“I’ve known fashion pretty much my whole life,” stylist Ivy Coco Maurice tells ESSENCE over the phone. She’s in Jamaica working on a research project, which is the Island she spent most of her summers growing up. It’s also where the Jamaican-American learned about fashion in the first place.
“My grandmother was a designer and she has the title of being the pioneer of fashion in Jamaica,” she says. Her grandmother, Ivy Ralph, created a menswear suit called the Kareeba, right after Jamaica established its independence in 1962. The suit gained acclaim in the 1970s when Michael Manley, then Prime Minister of Jamaica, popularized Ralph’s original design.
“It basically changed and redefined how people saw independence, especially for Black nations, Black islands,” she says. To the point, the Kareeba was featured in the Costume Institute’s “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” exhibition which raised a record-breaking $31 million dollars at the 2025 Met Gala.
As a child, she would spend time in her grandmother’s shop after school. Then, early in the morning, would wake up to the sounds of sewing machines and Christian music. Walking into the cutting room in their home, “I would take the scraps and try and make my own pieces of garments,” she says. “I would mess up the sewing machines,” she laughs, as her grandmother tried to teach her hand sewing and bagging up clothes for special orders to get her off the machines.
As she grew up, Maurice went to school for Retail Management and Economics at Syracuse, then somewhere down the line, ended up assistant styling a Calvin Harris and Rihanna music video “This Is What You Came For.” Styling 150 people for a party scene, “I knew that I was never going to be a stylist,” she says. It wasn’t until after college did she start to pursue creative marketing and gaining recognition from one of her most famous clients yet: her mother.
“You’re helping so many of these other people and brands with their vision,” she recalls her mother, Sheryl Lee Ralph, telling her. “Help me.” So, she did. “At first, I was very scared to work with her,” she admits. While she technically started styling her mother in 2018 for her podcast, it wasn’t until 2021, when Ralph began starring as “Barbara Howard” in the ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary, did Maurice have access to notable designers.
Now, going on six years later, “it’s just really been a beautiful experience,” Maurice reflects. More than just a mother-daughter relationship, she says other mature women see how she styles her 69-year-old mother which she’s fallen in love with. “We’ve redefined the fashion of a certain age,” she says, teaching mature women, through her mother, the most important fashion lessons: “The best accessory in fashion is when you’re wearing the garments, not the garments wearing you.”
One of her favorite examples is when she styled Ralph for her Supporting Actress win at the Critics Choice Awards in 2023. “She had this speech where it was like, ‘they don’t have to like you. They don’t have to love you,’” Maurice recalls. “That dress was actually an ode to her gold dress she wore opening night of Dreamgirls that had the very similar texture and fabrics.”
The following year, Maurice styled her in a custom Versace gown at the Emmys. The dress was long, black, and form-fitting with an elongated rhinestone trim that formed two tassels at the back. With the look, she paired Cartier jewelry (both silver and gold): three over-lapping bracelets, stacked rings, and a trio of earrings.
A third look she recalled was a casual yellow Altuzarra dress and burgundy St. John boots for Daytime Television early 2025. “She was super chill, super relaxed,” Maurice says. “I love that she can go from being super chill to super dressed up.”
While in their fittings, Maurice says her mother often turns on black-and-white movies which inspires her references across decades. “I think Turner Classic movies is probably the number one thing that plays,” she says. “We’re usually looking at fashion from certain decades, from period pieces, and watching old movies, looking at the garments,” and remembering the iconic costuming the industry often forgets.
“I take a lot of pride in archives. I take a lot of pride in going into different types of consignment shops and [looking through] magazines,” she says. And, of course, her familial and cultural roots. “I definitely see myself as an archivist because I actually hold a lot of pieces from my grandmother’s collections in the ’70s.”
And, even her mother’s personal wardrobe. “I just remember my mom being out of town and I would go through her closet and I would try on clothes from different eras of her life,” she says as one of her childhood memories. “I believe in preserving the past and I believe in history.”
At this year’s SAG Actor Awards, for example, the theme was 1920s. “That one was everywhere,” she says. “When people give a theme, one thing about Sheryl Lee Ralph she wants to commit.” While other actors gave modern interpretations of their fashion, Ralph embodied what the style was at its core: a raging white boa included.
The same whimsy she had at the Actor Awards could be said for her look at this year’s Critics Choice Awards as well. There, Maurice styled her in a Tony Ward couture piece. “It had these 3D embellishments on it, this cranberry haltered neck dress, and she had a gorgeous ponytail,” she recalls. With her hands tucked into her dress’ pockets, “she was able to twirl and people were like, ‘oh, this is whimsy. This is the whimsy that we were missing in fashion.’”
Like her grandmother, who redefined suiting, and her mother, with who she mastered dressing women over 60 (while remaining whimsical), Maurice’s career is leading her back home. “I’ve been working with two girls here in Jamaica,” she says, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Lila Iké and reggae artist Naomi Cowan, the daughter of reggae icons Tommy Cowan and Carlene Davis.
“I’m almost redefining the female fashion of reggae in a way, which I think is really cool,” Maurice says. At the same time, she’s busy reimagining her grandmother’s historic atelier, House of Ivy. At the end of the day, “it’s really just a blessing to have more reasons to come back home.”
