Each time my thumb strays over to indulge a scroll on my Instagram Explore feed, I’m aghast anew. Despite years of carefully curating who and what I follow – well-outfitted women, Greek beach frequenters, and the occasional British toddler with the vernacular of a posh old man – the algorithm has other plans.
Based on its assessment, a casual observer might conclude my interests lie somewhere between celebrity doppelgängers, clickbait therapy, “7 Things I Know At 33 That I Wish I Knew At 23” lists, and truly rattling news stories that make going to sleep at night more challenging than it should. I haven’t felt this profoundly misunderstood since I spotted a Pandora box with my name beneath the Christmas tree, aged 21.
But I digress. This isn’t about the algorithm’s recent shortcomings nor my parents’ questionable approach to gift-giving, it’s about the Dutch creatives who should be populating your feed instead. Because if you’re going to actively train the algorithm, you may as well steer it towards Europeans with taste.
While Amsterdam often conjures images of canals, cycling, and coffee shops, and is routinely overlooked in the style stakes in favour of neighbours like Paris and Copenhagen, the pearl of the Netherlands holds its own. The tiny capital brims with natural wine bars, cute bookstores, restaurants, and boutiques. On canal-side terraces, genetically blessed inhabitants convene to drink tiny beers, eat bitterballen, and bask in the rare Dutch sun.
The city is also home to a wave of creative minds – designers, photographers, stylists, chefs – each tending to their own beautifully curated corner of the internet. Here are a few worth following, Explore feed be damned.
1. Carmen Atiyah de Baets
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Carmen is the Dutch-Lebanese founder of her namesake guesthouse, shop, and kitchen, CARMEN, housed in a beautifully renovated canal house on the Keizersgracht. She runs the multi-concept space with her husband, chef Joris ter Meulen Swijtink, where, between garden aperitivos, movie nights, and chef pop-ups, they serve the best breakfast in town. Both her personal and business Instagrams are awash with snapshots of a life well lived: holidays to her beloved Beirut, buying trips with friends, and glimpses of her curatorial mastery in the shop, where local labels like Pien Studios and Flore Flore hang out alongside international gems including Gil Rodriguez and SC103. The entire CARMEN enterprise is chic to the max.
2. Lotte Wierenga
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Lotte Wierenga is the Dutch answer to Leandra Medine and easily my most stylish friend. Incredibly gifted in the business of putting together a look, the stylist has a predilection for all things CHANEL and sad girl literature, and her love of fashion is rivalled only by her devotion to the holy union of butter and bread. A scroll in Lotte land includes everything from dahlia and corgi content to joy-inducing outfits and beautiful editorials spanning L’Officiel and our own homegrown Coolpretty.cool.
3. Pien Studios
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In Pien Barendregt’s world, woollen bags resemble mushrooms, elbow gloves are spun from marshmallow-soft mohair, and scrunchies are the size of heads. The Dutch designer founded her eponymous studio out of her bedroom in 2020, and it has since grown to staff a small group of local knitters and weavers. The philosophy “we knit slow” underpins the studio’s work and stands as a well-crafted antidote to the fast-paced fashion industry. Come for the NYT-approved bonnets, stay for the beaded coffee coasters and high-concept shoots created with friend and collaborator Max van Namen.
4. Flore Flore
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Dutch designer Flòrian van Zuilen believes that the simpler something is, the harder it is to achieve. Following that logic, she’s accomplished the impossible: creating the elusive perfect cotton T-shirt. Since launching her brand, Flore Flore, in 2021, her understated wardrobe staples have been worn by discerning cool girls everywhere, from Diana Bartlett and Lazlo Badet to Kendall Jenner and Coco Baudelle. Live out your balletcore dreams in the kind of cotton pieces some of us spend a lifetime searching for.
