Kiko Kostadinov (Q4935)
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Kiko Kostadinov is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Kiko Kostadinov |
Kiko Kostadinov is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Just before this show took off, an Australian-accented announcement over the PA urged us to ensure that our essential items were in hand, plus to place any bulky items in the overhead lockers. The opening looks were made up of a series of sportily piped viscose suiting with utility details that were accessorized with rakishly eye-obscuring pillbox hats in Pan Am blue, beehive wigs, and silky scarfs shot with metal that had been twisted to have the flyaway élan of the Petit Prince. Combined with the double-face and bicolored coats that cocooned the wearer in drape and featured an inbuilt head covering that we saw later, we started to suspect we were flying somewhere over deeply filtered Pierre Cardin territory: nostalgic futurism.Backstage, Deanna Fanning said, “We were thinking about identity in moments of transit and transience.” The aviation details, she added, were significant to one of the characters she and her sister, Laura, had created as imagined ciphers upon which to hang this collection. Another character, they added, was a collector of memories: This explained the house-developed postage-stamp prints on double-front Belstaff-ish moto jackets and zippered jeans developed in collaboration with Levi’s. Apparently, the designers had to explain the archaic concept of stamps to some of their interns.A third character was dubbed “the warrior.” As well as wearing the vaguely armor-ish metal mesh pieces that also sometimes seemed deconstructed from a moto starting point, she battled through in flowingly flou bias-cut dresses in jewel-toned satins. “We’re thinking about movement and how sometimes it can be really tough to occupy space, or feel like you shouldn’t occupy it,” said Deanna. This was a precisely piloted exploration of nostalgia-shot maximalist liminal-ism that you could see the brand’s many fans being enthusiastically on board for.
1 October 2024
Kiko Kostadinov must be menswear’s most inventive young pattern cutter. He’s certainly one of the most capable.He showed his spring collection this morning at a venue on Rue Férou, the famous Paris street that once housed the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Man Ray and has the words of Arthur Rimbaud’s “Le Bateau Ivre” emblazoned on one of its walls. But the place he approached this collection from was far less artistic and more scientific.“I’m growing into a certain age,” said Kostadinov backstage, “I’m not old; I’m 34, but I think of people who are obsessed with their health, and also the people around me who got me thinking about different institutions,” he said of the hospital, clinics, and laboratories that occupied his mind. “You forget how related we all are to these places,” he said, continuing to explain that he considered the different roles in these spaces: doctors, researchers, caretakers, patients. Yet this wasn’t a conversation about mortality but rather about longevity: “I listened to this podcast that talked about how you can now live until 90, but that you don’t know how your final years may be,” said the ever reflective designer. “It’s health span, not lifespan. You have to do a lot work way in advance when you’re in your 30s or 40s if you want to have some enjoyable last few years.”Kostadinov seems to be taking this same approach at setting up his brand for the future. “Last season was about building Kiko signatures, so now I wanted to expand them,” he said. Such was the case with the clever diagonal snap-dart construction of his opening jacket and trousers, which came from another outerwear piece from his spring 2018 collection, or of his “K” exposed darting applied to the front of double cap-sleeve T-shirts and on the shoulders of jackets. So ingenious is Kostadinov that even his equivalent to a logo is subtle and primarily technical, even if his deft pattern work is mostly decorative rather than functional.If the designer was at any point literal with the results of his clinical and scientific probe, it would have been in the graphics of sci-fi looking liposomes scattered over two looks. “It’s a new way of consuming drugs, and it’s something so new but I think it will be present in the next 10 or 20 years,” he said. There were also scrubs and lab-coat-looking styles he scattered through the lineup and styled with puffy surgical caps.
Except that the caps were down gilets folded into themselves and around the head, and the clinical cleanliness of these looks was intervened with colorful stripes (Kostadinov does not get enough credit for his meticulous color work).Such is the charm of Kostadinov. What has made him a prominent if often quiet voice in menswear today is not just his technical skill but his subtlety. His clothes appear unfussy and unchallenging at face value, despite the amount of thought that has gone into them. That’s likely why the group of reporters listening intently to this season’s elucidation reacted in awe backstage when he calmly declared that this collection was finished in two weeks after the scrapping of his last experiment.
