GOING FOR GOLD
Jolie wears a lower-impact silk slip dress and velvet cape from Chloé x Atelier Jolie; Chloé SoHo boutique. Briony Raymond ring.

TONE SETTERS
Collaborators Gabriela Hearst and Jolie wear Chloé x Atelier Jolie.

Though the property has passed through several hands since Basquiat lived here, traces of the prolific artist remain: the graffiti tag SAMO© (pronounced same-oh)—something he coined with his friend Al Diaz—is scrawled on the concrete floor. This morning, Jolie has her own small crew in tow: the brand’s president and chief operating officer, Helen Aboah, and Giles Duley, who is advising the project on corporate impact but started his career as a music photographer, soon evolving into “an angry man with a camera,” he says, with a focus on the impact of conflict on communities around the world. “Over the last 20 years documenting humanitarian stories, I’ve seen the negative impact of Western consumerism on developing countries—from child labor, illegal extraction of minerals, pollution from the dyeing of fabrics, exploitation of farmers, and much more,” he says. “Atelier Jolie can have an incredible positive impact on artisans who have often been unrecognized and undervalued—but we also have an opportunity to start conversations about workforce exploitation, pollution, and waste.” Adds Aboah: “At the top of Angelina’s manifesto is also the idea that we are all creators.”

There are signs that the team is beginning to make its mark: Draped over the doorway is a blank canvas stenciled with the Atelier Jolie logo in white spray paint. “That was my son practicing,” Jolie says proudly of Pax, 19, who along with Zahara has been heavily involved with Atelier Jolie. As a single mother of six, Jolie considers major endeavors such as this one a project for the entire family, and she turns both expansive and personal on the subject when the conversation turns to her children. “I was 26 when I became a mother,” she tells me. “My entire life changed. Having children saved me—and taught me to be in this world differently. I think, recently, I would’ve gone under in a much darker way had I not wanted to live for them. They’re better than me, because you want your children to be. Of course I’m the mother, and hopefully that safe place for them and that stability. But I’m also the one that they laugh at—and I see them taking over so many different aspects of our family.”

IN THE HOUSE
From left: Helen Aboah in Briony jewelry, president and chief operating officer of Atelier Jolie; Giles Duley, Atelier Jolie’s advisor for corporate impact; and Jolie, all in Atelier Jolie designs. The print and embroidery artwork on Jolie’s gloves and corset are by Duke Riley, a collaborator in the project. 

Though she’s loath to admit it, her approach to fashion has been hugely influential. Each style move she makes is fastidiously anatomized by fans on social media, and her seeming reluctance to make a spectacle of herself has only contributed to the current yen for all things quiet luxury (see also Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2023 courtroom style and the character Shiv Roy in Succession). These days a fashion website that successfully identifies Jolie’s choice of a seemingly unremarkable airport shoe can drive hundreds of thousands of clicks. And it’s precisely that power that Jolie is hoping to harness for good.

“I find it slightly funny that we are involved in fashion—I don’t think any one of us is overly ‘fashionable,’ ” she says, referring to both herself and her children. “But because we live in our clothes, it is so much a part of who we are, and something that’s important to explore, especially for young people.” The atelier is exactly the kind of place she’d like to go to with her kids. “I’ve always wanted to take my family to a place where I can say: Does your clothing really represent you? Absolutely you? And do you love it? I think the average person would not think it does. But I think tailoring does that for you.”

As Jolie tells it, the concept for her new project was born out of a desire to address conversations around self-presentation and identity head-​on. She recalls one such pivotal family discussion surrounding the Los Angeles premiere of her Marvel movie Eternals back in 2021. “I don’t tell the kids how to dress,” she says. “Even when they were little, I just put things in front of them.” The same goes for public appearances: “Nobody has to go anywhere if they don’t want to, and if they don’t want to dress up, they don’t have to.” On this particular occasion, five of her kids did—enthusiastically—dress up. And so Jolie decided to make their red carpet appearance an experiment in circular fashion, gathering pieces from her closet and letting her children choose. In the pile: a beige box-pleated Gabriela Hearst dress that Shiloh, then 15 and known for her smart suiting and boyish haircuts, opted to wear youthfully tailored to the knee. Zahara, meanwhile, selected a dazzling beaded Elie Saab dress from her mother’s storage, first seen at the Oscars in 2014. “I went vintage shopping with a few of them as well—I think Knox was wearing all vintage. The cut was quite unusual, quite cool, I thought,” says Jolie of her youngest son, then 13. “I want them to be their own people.”

PLAYING TAG
Jolie, who has selected 57 Great Jones Street—former home to one Jean-Michel Basquiat—for her new venture’s storefront, tries her hand with a bit of spray paint. Briony Raymond rings.

Around lunchtime, Jolie gets a call from her driver: It seems she is running late for a rendezvous with Pax—they’re on the hunt for New York apartments. (Jolie has just signed on to produce The Outsiders on Broadway.) Jolie turns to hug Hearst goodbye. “I’m not really somebody that has girlfriends, so this has been an interesting jump for me,” she says. Hearst returns the embrace and sends Jolie off with her favorite single-origin fair trade bar from Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate.

In this story: hair for Angelina Jolie, Massimo Serini; makeup for Angelina Jolie, Lisa Houghton; hair, Shingo Shibata; makeup, Raisa Flowers. Produced by AL Studio. Set Design: Mary Howard.