5. Juliette Koole
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Juliette is a model, dancer, and one of the brains behind Villa Lagi, a family-owned guesthouse and creative retreat among the vineyards in Piemonte. Her Instagram is a happy melange of kitchen dance breaks, Italian travels, cute 'fits, and sunny dispatches from the Italian renovations. Follow along if you, like the rest of us, are powerless in the face of some good villa-in-the-making content.
6. Bonnie Langedijk
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Bonnie Langedijk is the founder of HURS Official and one of Amsterdam’s sharpest minds. With a background in fashion publishing and art direction, she launched HURS in 2022 as a digital platform celebrating women’s stories through a style lens. It’s fresh, smart, and chic; a space where discourse around the cultural shift toward personal branding coexists with deep dives into whether the aesthetics of food are ruining the enjoyment of it. Being in possession of an encyclopaedic knowledge of art, design, and fashion herself, her personal Instagram is also well worth a follow: part visual diary, part mood board, all extremely tasteful.
7. Nurcan Tuzkapan
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Nurcan is the powerhouse behind Studio3000, the larger-than-life space in Amsterdam Noord that's played host to shoots, brand launches, and incredibly chic dinners. What started as a love of vintage has become a full-blown prop house and creative studio, all wrapped into one very photogenic “700m2 space for big thinkers”. Her feed also features all the things you want to see as you scroll: seaside Italian scenes playing out under the hot summer sun, glimpses inside trés stylish hotels, and many, many cool vacay looks.
8. Julia Khan Anselmo
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There’s no more coveted dinner invitation in Amsterdam than one from Julia Khan Anselmo. The Canadian-born chef and creative director launched Feisty Feast in Vancouver in 2013, and has since brought it to Amsterdam, where she hosts culinary experiences centred on women-led conversation and connection. A true multi-hyphenate, she also creates events for brands like ASICS, Maha Amsterdam, and Rosewood Hotels, and designs perfect summer staples under her label LAASOO. Born to host, Julia recently restored one of Amsterdam’s oldest Rijksmonuments with her husband, Jasper. These days, you’ll often find friends gathered around their marble table, lingering over lovingly, and elaborately, cooked dinners prepared by Julia herself.
9. Sabine Marcelis
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New Zealand–Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis is best known for her dreamy, light-responsive work in resin, glass, and high-gloss pastel tones. A veteran of Salone del Mobile and a fixture on the international design scene, she was recently commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum to design a sculptural, stackable chair for their FONDA café. She lives in Rotterdam with her architect husband, Paul Cournet, in a wildly chic former paper factory that the pair transformed into a luminous, open-plan loft; zoned not by walls but by colour, material, and geometry — pink resin volumes and curved glass dividers in constant conversation with the light. It’s part home, part immersive art installation, and all very Sabine. Her Instagram itself is a mix of process shots, pastel design moments, and interiors to screenshot and intermittently obsess over until the end of time.
10. Linda Schraner
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By way of Switzerland and Spain, Linda Schraner has settled, at least for now, between Paris and Amsterdam, making her an honorary Dutch-y in our books. A designer with a background in textile research and fashion theory, she’s interested in clothes that move with the body and say something about it. Her work often veers sculptural, with an eye for twisting, pressing, and reshaping familiar forms. As one half of Studio Ventisei, she crafts limited-edition knitwear that feels tactile and sensual, and her Instagram is a supremely chic portal into her world: process shots, expert styling, and the kind of aesthetically moreish inspirations that underscore her work.
11. Maxime van Namen
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Maxime van Namen’s photography has the girlhood energy of a Sofia Coppola film or a Petra Collins universe, although decidedly more pared-back. Based in Amsterdam, the creative director and photographer has a particular talent for capturing women in various states of unencumbered ease. She’s helped shape the visual worlds of some of the city’s most beloved brands (see above: Flore Flore, Pien Studios, CARMEN) and has lensed campaigns for international favourites like Paris Georgia and Saks Potts. Her portfolio is interspersed with dreamy, transportive dispatches from elsewhere: lace curtains, tailored cotton shirts, seasonal produce, and holiday martinis. A mood and a moodboard.
