Is Edikted, Gen-Z’s Favorite Fashion Brand, Israeli?

I will admit, I had no clue that the fashion brand Edikted (pronounced, yes, “addicted”) even existed until my colleague Daci told me about it after spotting gaggles of teens proudly carrying its bags at the Mall of America. Perusing its website, I immediately had visceral flashbacks to my uncomfortable mid-noughties wardrobe and to the feeling of pulling up pants that had no business being that low-rise and shirts that had no business showing that much midriff without being a crop top. (I was obviously a cargo pants and band-t-shirt girl trying to be something I was not.)

But as they say in French, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose — and what was once peak fashion in the Y2K era is now peak fashion again. Edikted is the latest fashion craze among Gen Z-ers, who flock the shop’s multiple U.S. (and one U.K.!) locations and order ceaselessly from its pink online shopfront, which is adorned by skinny models showing aforementioned midriffs and takes me back to watching Britney Spears videos on repeat. Rumblings on the internet have deemed Edikted to be an Israeli brand — but is that true? The website’s “about” section is pretty opaque, so let’s investigate.

Is Edikted an Israeli brand?

Edikted’s headquarters are in Los Angeles. While the brand was founded in Tel Aviv in 2020, it soon moved its headquarters to the U.S., and its primary focus is the American market (though it has branched out to Europe, as previously stated, and does ship worldwide). It also has offices in Ramat Gan, Israel. The clothes, like with most brands that change their inventory at a fast pace, are not manufactured stateside; they’re made China, Turkey and Spain. The leadership behind the brand — like CEO Dedy Shwartzberg and COO Zvika Alon — are indeed Israeli.

So the TL;DR is: Edikted is a U.S.-headquartered brand that has an office in Israel and is headed by an Israeli CEO and COO.

Who are the founders of Edikted?

Researching this piece, I had no idea that I would not just get triggering flashbacks to my early 2000s fashion, but to mid-2010s Israeli mall-meanderings, where the neon sign for a store called Adika shone bright. Those who took walks in Soho in the late 2010s might remember the Adika store on Broadway.

The brand, founded in 2012, was spearheaded by CEO Dedy Shwartzberg, who would go on to found Edikted with many others who previously worked for Adika.

In 2020, Adika got some international fame when popular social media personality Charli D’Amelio wore a white crop top of theirs on one of her dance videos, making it one of the hit fashion items of that season.

However, drama started brewing when the people running Adika and Golf (the company that had purchased the brand in 2015) had very differing opinions of where the brand should go. Golf wanted to focus on the local Israeli market, while Adika’s leadership wanted to turn their eyes to a very lucrative international — and specifically U.S. — market.

It all came to a head in April of 2020, when the company’s leadership, Shwartzberg and his second in command, Alon, all quit, dooming Adika to a slow death. The brand is defunct as of 2023. We all can guess what happened next.

When was Edikted founded?

Edikted was founded by Shwartzberg and other members of the Adika team in 2020 and started selling clothes in early 2021. “Within the first month [January 2021], our KPIs were 10 times greater than what we had expected,” Shwartzberg told Glossy.

What’s the secret to Edikted’s success?

Edikted seems to have a really amazing understanding of its Gen-Z clientele, how they shop and what they’re looking for.

They send packages to influencers and celebrities like Addison Rae and share images of influencers in their swag.

Their packaging is bright, pink and recognizable, making for a fun unpacking experience. They move at a fast pace with the trends.

These are all lessons the team seems to have learned when working with Adika, but honed in over half a decade of running Edikted, with sales that appear to grow every year, despite brands with similar aesthetics (RIP Forever 21) floundering. In recent months, it opened shops in Chicago’s Oakbrook Center and Houston’s The Galleria.

Edikted and its Y2K aesthetics really don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.