22 June 2024
For fall, Laura and Deanna Fanning said they were exploring dichotomies and contrast, and if some of the all-black looks in this lineup appear pared back on-screen, that's not minimalist—it’s creative sleight of hand, they said. They prefer the term “modular.”Backstage before the show, the designers said they wanted to explore the tension between fragility and clothing-as-armor: a black dress was sliced to reveal flashes of skin as its wearer moved, for example. Elsewhere, in lieu of openwork, inverted pleats revealed contrasting colors beneath, while coated cotton coats that fastened at the chin were structured by graphic trim. Also armor-like was a three-piece suit done in denim, a collaboration with Levi's.Highlights included the Aran knits, in mustard or red, engineered with big, pleated shoulders, long sleeves and an interesting mix of chainmail and ribbed textures. Though the designers said that they liked throwing together colors that don't intuitively belong together, the exercise in color-blocking mostly worked. A series of curvilinear panel dresses, alternating between sheer and opaque, will likely connect with the label’s base. So, too, might the sailor striped dress with pinched lines, and some of those throw-on, draped “shield” tops.The overall impression, however, was uneven: if the designers had settled on any one (or two, or three) of the ideas, it would have been enough.
5 March 2024
Having just set up a Paris outpost, Kiko Kostadinov is “stepping into a new chapter.” Whereas past outings have referenced characters from books, movies, or his imagination, the designer said that this season felt like the right time to look back on his own output and reconsider certain themes. In his show notes, he described the effort as “an aggregate manifesto of gestures and forms.”In a season awash in earth tones, the designer made a bid for “letting the eye travel through color” by punching looks up with shots of anise, neon green, and washed-out pinks and blues, worn in layers or worked in stripes. Rather than emblazon his clothes with a logo or lettering, the designer fine-tuned darting techniques that etch out aKin fabric, part of his research into “building a new language and claiming space rather than changing every season.” A “blurred” floral print jacquard also felt fresh, as did a series of leather bags strung, candy-like, with colorful plastic rings. Those returned on a series of “crown” headpieces in felt by Noi Kamo—which gave the brand’s followers not one rising talent to watch, but two.
21 January 2024
Sonia Delaunay’s 1920s stripes, Madeleine Vionnet’s 1930s draping, Adeline André’s 1980s patchwork—Laura and Deanna Fanning’s female-centric references returned in abundance for spring, ushering in a softer take on their off-kilter brand of cool-girl style. “We’re always drawn to what women have done in fashion throughout history,” said Laura at a preview. “We look backward to look forward,” added her twin sister, Deanna. Their references felt even more potent in a season that has witnessed big-name female designers exiting major luxury houses, with rumors rife that they will be swiftly replaced in those positions by male juniors.The Australians’ experiments with ephemerality gave their collection a grown-up edge that set the tone for their first appearance on the official PFW schedule. They’ve built a loyal following in recent years with their playful, new-gen take on glamour—and their covetable accessories. Off the back of the success of the Trivia bag (carried by It girl Iris Law and DJ duo Simi & Haze), the Amlen pochette is dangling from well-dressed hips and shoulders (FYI, they revisited it for spring in brightly colored perforated suede). Down below, the Lella, a hybrid ballet slipper–cum–driving shoe with grosgrain ribbon tie-ups, was adorning the feet of the eclectic crowd of tastemakers who turned up in force to support the designers at the Palais de Tokyo show space.The sisters’ draped pieces stood out for spring and lent a faintly futuristic tinge thanks to a shiny cotton-nylon that they used for more conventional rippling camisoles and dresses, and for twisting into trousers, some punked up a little with zip details. Equally persuasive were the lightweight trench coats in a cotton-viscose woven with steel, the metal giving the fabric an artfully crumpled quality that was equal parts delicate and attitudinal. That contrast gets to the heart of what makes their Kiko collections so compelling. “We really want the brand to feel real and authentic, but we also believe in a vision and a dream. When you lose that in fashion, it can be very sad,” remarked Deanna in her singsong Aussie lilt. For those front-rowers calling for more female designers, it’s reassuring to know there are some rising stars already well versed in what their audience wants and needs.