12. May Liok
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May Liok is the talented pair of hands behind a growing collection of sculptural ceramics, all handcrafted in her Amsterdam studio. Toeing the line between sculpture and object, her pieces are bold and abstract in form, but always playful — often with bits of rope, fabric, or metal folded in for good measure. Her ceramics have shown up on shelves at CARMEN, and her Instagram is a calm, tactile corner of the internet.
13. Sabrina Meijer
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Once the voice behind cult fashion blog afterDRK, Sabrina Meijer has long had a knack for capturing beauty in the everyday. These days she’s focused on REYEM, the slow-fashion label she founded in Amsterdam, and her recently launched Substack, Style, Unfiltered, where she pokes around the archives of her personal style in an attempt to reconnect with self-expression through fashion. Her style leans classic but never boring; a mix of sharp tailoring, cotton basics, and low-key luxury.
14. Iman Whitfield
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If you’ve admired a beautifully art-directed campaign coming out of Amsterdam lately, chances are Iman Whitfield had something to do with it. The creative director and founder of Studio Whitfield works across film, photography, brand identity, and styling, and her output always feels cinematic yet considered. She’s worked with brands like Patta, Filling Pieces, and Ace & Tate, often bringing a distinctly atmospheric touch to whatever she’s building. She also happens to have a penchant for interiors, with evidence of that freckled throughout her feed.
15. Sander Lak
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Sander Lak, the former design director of Sies Marjan, is back at it with a namesake label that debuts during Paris Men’s Week this June. Trained at Central Saint Martins, he spent five transformative years at Dries Van Noten before reinventing Sies Marjan. His new label, Sanderlak, will centre each collection on one global city, starting with Los Angeles, using local materials, crafts, and collaborators to bring a deeper sense of place to tailoring and ready-to-wear. Needless to say, we’re here for it.
16. Jill Kortleve
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If her Insta bio is anything to believe, Jill Kortleve is just a girl in the world. But those who follow along (300k and counting) know she’s so much more. The Dutch model has walked for Chanel, been a key fixture for Alexander McQueen, fronted campaigns for Fendi and Mugler, and graced the covers of Vogue more times than we can count. Equal parts supermodel and internet friend, her feed is a mix of high fashion moments, barefaced selfies, and holiday postcards that‘ll make you feel some type of way.
17. Yin Fung
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Yin Fung is the Amsterdam-based editorial assistant at ELLE Netherlands and the type of gal to make conscious fashion feel cool, minus the preaching. She has a soft spot for small, sustainable labels and is known to hunt down gems on Vinted and Vestiaire with the skill of a seasoned pro. She once described her vibe as “cool Asian auntie” energy, which feels entirely apt. Style inspo, including tonal chocolate brown looks, capri pants, and a-line skirts, incoming…
18. Veerle Formannoij
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Introducing your new beauty fix: Veerle Formannoij’s Instagram page. The Amsterdam-based set designer and image director has a background at Vogue Netherlands and now spends her days styling objects—books, lipsticks, bags—with the kind of aesthetically pleasing know-how only someone with The Eye could pull off.
19. Gijsje Ribbens
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Meet Gijsje Ribbens, the image director behind your favourite Dutch brand, Kassl Editions, and the founder of RiRa Objects, “a destination for extremely cheering contemporary home objects from the Low Countries.” A former fashion editor turned visual curator, she brings an editorial sharpness to everything she touches, from buttery trench coats to sculptural soap dishes. Taste with a capital T.
20. Iefke de Roos
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Iefke is the wizard behind The English Boys, a compendium of handmade ceramics that embrace irregularity and imperfection. In her words: “Imagine delicate feminine ceramics heading out and meeting the likes of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney in ‘60s London and forming an irresistible pair.” I don’t think I’ve ever pined for a ceramic more in my life — so you can imagine my elation when, for my 30th birthday, a dear friend gifted me not one, but two, of her precious pieces.
