy yellow and juicy rhubarb. Irresistible gingham, florals, stripes, stars and even a strawberry polka dot have won Byrnes a following who, like her, want to dress with style on the course and feel like they belong. As she puts it, “I’m inspired by that girl every day.”

Men's Brands Getting It Right

Plenty of men’s brands have successfully translated their aesthetic into women’s wear without falling victim to the outdated “pink-it and shrink-it” mentality. Intrinsically disruptive brands like G/Fore or Bad Birdie have found a devoted female customer base, drawn to their saturated, futuristic vibe and punchy prints that feel trendy, personable and exciting. Same goes for street-style-savvy brands like Malbon Golf and Eastside Golf, both of which started with a focus on menswear and have grown to develop a women’s side with a unique voice and perspective. The Scandinavian-sleek J.Lindeberg launched its first “golf lifestyle ambassadors” featuring two leading ladies, actress Kathryn Newton and influencer Mia Baker.

It’s a promising sign of the increasing presence women have carved in the space. Another big name getting it right is PXG, thanks to the steerage of Renee Parsons bringing creative solutions to techy women’s sportswear she even models herself.