Devina Louise was founded in 2016 by Devina Hofste. Born in Cairns to a German mother and an Austrian father, she spent her early childhood in Germany before returning to Australia and being raised in the harbourside Sydney suburb of Mosman.

She grew up hearing about her great-grandmother Gertrude, who lived in Gronau, a small German textile town on the Dutch border. Gertrude raised four children there and made every piece of their Sunday best. She wasn't a trained seamstress. She'd taught herself. She loved textiles and would often mix several in a single piece. Women in the town asked where the children's clothes came from and wanted to buy them. She chose never to sell a piece.

Years later, early in her own design career, an internship brought Devina to Vienna, close to where her father had grown up. The experience pushed her the other way. So much of what she saw was about the show, not about whether the clothes were practical to wear. In 2016 she came home thinking she was done with fashion. But she wasn't done making clothes.

From her great-grandmother Gertrude she learned that when fabric is chosen well and handled with care, it does most of the work. From Vienna she learned restraint, after seeing what happens when clothes are made to be looked at instead of worn. That is why what Devina Louise makes is wearable and restrained: classic cuts in the best fabrics we can find, built to be worn for years rather than retired next season.