3 October 2023
“Clothes about characters, and clothes about clothes,” read a line in the show notes placed on each seat at Kiko Kostadinov’s spring show this morning. Ah, at last! Clothes aboutclothes. During a menswear season that has mostly revolved around spectacle, it was energizing to witness Kostadinov’s commitment to making subtle yet conspicuous pieces.Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini’sLa Ricotta(1962) served as this collection’s esoteric inspiration. The short film offered a myriad of references, informing the structure of the lineup, its color palette, and Kostadinov’s overall treatment of manhood in its early stages. The movie’s black-and-white scenes—starring Orson Wells as Pasolini himself—translated as sections darker in color and with dashes of evening-ready elegance, while its strokes of saturated colors informed the hues of yellow, teal, and pink punctuating the collection.But it was the technical nuances with which Kostadinov adorned his tailoring and knitwear that stood at the center of his efforts today. A double-breasted jacket had its lapel removed in favor of a hanging oversized shirt collar, while the body of a simple black coat was pleated and the plackets of a white button-down shirt, which was here worn as a jacket, were duplicated. Trousers were pleated multiple times at the waist, shawl collar jackets were highlighted by satin detailing, and a sleeveless jumpsuit—the cut of its torso mimicking a dress vest—was nipped ever so slightly at the waist. Knitted vests with tiny lapels and pleated bodices offered playful interpretations of traditional tailoring in the context of boyhood.Most subtle but striking were a run of jersey tops constructed with 15 darts. Their delicate and organic draping exemplified the way Kostadinov employs his deft technical eye to playfully reimagine the surfaces of clothes while keeping them wearable. “For every garment I work on, the goal is to delete the origin of it,” the designer said of his design approach. “If you reference a ’50s jacket, how do you delete that beginning?” This mindset is why, in a season at capacity of tailoring proposals, Kostadinov’s stood out for their freshness and directionality—a clear example of what happens when designers actually center the garment while making clothes.Another of Kostadinov’s highbrow references today was the spatial work of the American artist Tom Burr.
The designer explained that Burr’s work informed the surface machinations in his collection—the aforementioned tacking, draping, and darting—and the recontextualizating of the lycée as a “liminal space” between the show, the backstage, and what informs it. Items of Kostadinov’s past collections were left on hangers placed in front of bookshelves on the hall outside the show space. “I’ve been finding seasonal themes every collection, but I think this is the last I’ll approach in this way,” he said. “We’ve been going for 15 seasons, so I want to start self-referencing now.” With bookshelves full of encyclopedias turned into a library of his own archives, one can’t help but wonder what Kostadinov will send down the runway once he starts making clothes about his own clothes.
24 June 2023
In a season when celebrity-packed front rows are ten-a-penny, and the battle for buzz feels more frenetic than ever, it’s refreshing to attend a show like the one Kiko Kostadinov staged in the gymnasium of the Lycée Henri IV in Paris’s Latin Quarter. The brand generates its fair share of likes on social media, but it also has that rarest of patronages: a cult following.You can chart it in the angular Trivia shoulder bags and the chunky sneaker-soled ballet slipper-boots (both Bella Hadid-approved, FYI), the cropped sweaters in sickly-sweet colors and the convertible paneled blouses that have been easy to spot around Fashion Week. And it was pleasing to clock the genuine fan girls at the brand’s fall show, out to support twin-sister duo Laura and Deanna Fanning in their bubble-hem skirts and cargo pants mixed in with pieces from their wardrobes. To use that most overused of fashionable adjectives, their looks felt authentic.There was lots for the Kiko girl to like here. In their sophomore season in Paris, the designers used antique lingerie as a springboard for a collection that played with construction and concealment. The first looks explored cloaking, cut-outs and compartments, with draped T-shirt dresses worn nonchalantly over layered pants segueing into halter-neck cotton tops and zippered jackets with necklines cut to peel off the body. Then came the deftly shaped trousers for which they’re known, and the striped knit maxi dresses in jolie-laide shades. They also embraced the use of tulle for the first time, subverting the characteristically princessy fabric by adding tulle ruffles to boyish paneled trousers and splicing it with jersey to hem body-skimming dresses and skirts. “We had two words for this collection, bold but still quite delicate,” Deanna said backstage, by way of summary. If at times the effect was a little homemade, well, you forgave them: the pieces still had a sportswear edge which made them look offbeat in a good way.Then there’s the new hybrid accessory: the Lella shoe, which blends a driving shoe, a ballet slipper and a bowling brogue, and is named after the Italian race car driver Lella Lombardi, the only female driver to score points in Formula One. “We view the collection as a hybrid between lingerie and outerwear, so with the shoe we wanted something that showed action,” said Laura. Futuristic and nostalgic at the same time, it hit upon the girls’ magic formula.
