Buzzy clothing brand for teens and tweens has a secret weapon: A 16-year-old designer

Ariella Maizner is sew talented.

At age 6, she took her first sewing class and discovered a natural affinity.

At age 9, she launched her own fashion line, Theme, after friends started asking about the feminine frocks she was making and wearing to birthday parties and bat mitzvahs.

Initially, she tie-dyed shirts on the roof of her family’s Manhattan apartment to sell at boutiques and pop-ups. When she was 10, Rent the Runway invited her to show a collection of sequined hoodies and matching skirts at New York Fashion Week.

Now, at age 16, Maizner has a growing brand that’s sold at more than 200 boutiques across the country, as well as in department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. Her clothes have been seen on Zaya Wade — the daughter of actress Gabrielle Union and basketball star-turned-Utah Jazz co-owner Dwayne Wade — and TikTok influencer Charli D’Amelio. She’s collaborated with the likes of Walmart and State and recently debuted a line of beaded bracelets and charm necklaces for teen mall brand Claire’s.

“Ever since I was little, I played dress up,” Maizner, a sophomore at a Manhattan public high school, told The Post. “I thought, ‘Oh, if I can make my own clothes, that would be so cool!’” 

The first piece she finished was a rainbow-striped maxi dress with a matching belt. Soon, she was sewing herself frocks for her friends’ birthday parties and other events — and getting lots of requests from others who wanted clothes like hers. 

“That’s when I was like, ‘I want to make a brand,’ because everyone asked me to make things for them,” Maizner said. When she told her mother, Debbi Maizner, then a CMO at JPMorgan Chase, she wanted to start her own line, Debbi was cautious but encouraging. 

“I told her: ‘We live in the best city in the world. You should meet people and learn from them,’” Debbi — who now handles operations for Theme — told The Post. “It started as a journey to just support her interests.”

Maizner often would DM designers and entrepreneurs she admired on Instagram and ask to meet with them. “I would bring all the clothes I sewed and lay them all out, and [they would invite] their whole team to come in, and they would just connect me with other people and give me really good advice that motivated me,” Maizner said.

“When I first met Ariella I was struck by how young she was, but how she knew exactly what she wanted to do,” Minkoff told The Post.

Theme is unabashedly girly: tiered ruffled skirts with lace trim, sequin-studded strapless party frocks, frilly tops and tie-dye hoodies and loungewear in pastel hues. Yet Maizner prizes comfort and versatility. Tops come with detachable, adjustable spaghetti straps; skirts have shorts attached to them. 

One of those designers was Rebecca Minkoff, who has become a key supporter of Maizner’s work.

“A really big thing is making sure the clothes are comfortable and the girls feel confident in what they wear,” Maizner said. “Because I think that’s like the biggest thing when you wear clothes: feeling good and feeling yourself.

While Maizner sits in on business meetings, provides feedback to manufacturers and helps conceptualize the brand’s photo shoots, Debbi wants to make sure she has time to be a normal teen.

“I want to let her be a kid,” she said.

Maizner competes on her school’s basketball team, runs track and field and plays tennis. Her favorite subjects are math and photography. On weekends, she goes vintage shopping with her friends and hangs out in the West Village.

And, in between all that, she works on her fashion line. She creates mood boards with vintage photos for inspiration. She sketches silhouettes and sends them, along with color swatches, to the various manufacturers she works with. She tests fabrics and examines every single stitch.

Yet Maizner told The Post that she doesn’t think of designing as work. 

“Whenever I have nothing after school, I want to go to sewing class, because it’s my happy place,” she said. “Honestly, it doesn’t feel like a lot to fit in, because I really like doing it. It just feels fun.”

She involves her friends and sisters in the process as much as possible — fittings are like parties. And her rambunctious 7-year-old sister, Noa, is one of her best fit models.

“She gives us really honest advice,” Maizner said with a laugh. “We always say if she can do a cartwheel in it then it passes the test.”