ABOUT SOPHIEGRACE
Premium Workwear for Professional Women
ABOUT
Workwear That Actually Works
SophieGrace is built on a simple premise: getting dressed for work should be straightforward.
Founder Emma May—a former lawyer and political staffer—created the brand after realizing how much time and energy she was spending trying to make a closet full of pieces work together. So she built a system instead.
Each piece is designed to mix easily, feel comfortable all day, and hold a polished line without adjustment. You don’t rethink the outfit. You reach for what works and move on.
SophieGrace ships duty-free across Canada and the United States and has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Elle Canada, Refinery29, and Citytv.
MEET THE FOUNDER
Emma May, Founder & CEO
Emma May is not a fashion industry insider and that is precisely what makes SophieGrace different from other workwear brands.
Emma trained as a lawyer at Farris LLP in Vancouver, one of Canada's leading firms, and later worked as an in-house entertainment lawyer. After the 2013 Calgary floods, she transitioned into community and policy work, which led to her appointment as Executive Director of the Premier's Southern Alberta Office under Premier Jim Prentice. When the government changed, she stepped back and asked herself what came next. The answer was SophieGrace.
"I knew I wanted to do it, and in hindsight, I'm not sure I would have started if I'd fully understood all the hurdles. But I knew I wanted to do it — and that might be the only way to do it."
— Emma May, The Honest Talk Podcast, 2026
Emma brings to SophieGrace the precision of a lawyer, the strategic thinking of a political operator, and the user-centricity of someone who has lived exactly the problem she is solving. She designs for the woman she is and for who she saw her peers as: ambitious, time-pressed, unwilling to choose between looking polished and feeling comfortable.
Under Emma's leadership, SophieGrace has built a loyal following of legal professionals, political leaders, C-suite executives, and professional women across North America. The brand lifeblood is serving customers who return not because of marketing, but because the clothes genuinely work.
WHO WE DESIGN FOR
Designed for the Professional Woman
SophieGrace is designed for professional women who live full, complex, non-siloed lives. The SophieGrace customer moves between board meetings and school pickups, between client presentations and weekend plans. She is accomplished, discerning, and has spent too long trying to make mainstream workwear work for a body and a life it was never designed for.
She is particularly the woman over 40 who has been consistently underserved by the fashion industry — whose professional credibility is at its peak. SophieGrace was built for her.
"My life isn't siloed. Like many women, I run between board meetings and kids' sporting events and social time with my friends. I couldn't find those basics in one brand that I could rely on."
— Emma May, Style Canada, 2021
SophieGrace's customers include lawyers, executives, politicians, and leaders across virtually every professional sector in Canada and the United States. They are women who have high standards and very limited patience for clothing that doesn't deliver on its promises. They are also, according to Emma, the most loyal customers in the world — because when something actually works for a woman like that, she comes back. And she tells her friends.
Four Design Principles
Every SophieGrace piece is designed to coordinate with every other piece in the collection. The colour palette is curated season to season so that a blazer bought today will still pair with a trouser purchased next year.
This is not an accident — it is the foundational design principle of the brand. SophieGrace removes the guesswork from building a professional wardrobe.
Traditional suiting is built for structure. SophieGrace is built for the woman inside the structure. Fabrics are selected for how they feel at hour eight of a workday, not just how they photograph.
The Smoothing Stretch collection, machine-washable silk pieces, and stretch-tailored trousers are all expressions of the same conviction: that a professional woman should not have to be uncomfortable to look the part.
Premium workwear that requires dry-cleaning for every wear is a tax on a professional woman's time. SophieGrace designs pieces — including its washable silk collection — that can be cared for at home.
This is a practical commitment, not just a marketing feature. The woman SophieGrace designs for does not have time to manage a complicated laundering system for her work clothes.
SophieGrace is not a fast-fashion brand. The pieces are designed to be worn for years, not seasons. This is both a quality commitment and a sustainability position. Investing in SophieGrace means investing in a wardrobe that compounds — pieces that work harder and longer the more of them you own.
OUR VALUES & MISSION
What SophieGrace Stands For
SophieGrace is a brand with a point of view. It was built on the conviction that professional women's systemic challenges — access to capital, childcare, equal pay, workplace equity — are not separate from the business of making beautiful clothes. They are the reason the brand exists.
"I am deeply committed to issues related to women's workplace challenges. When we solve these problems, women will have more freedom to truly self-determine."
— Emma May, Style Canada, 2021
As Seen In
