These are up-and-coming designers to know (and shop).
WORDS BY HALIE LESAVAGE.
Image credit: GETTY IMAGES
There’s a misconception that only one or two major fashion cities are known for emerging talent. But fresh ideas and deeply original personal style aren’t limited to a single Fashion Week, as the best new designers of 2023 prove.
New names reinvigorating the industry come from every corner of the world—and bring highly specific points of view with them. Paolina Russo offered folkloric twists on stretchy knitwear and printed leather in Copenhagen. Fforme transfixed New York City with its elegant matching separates, while Grace Ling and Kate Barton turned the staid eveningwear category into a playground for sexy surrealism. In Milan, Karoline Vitto emphasized the power of the female form with alluring cutouts and sensually tailored dresses, modeled by a refreshingly size-inclusive cast.
These designers are a sample of 13 new brands innovating in fashion by simply, yet radically, being themselves. Get to know each one below.
Paolina Russo
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It didn’t take long for Paolina Russo’s forward-looking knitwear to make waves in fashion’s inner circles. With just a few seasons under its woven belts and cutout ribbed knit dresses, the label has already been named a finalist for the 2023 Woolmark prize and awarded the inaugural Zalando Visionary Award in partnership with Copenhagen Fashion Week.
The early hype is earned: Combining references as disparate as French folklore, youth recreational soccer, cave drawings, and early-’00s spinning top toys known as Beyblades, Russo and co-founder Lucile Guilmard create techy knitted separates and soccer-cleat-studded corsets that cleverly merge their personal pasts with the future of fashion. Their vision for spring 2024 also had one of the most inclusive runways by every metric—even choosing a large venue to allow fans from beyond the fashion industry to sit in on the show.
The Garment
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The Garment refers to itself as a “monochrome universe,” and under the direction of Sophia Roe and Charlotte Eskildsen, it’s one all minimalists will want to live in. While collections are largely constrained to a black, white, and occasionally washed-pastel palette, the smart layering and prevalence of exciting textures never allows it to feel boring. Case in point: The Copenhagen-based label’s spring/summer 2024 show displayed lace doily tops and color-blocked midi skirts, flowing tunics over coordinating pants, and a selection of exquisitely tailored car coats.
Karoline Vitto
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Karoline Vitto’s designs emphasize and celebrate parts of the female form that other designers cover up—curves, rolls, and folds are the focal point. Long, charm-adorned cutouts and close-hugging silhouettes are signatures of her brand, which covers U.S. sizes 4–24 and is always modeled on curvy bodies. After an exciting runway debut at London’s Fashion East collective in 2022, Vitto held a show at Milan Fashion Week for the spring/summer 2024 season with support from Dolce & Gabbana.
Veronica De Piante
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Veronica De Piante opened its virtual doors in 2022, but it has a sensibility that feels utterly timeless across its outerwear, knits, and evening dresses. You can easily see yourself passing down De Piante’s double-breasted leather jacket or floor-length red silk gown for generations. These pieces, and the entirety of the collection, are made in small batches by family-run factories in Italy.
Fforme
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A lot of labels claim to have perfected the so-called capsule wardrobe. Fforme has actually done it, but not in a way that feels formulaic.
“At the end, what I try to do is break down rules, and with that comes a different way of dressing. There is a kind of freedom in that,” creative director Paul Helbers said in his spring 2024 show notes. A rethinking of the modular wardrobe manifested on Fforme’s inaugural Fashion Week runway through layered and overlapping separates in cream, mauve, and black; the asymmetric dresses and loose trousers were relaxed, but not “easy.” Elevated hybridity was also part of the offering, as in a dress that could transform into a breezy tunic through hidden zippers. Here, dressing intelligently can also mean dressing elegantly.
Conner Ives
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Conner Ives’s vision of eco-responsible fashion doesn’t skimp on a sense of fun. The designer has repurposed nearly 15,000 T-shirts bound for scrapyards since 2021; his reimaginings have included splicing them into patchwork dresses and cutting and resewing them into other tops.
