Ten Designers You Need to Know Now
I've seen the future of fashion, and it's... brilliant?
Hi there! I haven’t done one of my favorite things in a long time: shouting out under-exposed designers and their always-radical wares. If you’re ever confused as to the direction in which the fashion world is heading, look to the crocheters with 1,000 Instagram followers, the Etsy-famous, the Black futurists, and the model-turned-designer anomalies who aren’t topping the SSENSE charts or being featured in any X Under X lists for a true sense of what’s good. Below, ten designers I feel drawn to for their vision, whether it be punctuated by perversion, grounded in romance, or anything in between.
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1. Seeing Red
One of the few designers on this list I have mentioned on this blog before, Seeing Red is a London-based project run by someone possibly named Fred or Fronk (don’t ask me) creating clothes that push GORPiness into a more exciting direction than the wild west of puffer vests and tech logos into which it’s largely devolved. Its future-oriented designs take utilitarian stylings, such as the cropped hems of bomber jackets and the deep pockets of cargo pants, and push them to extremes, making pieces that can feel like anything from an exoskeleton to a disturbed deck of cards. Genderless and androgynous without feeling dour or nonbinary-core in the burlap sack style of the early 2010s, these are the clothes that will carry us into the rest of the Anthropocene, both shielding us from the increasingly volatile climates and providing us with both utility and pleasure as the pair become ever more scarce in the fashion world.
2. Daveed Baptiste
A Haitian designer by way of NYC, Daveed Baptiste creates clothes steeped in Afro-futurism in a way that makes me crave a Samuel R. Delany film adaptation costumed by Baptiste himself. The above “Twin Flame” cargo pants, masterfully styled low-slung with classic plaid boxers puffed out in a decidedly Cronenbergian, Lumps and Bumps-esque fashion (and you know how I feel about Lumps and Bumps), feature a single piping detail that runs across the entire body of the pants, contorting and puddling like the veins of a complex rock formation around the calves and ankles. Baptiste’s designs speak equally to a kind of Dune-ian view of a nature we have not yet witnessed but are creeping into as our tides rise and animal populations grow more desolate with references to both sea and desolate earth baked into his crafty draping, but his clothes are just as human as they are inhuman, evoking the Black Dandy in its elegant peacocking better than almost any fit pulled at this past Met Gala in designs like the below “Accordion Dove” dress shirt. Your assignment for the day is to find a used copy of Babel-17 for $10 (shout out to my friend msw for putting me on to this novel years ago) and tell me I’m right in thinking that we need to make this happen.
3. House of Sassfiend
Tyronecia Moore’s burgeoning brand House of Sassfiend has rightfully popped into the public eye following her creation of a signature baseball cap covered in a crocheted net that reminds me of my skullcap fixation of yore (real Esque heads will know!). The simple but evocative design tempers the buoyancy of a cap with the feminine maturity of a snood or hair net, resulting in an accessory that’s both wearable on an everyday basis and unique enough to elevate and define a casual outfit. I suspect Moore will go on to create more trend-provoking statement pieces that toe the line between intentional and insouciant.
