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Atlanta Apparel will return next month, with top collections shown to retailers from August 5 to 8. Knitwear will be a core focus during the market, with various brands across a range of price points sharing their latest lines and new innovations. Ahead of the exciting moment, we caught up with Autumn Cashmere’s Kathy Lee and Milio Milano’s Dillon Martino and Danielle Price on their labels’ news advancements across production and materials—plus how they’re celebrating new anniversaries and what makes Atlanta Apparel’s market meaningful and impactful!
Kathy Lee, CEO, Autumn Cashmere
How long has Autumn Cashmere worked with Atlanta Apparel—and what makes the market so meaningful for you?
We signed up in 1998. We have a sales rep there, and we have a showroom at the market. It’s really important. In the southeast, they are trendy, and we have a lot of customers. Specialty stores buy the trendiest stuff. In the past, I thought it was more conservative but they’re looking for more of the contemporary styles and we have a really good market there. The Atlanta Apparel market is really important to us. It’s right for us. There are a lot of specialty stores that carry more fashion-forward, contemporary styles.
Autumn Cashmere Holiday 2025 (Courtesy of Autumn Cashmere)
Autumn Cashmere uses lots of different materials in its collections. Can you tell us about some of the yarns, textiles, or fabrics the brand specializes in, in addition to cashmere?
We started with cashmere and expanded. Cashmere is not our main business anymore. It was, because we introduced a lot of different type of yarn and more new novelty yarns. We buy a lot of yarn from Italy. The cotton has grown really big in recent years—the 100% cotton. Cotton we’ve carried for many years—I would say more than 20 years—but every year, every season, we introduce new yarns. In the fashion industry, you have to introduce new things to people. Consumers are more excited. I’m excited when I see new yarns, cool yarns. For this season, we’re still sitting on holiday and resort. We have new yarn; we have a new kind of cashmere-silk. It’s perfect for this holiday resort season. It’s lightweight for silk, and it does not pill, which is beautiful. We also introduced the cashmere lurex—the fine gauge cashmere lurex. It’s simple—it’s not really shiny, but it’s perfect for that season. It’s also lightweight. We always have our fine viscose. We have a lot of a bodycon styles. every season, we bring two, three new yarns to our collections, beside our main core groups.
Autumn Cashmere Holiday 2025 (Courtesy of Autumn Cashmere)
Have there been any new fabric innovations at Autumn Cashmere this year, or any new updates we can expect at its Atlanta showroom next month?
We always bring new yarns for each collections. The production we tried to source from China. We try to source it in other countries, to bring down the cost. We have our own factory in China. We send the yarn there, so it’s our yarn. We control the quality from the beginning, and we send our own yarns to that factory. They just need to make it. We send our team to go there to manage, and make sure the quality is great. That’s new for this year, trying to adapt to the change—what’s going on for the tariffs—and still try to provide the best quality sweaters at a reasonable cost. We’re not just going to increase the price a lot—we tried to find a different way to reduce the price.
Autumn Cashmere Holiday 2025 (Courtesy of Autumn Cashmere)
This years is Autumn Cashmere’s 30th anniversary. How is the brand celebrating that landmark—and looking ahead to the next 30 years?
We are planning it! Even for our e-commerce, we will have some 30th anniversary discounts and events. We’re sending out more gifts to our customers with purchase, celebrating 30 years. We’re more engaged with social media for this kind of event. We don’t have details yet, but it’s planned for the rest of this year. In 30 years, we have a large customer base. We have different colors, and very trendy colored styles each year. We have all kinds of trend forecaster subscriptions. I sent my designers to Europe for inspiration. When building a whole brand, it’s not just [about] design—it’s not just cool fashion and trendy designs, but the whole package comes later. Great quality, customer service…that’s why we have a really stable customer space. They always buy from us every season because we are reliable, and our styles fit. We’ll continue doing that for the next 30 years!
Dillon Martino, Southeast Sales Manager and Danielle Price, Southeast Sales Representative, Milio Milano
What are some of Milio Milano’s latest brand innovations or changes this year?
Dillon Martino: This year, we’re at a 65% growth for the year so far, which is amazing. The company’s been around two and a half years in America, and it’s been about year and a half in Italy before that. We’re at a huge growth for the year, despite the tariffs and the production issues in Italy, where there’s not as much fabrication. We’ve just pushed through and been able to explode because we have over 900 styles. Out of the 900, there’s a bunch of them that just blow out as soon as they go into the boutiques. We’ve had a lot of good responses with boutiques; we don’t sell to the customers, and we don’t sell to the department stores—that’s great for the boutiques and the specialty stores, because it’s all theirs. We’ve had a lot of success with that. We own our own factories in Italy, so that’s been a huge plus for us, because we have ownership in the factories—we’re able to make decisions and get product in so much faster. We run a little bit different than other brands; they tend to look out really far out, and say, “Okay, you have to buy this product from August to December, and then you can’t find it anymore.” We need, however, millions of dollars of immediate inventory [so] everyone could place a huge order with us right now. So, we pre-book and bring in style for the future. What makes it different is that we also bring in 50 new styles that are in stock next week.
Milio Milano (Courtesy of Milio Milano)
What are some of the brand’s signature colorways, fabrics, or best-selling styles you’re know for?
Dillon Martino: As far as fabrications go, linen has done fantastic. We have some beautiful, high-quality linen, and it’s all priced great. My dad was saying that we could charge about 30% more for the product that we had, 30 or 40% more, but he chooses to keep it lower so that boutiques get a higher MSRP. We have high-quality linen that feels really great, and that does amazing. We also have beautiful silk viscose. We do really, really well with that—and eveningyear and going-out wear. Because we have 900 styles, we do really well in each category. We also have knits and sweaters which are made out of viscose. We have this symmetrical sweater, which is our number-one seller in the whole company; it’s a multi-wear sweater. I have a store in Marco Island, Florida where [the owner] sold. She was skeptical about getting this sweater. She got it in, and from November 11 to December 28 she sold 164 pieces. That’s a sweater that, when people get in, we tell them, ‘If it doesn’t sell, we’ll take it right back.” That’s our number-one selling piece. As far as our cuts go, we have so many cuts that do well. We’re pretty ageless. We have some contemporary styles, some flowy styles, some really tight, evening, going-out, sexy outfits.
What makes Atlanta Apparel’s wholesale market so special and important to the knitwear industry?
Danielle Price: The Atlanta Apparel market itself is a wonderful, wonderful show, Many of our stores cater to customers between ages 12 all the way up to…I have a store whose oldest customer is 95. So that being said, our line being so ageless and our asymmetrical collection specifically, as well as our linen collection specifically—we have the same fabrication, but we offer it in 20 different body styles. You can have a sleeveless option, you can have a long-sleeve option, you can have a turtleneck option, so you have something for every single customer despite their age. Milio specifically does well because we have options. We have the sleeveless, cropped option for somebody that’s 18 that wants to wear a profile. We have some options for back-to-school that are short sleeves, great for warm weather for somebody that’s 15. We have a long-sleeved option for the older customer. Having that option for the buyers that come in and they are catering to customers between ages 12 and 95, we have something to cater for every single customer and every single occasion, from casual leisure, airport outfits, back to school, workwear, cocktails. Whatever the occasion is, we have a body style and a fabrication style to meet their needs. It really is a one-stop shop. We do have stores that cater to those customers, and their store is filled with our brand because we have something for everyone, which is really amazing.
Dillon Martino (Courtesy)
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