“I’m lucky enough to work with so many incredible women around the world…celebrities, high-profile private clients, royal families, world leaders…they always remain a source of inspiration and my muses in everything I do.” Courtesy of Tamara Ralph
Tamara Ralph’s latest couture collection glows with blush tones, pearl inlays, and a quiet reverence for the women who shape her creative universe.
Mother-of-pearl, locally known as capiz, has long been a symbol of natural beauty in the Philippines. You see it delicately framing the windows of old churches, catching the morning light in shell chandeliers, and lending a quiet glow to handmade boxes passed down through generations. For Tamara Ralph, the material’s luminous fragility sparked something deeper. “It’s always been an era that’s inspired me,” she says, referring to the decorative art and architecture movement of the Roaring Twenties, “and I wanted to have a centering around mother-of-pearl.”
For her Fall/Winter 2026 collection, the Australian-born, Paris-based designer revisits the golden age of Art Deco through the lens of couture. Anchored by the shimmer of pearls, the collection blends lightness and sensuality with Ralph’s signature elegance and emotional depth. “This beautiful palette of winter whites, very light palette, metallics, golds, rose golds, silvers and blush tones,” she explains from her home in the south of France. “We have all this opulence of the feathers, the embroidery, the detailing, and these geometric elements that were quite prominent in the Art Deco period.”
The collection arrives during the centennial of the art movement, and rather than referencing a specific artist or object, Ralph turned to the era’s decorative sensibilities as a collective. “There were some beautiful home pieces that I’ve loved,” she says. “They were kind of mother-of-pearl inlaid sideboards and cabinets and all these beautiful things with geometric elements. Furniture design has always been something that I’ve loved and enjoyed kind of designing over the years and getting, you know, inspired by.”
That inspiration became tangible in the silhouettes themselves. “Especially look one and two, for example, were hand-moulded Mother-of-Pearl corsets,” she says. “They took an incredibly long time to make. They’re incredibly intricate. They’re a complete mold of the body. And then we inlaid the mother-of-pearl on top of this hard-tailed mould, which was amazing.”
The delicacy of the material made the process especially exacting, “[It’s] a very, very fragile material to work with,” Ralph explains. “And these hard-shelled corsets, to get the shaping right and the silhouette perfect, took a lot of development and prototyping…it was fun working on this collection, I must say.”
As with all of Ralph’s couture, there is an emotional undercurrent to the technique. “With all of my work, I like to kind of create a sense of emotion,” she says. “And I think that that is what you do as a designer. You create an emotional response, an emotional attachment, whether you’re a fashion designer or in another creative field.”
Since launching her eponymous label in 2022, Tamara Ralph has become a go-to couturier for the world’s most authoritative women. Her work is instinctively feminine. She understands the power women hold and complements the female form through pristine dressmaking. In the scrutiny of the limelight, she’s dressed A-listers including Beyoncé, Angelina Jolie, Zendaya, Penélope Cruz, Blake Lively, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Cindy Crawford, Eva Longoria, and Jennifer Lopez.
Ralph doesn’t design for impossible fantasies. She finds inspiration in a living constellation of real-world power, intellect, and influence drawn from the women she serves and stands among. “I’m lucky enough to work with so many incredible women around the world… celebrities, high-profile private clients, royal families, world leaders…they always remain a source of inspiration and my muses in everything I do.”
This philosophy is woven into the couture experience she curates for her clients, set in an atelier overlooking the Seine on Rue François 1er, steps from the Grand Palais and the Avenue Montaigne. “We welcome all of our clients into the Maison in Paris to have a full couture experience of the brand, to immerse themselves in the brand and the different collections,” she explains. “We sit down together. We discuss what I think would work well for them, as well as the upcoming events. We look at embellishments. We look at fabrications. We look at everything.”
The process is completely bespoke. “The first process is always a prototype, which is the toile,” she says. “This is a complete representation of the piece, but marked up in the calico, the fabric, so we can really test the silhouette, the drape, the fit, everything, and make sure it’s absolutely perfect before we start in the real fabric.”
Some clients request single gowns. Others, entire wardrobes. “Some women like to have couture as their everyday, and it’s infused into their everyday life,” Ralph says. “Whether that be from their day wear or the tailoring to pieces that they need for important meetings or, you know, evening. And really, it can be a lifestyle.”
Many pieces are runway-to-client adaptations, but others are dreamt up from scratch. “We do work on pieces that are custom for a lot of clients as well,” she says. “I sketch for all my clients original sketches that are unique and have never been seen before. And that’s really lovely because then they have a one of a kind piece that’s, you know, completely designed for them.”
Beyond couture, Ralph continues to expand her creative universe through high-profile collaborations. “We’ve worked on quite a few amazing collaborations since the launch of the brand, the first one being the watch I created for Audemars Piguet,” she says. “It was a limited edition timepiece and was actually designed for the female market, but was actually also quite popular with the male market.”
Earlier this year, she also released a design collaboration with Daum, the legendary French crystal factory that still uses the pâte de verre (glass paste) technique. “They’re an incredible brand that has had a huge long history,” Ralph says. “And for me, I think they’re incredibly creative with what they produce. Their concept and their way of making things are very much like couture. No two pieces are ever the same. They take months and months to create a piece.”
While she can’t disclose much information about her upcoming collaboration launching in January, she can confirm she’s currently concentrating on “high-end curated product categories, very specific products, and limited edition luxury pieces.”
Through it all, Ralph remains grounded in her identity as a woman designing for women. “What I offer is different from what other brands offer, and I guess women love coming to me because I’m also a woman and I design for women,” she says. “I love designing for women, I love celebrating women, and, you know, I have generations of craftsmanship that I’ve instilled through my atelier.”
She continues, “The level of detailing, the embroideries, the elements, the innovation is, I think, sets us apart from other brands as well. And the femininity element that we have throughout all my designs, I think women really love and they gravitate towards.”
With this collection, Ralph transforms a decorative motif into something deeply felt. Whether seen in a seashell corset or a shimmering satin drape, the spirit of capiz; delicate, luminous, enduring, lives on in every stitch.