You can bet Bella Hadid will be wearing them soon, and not because her stylist told her to.
3 March 2023
This was the last meaningful runway tilt at the citadel of “menswear” in a menswear season that contained several of them, from JW Anderson to Jeanne Friot and more, all fired from different angles. Kiko Kostadinov’s was fantastic and also fantastical. As he explained backstage, he imagined a group of schoolboys who were invited to create a collection for themselves, but whose research material was based on four unsung influences from the womenswear design canon. These were the French-born designer Anne-Marie Beretta, Milanese titan Krizia (aka Mariuccia Mandelli), the American costume designer Irene Lentz and the Roman couturier sisters Sorelle Fontana.Apart from understanding that Beretta designed Max Mara’s defining 101801 camel coat and having attended one of Krizia’s last shows, I was not that up to speed on these designers. For sure few others in the audience were either. But that starting platform allowed Kostadinov to build a runway performance in which he teased away at the edges of “menswear,” presenting his models on a raised gantry on which they occasionally paused to drop a hip and pose. One synthetically-tangerine haired model in a purple, orange-shot pintuck seamed pant and Klein blue trench swooshed by the photographers with particular vim.Kostadinov said he also incorporated the codes of Laura and Deanna Fanning, who design the KK brand’s womenswear line, and treated the work of London-based artist Mariann Metsis in the same manner Krizia incorporated animalia. The hood/scarf garments that rested upon and emphasized the left shoulder seemed to contain fossilized echoes of Beretta’s Soy dress. Cape-shouldered shirt/dresses, one Metsis-printed, were, you suspected, almost certainly based on some long-forgotten womenswear gem.
22 January 2023
Laura and Deanna Fanning have previously expressed frustration at a regular remark from retailers viewing their womenswear line for Kiko Kostadinov: “So, where are your frocks?” Determined to dress women in decisive day-to-nightwear, they design pieces that make you look twice—a dress with poppers that transforms into a vest and mini skirt from their spring/summer 2022 collection recently made it into Dua Lipa’s wardrobe, for instance. It was a little surprising, then, to see floaty silk-georgette and chiffon midi dresses wafting through the high-school gymnasium that served as their show venue for their Paris Fashion Week debut. Were they feeling the Paris romance?“We wanted to push ourselves through things that are a bit more draped,” the sisters said, nodding, backstage after the show. “It was a bit of a risk but it’s been fun to play with the transparencies, the delicate and ephemeral. The collection was about fantasy for us—fantasy and hope.” Kiko fans—and judging from the number of fashion insiders toting the label’s popular Trivia bag around Paris this week, they are numerous—will be pleased to know that the fantasy came with the Fannings’ habitual made-you-look edge. A pretty azure-blue dress had an ab-baring cut-out and was styled with off-beat chain-link necklaces worn across the body, from which dangled juicy-hued beads. Another style layered an elegant asymmetric turquoise slip over apple green silk-georgette. A clingy dress featuring pastel shades of mesh layered over one another boasted a pleasing neckline, folding out from the bust like a napkin in a fancy restaurant.What made them work was a playful deftness and sporty edge in the styling. The 19-year-old British model Mia Regan, sat front row, and is emblematic of the pretty-tough girls that wear Kiko, seemed taken with the cowl-neck mini dresses, too.
