Shortly thereafter Emhoff and Batsheva collaborated on a candy-colored knitwear collection, and major labels started casting Emhoff to walk their runways. When Ella Emhoff chose a Batsheva frock for the inauguration of her stepmother Kamala Harris as vice president, fashion’s star-minting vultures heard the buzz in the air. The religiosity has become the halo to her brand, which expanded from the narrow premise of floral and moiré prairie dresses with a Victoriana-meets-Laura-Ingalls vibe to shoes, fragrance, jewelry, and furniture during a pandemic-challenged period for many of her industry peers. Batsheva Peter Pan Velvet Dress ($475) David Webb Ring ($38,500). The designer Batsheva Hay in her own design. “This was part of my being lost,” she tells T&C, referring to a period of immense change after she left a life as corporate lawyer by day and girl on the downtown New York scene by night to become a wife and mother running an Orthodox home where modest dress standards are honored. Mommy-and-me, the ritual of parent and child wearing identical outfits, which today reads as equal parts dated, perverse, and radical, was where the designer’s career in fashion began, in 2016. “She really loved it,” the designer says, speaking for her daughter. Today she wears a bathing suit and shorts while Batsheva is in one of her voluminous printed cotton housedresses and Nike Air Jordans, but the previous Friday for Shabbat dinner they sported matching Batsheva dresses. “Can the whole world hear you?” Ruth asks, wondering why an iPhone is recording everything she and her mother say. The dialogue ping-pongs from one inquisitive kid to the other to questions about how the Hays have built a small but influential fashion business out of practicing observant Judaism, which the couple-both of whom were raised secular-came to as adults. When the couple arrive at their Upper West Side apartment after their respective workdays, their nanny is finishing dinner and their children, Ruth, 8, and Solomon, 6, are eagerly awaiting their attention. Chez Hay, family matters more than fashion, even if they’re inextricably intertwined. It is not, however, the best time to have a linear conversation about the state of their artistic partnership and the traditions they follow. Thursday evening is a great time to witness the controlled chaos and the familial priorities that define the household of photographer Alexei Hay and his wife, the designer Batsheva Hay.

Batsheva hays rich eggy