About General Knot & Co.

Ann and Andrew Payne in our Bedford, NY studio

General Knot & Co. is a small, independent accessories label, founded in 2010 by Ann and Andrew Payne and based in a working studio in Bedford, New York. Every General Knot bag, necktie, and small good is designed by the two of us and hand-made in our Bedford studio and a small network of trusted American makers and partner factories we've come to know and rely on over the years.

How General Knot Began

We are both fashion designers by training — Ann at The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), Andrew at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Before launching General Knot, we built careers inside the apparel industry. Ann led the design and merchandising teams at Original Penguin, where she helped revive the brand, after a path through childrenswear at Healthtex and brands like Sean John. Andrew led knitwear teams at Perry Ellis, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, and a large Turkish denim brand. Both of us were on the road most of every year — fittings in Asia, development trips in Europe — and most of what we know about how to make a thing well, we learned alongside the people we met in factories around the world.

In 2010, we took those years of training and translated them into a brand of our own. General Knot launched as a men's neckwear company, built around our love for beautiful textiles. The line grew. We added pocket squares, then dopp kits. Our customers — many of them women buying for the men in their lives — started asking when we'd make something for them. We took the leap, beginning with simple totes, and the brand grew with us. Today General Knot is primarily a women's bag and accessory label, with a loyal neckwear customer still very much in the picture.

What We're Known For

Color and pattern. The kind of choices that feel familiar to the eye and a little unexpected at the same time. Both of us studied art and art history alongside design, and our work draws constantly from those references — design movements, textile traditions, art-historical compositions. Every General Knot piece has to clear one shared bar before it goes into production: we both have to like it. We almost never disagree.

How We Make It

General Knot is, by design, a small operation. The majority of our bags, leather goods, and accessories are made by hand in our Bedford studio — the two of us, at our own machines, with tools and presses we've built up over the years. The pieces we don't make in-house — our neckwear in particular — are made for us by a small group of skilled American partner factories and independent makers we've come to trust. We know every person who makes every piece of General Knot product. That isn't a marketing line. It's just how the brand is built.

We work in batches, build quality control into every step of the process, and keep our studio clean enough to think in. We choose tools that are built to last — many of them by independent American machine makers — and we put the time required for a piece on the calendar before we promise the date.

Our Textiles

Our fabrics fall into two groups. The first is rare vintage textiles, carefully preserved over decades, which we hunt down through a network of specialized collectors around the country and the world (and at antique shows like Brimfield, Massachusetts). The second is new fabric, woven for us by specialty mills overseas — most often in Japan and Eastern Europe, where the craft of textile making still runs deep. Working with rare and limited materials means our collections are, by nature, limited. When a fabric is gone, it's gone.

Our Collections

• Totes & Travel Bags — Built for the way you actually move through the day.
• Neckties & Bow Ties — The original General Knot category, still cut from the same instinct for color and pattern.
• Makeup Bags & Travel Clutches — Lined in water-resistant canvas, made for the bottom of any bag.
• Small Leather Goods — Hand-cut and hand-assembled dog collars, keychains, and card holders, made to be lived with.

— Ann & Andrew Payne, Bedford, New York