For spring 2024, Ives replaced a live runway show with a lookbook narrated by an AI Carrie Bradshaw. Titled “Late Capitalism,” the collection drew on modern fashion-girl archetypes inspired by an unlikely source: “a TikTok I saw of a girl in New York waiting in a long line for a sample sale at Dover Street Market,” he told Bazaar. “It was during the time that the Canadian wildfires turned the sky in the city orange. An impending ecological crisis serving as the backdrop to one of the industry’s many ‘not-to-miss’ consumerist moments, seemed to sum up the cultural mood.” To capture this highly specific moment, Ives partnered with Depop to source deadstock and raw materials for the line.
Grace Ling
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Grace Ling was one of the most anticipated runway debuts at New York Fashion Week in September. At first glance, her collection delivered a futuristic spin on eveningwear, with freaky metal embellishments and sheer ribbed fabrics. Breaking down each look, Ling pointed out that her designs have their basis in extremely wearable pieces like trousers, blazers, and comfortable skirts. Combining chicly utilitarian pieces with surrealist hardware, “I see [my collection] as a uniform for the cultured modern person—a lifestyle and witty spirit that holds an ongoing dialogue with the world of art, sustainability, and multifaceted fashion,” she said.
Hodakova
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Hodakova describes itself on Instagram simply as “converted goods.” This is maybe underselling the exciting proposition from Stockholm-based designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson. Hodakova is another proponent of using deadstock and upcycled materials, but the final garments combine minimalism and eccentricity in a way that feels fresh. See the designer’s debut at Paris Fashion Week for the spring/summer 2024 season, where column skirts came with hemlines fashioned to look like trouser waistbands and one standout dress was entirely constructed from pens. In the currently shoppable collection, twisted T-shirts and trouser cargo skirts make the same cheeky twists on recognizable wardrobe classics.
Dauphinette
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Attending a Dauphinette show can sometimes feel like a healing ASMR session. Designer Olivia Cheng is a genius at upcycling, and her latest collection continued her streak of coating dresses, shoes, and bags in repurposed beads and resin-preserved objects that make a joyful pattering noise as they glide by. Dauphinette is whimsical and bright, but never predictable; Cheng’s use of buttons, plates, and even eggshell embellishments guarantee it. The designer has a fitting term for her imaginatively decorated garments and colorful jewelry: “living artworks.”
Diotima
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There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Diotima, helmed by LVMH Prize semifinalist Rachel Scott. Her signature crochet with ruffles undulating like sea creatures has been worn by everyone from Gabrielle Union to Letitia Wright to Doja Cat. As acclaim has grown for her sequin-dotted netted dresses and tailoring inventively spliced with crochet, Scott has kept a deeply personal reference point—her Jamaican heritage—at the heart of each design. In each and every Diotima collection, each piece’s foundational crochet is handmade by local artisans in Jamaica.
Interior
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At Interior, Bode and Trademark alums Jack Miner and Lily Miesmer are creating a singular brand of nouveau Americana. The collections contain a few hallmarks of classic sportswear like blazers and cotton poplin shirting, but ’80s exaggerated shapes and lookbooks winking to pop culture (in spring 2024’s case, teen movies from the aforementioned decade) add a wry sense of humor to the lineup. Best of all are the inflections of satin and lace for women who are dressing to be the main character.
Kate Barton
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You can get a sense for Kate Barton’s ambitions by listening to the playlist at her collection previews. Early-’00s Britney, Christina, and Beyoncé all appear—and Barton’s dresses are fit for modern pop divas. Specifically, Barton uses an innovative draping technique that makes dresses and separates flow like water from a single piece of fabric. Minis come in sticky green sequins and a leatherlike lavender material; liquid metal silver and patent black are also in the mix. Paired with detachable metal embellishments and quirky resin bags, the resulting pieces look like they belong on the VMAs red carpet—or in the closet of a woman who wants to channel her inner award winner on her next night out.
Mark Kenly Domino Tan
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Mark Kenly Domino Tan isn’t new in the usual sense; the brand officially launched in 2014. But a recent shakeup bringing Caroline Engelgaar to the helm as creative director justifies the Copenhagen-based label’s presence on this list. The new era at this Scandinavian staple comes with a precise focus on tailoring and refined yet unexpected layering, with results that could take over an entire work wardrobe. See: this blue poplin look from the spring/summer 2024 runway, one of several that used a tightly edited palette to emphasize the shape and structure of the garments.
This story first appeared on harpersbazaar.com
