Gabrielle Uy Designs the T-Shirts Behind Your Favorite Pop Stars

Picture a concert tee from a Laufey show. The lettering feels textured, tantalising… almost edible. That’s because it was originally designed with real cake icing, translated into wearable puff paint. What thousands hold as merchandise began as a physical experiment in Gabrielle Uy’s studio, or kitchen table. Through these tactile details, her work bridges the massively public with the intimately handmade.

@gabrielleuyy

Based in New York, Gabrielle works as a designer and strategist at acclaimed design studio 2×4, whose clients include Instagram, Prada and Chanel, and as an independent designer with an affinity for music, fashion and art. This dual approach defines her practice: balancing strategic brand work on a global scale in one studio, with a more personal, analogue approach in another.

Among Gabrielle’s independent projects, the most visible is her role as lead merchandise designer for Laufey’s Grammy-winning album “A Matter of Time,” and its global arena tour. Collaborating with Laufey’s Creative Director and identical twin Junia Lin Jonsdottir and Laufey’s official merchandise partner Futureshirts, Gabrielle translated the album’s nostalgic atmosphere into a cohesive range of wearables. Lush, intricate and frequently hand-painted, the merchandise drew inspiration from the album’s lyrics and rich visual world. Every last detail is an easter egg: the number of stars on the North America tee matches the total number of shows Laufey played on that leg of the tour. 

This attention to personal narrative extends to her custom work for American Ballet Theatre Principal Dancer and internet personality Isabella Boylston. Gabrielle spent nearly fifty hours transforming a canvas tote into a portable biography, illustrating Ms Boylston’s life in New York and her travels in fabric marker, paint, and embroidery. Now featured in global fashion publications and used by Ms Boylston daily, the bag exists as both a personal accessory and a commemorative object honouring the multi-decade career of a star ballerina at the top of her field.

Gabrielle credits her rapid ascent as a designer to her mentors and collaborators: her résumé lists some of the most acclaimed studios and projects in the New York design scene. Throughout summer 2024, Gabrielle designed at Special Offer Inc — an eight-person studio credited with the GRAMMY-winning design for Charli XCX’s career-defining Brat album and tour, which took the Internet by storm and was featured in CNN and the New York Times. Similarly, Gabrielle became the youngest member of the illustration team at luxury fashion brand Bode after founder Emily Adams Bode Aujla encountered her student work and hired her on the spot. Gabrielle currently works at legendary design studio 2×4, whose clientele includes Prada, Miu Miu and Chanel, in a bespoke branding-and-strategy role the studio designed just for her. Gabrielle shares, “I’m so lucky to have worked with and been mentored by literally my favourite designers on the scene — I’m such a fan, and they continue to inspire me constantly.”

These experiences have helped Gabrielle build a robust independent practice of her own. At once an idiosyncratic blend of all these influences and entirely her own, Gabrielle’s design sensibility maintains a distinct personal voice: one defined by a painterly, hands-on approach to material, a sense of playful curiosity, and a creative philosophy grounded in intimacy and careful attention. The result is a design practice that consistently feels like a singular, personal encounter — and one increasingly finds its place on the global stage.

You can view Gabrielle Uy’s work at her website and on Instagram.