The Coveted Threads Story
I’m Amy Cohen and Coveted Threads is my passion project.
Extraordinary, rare sustainable and vintage things are my love language.
They inspire me creatively, light me up from the inside out, and make me feel more alive.
I’m not sure when it all began.
Maybe middle school, when I was always so excited to receive the oversized boxes that arrived by UPS from my cousin filled with designer pre-loved threads. The brown corrugated box looking like a solid gold treasure chest in my eyes. The 1950s Barbie another cousin gave me when she was done with dolls and cleaning out her childhood bedroom, that I welcomed her with open arms. Years later, searching NYC for the perfect art deco ring to no avail of a match for me, then discovering exactly what I was looking for had been hidden in my grandmother’s kitchen cabinet for years - Aunt Syl’s ring that had a wild past, showed up when it was ready to be revealed and become part of my story.
There are many other tales of things that still linger with me.
A velvet-striped clutch from a tiny vintage shop called Dandelion, off the beaten path just beyond my college campus over 30 years ago. It reminded me of the circus—dramatic, strange, alive. I remember the tag almost as clearly as the bag itself “Dandelion: Because Beautiful Things are Wild.”
There was the Art Nouveau choker I found in a sleepy small town thrift store in the early 1990s—a woman’s face cast in metal, worn close to my skin around the age of 20. It made me feel connected to something deeper in myself. Strength, femininity, power.
Countless other items have been handed down to me or purchased. A story connected in my mind to each about where I got it, when and how it made me feel.
Items I have seen and were owned by someone else, or sold to another became coveted. I chase down something similar. Enjoying the possession as much as the pursuit. Adding them to a collection of things that I admire by observing them around me, as there aren’t enough days in a year to use or wear them all.
Other things I decided to leave behind, instead of buying—like the purple Pucci velvet key case for $20 at the City Opera Thrift on 23rd Street in NYC back in the day. The things I gave away in haste when I left NYC for Florida during COVID, feeling like I couldn’t take everything during that apocalyptic time. I hope they are being enjoyed as much as I miss them.
And then there are the magical stories.
My vintage Eleanor Brenner Couture dresses (my mom helped me start when she bought me a couple at a Midwest sale at a church). Adding to my collection, I found one on an online. It was being sold in Virgina. Stunning and in my size, I ordered it. When it arrived late one night, I put it on and sat on the couch while my husband and son slept upstairs. It was a perfect fit. Meant for me - I felt the connection. I sat there and decided to look up the listing, as it had info about the woman who once owned it. I googled her name to learn more about her life. Thanking her and holding her memory in high regard. I scrolled down the page. A photo of a woman looked familiar. I knew her from a spiritual retreat in Ireland—the daughter of the woman. I was stunned and believing in synchronicity, I also knew it was meant to be.
The value of my things is the priceless feelings they brought me and continue to bring. They belonged to other women before me. They carried lives, moods, eras, and untold histories long before they found their way into my hands. These things shaped me as a woman at certain points in my life. They will be a New Chapter for others after I’m long gone.
Coveted Threads was created from my love of coveting, the pursuit, the stories I concoct about who owned them, and making them for the woman who is ready to welcome something special to be part of her story.
Every needlepoint and sustainable jacket begins with discovery: Sourced from around the world, each jacket is for the woman becoming her own next chapter—someone who values individuality, artistry and the quiet power of wearing something no one else could ever truly replicate. It sparks conversation and carries meaning.
That’s the heart of Coveted Threads:
Longing to Legacy.
To the women who stitched for us—
We think of you often—though we may never know your names.
Your hands moved with patience, with care, with a quiet devotion to beauty that asked for no audience. Thread by thread, you created something lasting, something intimate—pieces of art meant to live, to be held, to be seen up close, to exist as an expression of your own moment in time.
What you could not have known is that your work would travel.
Decades later, your needlepoints would be found again—rediscovered, reimagined, and brought into a new life. That what you made would not fade, but evolve. That your colors, your choices, your hours of attention would become part of something worn, cherished and carried forward.
Your work is not just preserved—it’s loved. It is chosen again. It is given a new story without ever losing its original soul. And through it, you are remembered—not as anonymous hands, but as creators whose beauty endures.
With deep gratitude,
Amy Cohen, Founder of COVETED THREADS and all the remarkable women who are beginning their NEXT CHAPTER