2 October 2022
The bookshelves on the top floor in the Lycée Henry VI in Paris’s Latin Quarter are kept locked behind metal grates. From my seat at Kiko Kostadinov’s spring 2023 menswear show I could make out some musty encyclopedias and history volumes with yellowing pages collecting dust. The past is always present, but mostly out of reach.On the runway, Kostadinov was looking to rewrite his own history books. Bulgaria’s fraught past with the Ottoman Empire was his sartorial starting point; he found inspiration in Ottoman Janissary military garb and the work of traditional Bulgarian painter Zlatyu Boyadzhiev. Janissary draping and textures informed the single-breasted coats with their hems folded up and tucked into belts. Bulgarian shearlings and layered trousers were reimagined as alpaca and chenille. The Vietnamese artist Dahn Vo’s reappropriations of Vietnamese and American history, in particularWe the People, in which Vo attempted to rebuild the Statue of Liberty from copper pieces, informed the hexagonal decals on the closing looks, each shape coming together…but not there yet.If you didn’t have the press release you would probably never be able to work backwards to these references from these excellent clothes. That’s fine. At the end of the show a fellow journalist slapped his thighs and exclaimed, “Wow! That was great!”What made it great? It was the iridescent cargo pants and braided hem bag worn with the brand’s new clunky sneaker. It was the trio of minimal suits that opened the show, a beige worn regularly, the next with pants inside out, and the third entirely reversed. It was the spiffy pragmatism and lightness of cropped jackets with contrast yokes and a single pocket at the back and the ethereal prettiness of winged adornments that envelope the shoulders and arms, almost like a chrysalis. It absolutely was the leather jacket worn over a ragged Bulgarian-made sweater that had a darted cocoon back. “Fucking gorgeous,” another friend said of the jacket after the show—it’s a disservice to everyone looking at this collection online that you cannot see the gentle swoop of its lower back.The history that will be written for Kostadinov this season has far less to do with his thoughtful inspiration and more to do with his place in the fashion industry at large.
For a long time fashion has slotted Kiko into a conceptual space when he is, underneath all the imagination and fascination, one of the most competent, surefooted, and clever designers of wearable and luxurious menswear in the game. “We don’t need to prove we can work with color or we can make crazy things,” he said at a preview. “We can do suiting, tailoring, workwear.”Hours after the show Kostadinov was presiding over a techno party (fog, lasers, and bass thump thump thumping) in the hinterlands of Paris. Steve Lacy, Kozaburo Akasaka, and other menswear icons mingled. Outside, guests paid their host no mind, despite the fact that admittance required getting his logo stamped on one’s arm. “Nobody knows who I am,” he smirked. Kostadinov likes to be under the radar, but with clothes this good, it’s only a matter of time until everyone is paying attention.
27 June 2022
Sweetness and glamour are not qualities you’d think of when it comes to the Kiko Kostadinov woman. In the hands of twin-sister designers Deanna and Laura Fanning, the Kiko gal has been sleek and raw, urban and elegant. Always precise in the kick of her trousers and the spread of her collar over her clavicle. Certain.But for fall 2022, the Fannings found themselves drawn to ideas of girlishness and glam. “Not the glamour of 10 or 15 years ago, when you think of a woman who isn’t actually glamorous at all,” clarifies Deanna, pointing out her and her sister’s inspirations as decidedlynotY2K. Over a Zoom call they spoke about the ’30s, Art Deco, and the vampiresses that haunted that era, poisonous in their beauty. Combined with saccharine bows on the duo’s sinisterly sweet new sneaker boots and sculptural glass necklaces hand-blown by a single female artisan in Murano, the clothes Deanna and Laura have designed convey a potent, almost magical spirit.That kind of black magic is not really new to the Kiko women’s universe—remember the sisters’ spring 2020 goddess show—but the ease and sexuality of the new pieces might be. Long tunic tops are fastened with a single hook over the breasts, a dress is wrapped and twisted to expose a circle around the navel and the wearer’s entire back, and some skirts bubble and flare out while others are suspended by the metal chains of the brand’s jewelry. Even those fluffy, shaggy knit dresses made in an Impressionist paisley print have something kinky about their short hems and bell sleeves.Or maybe it’s the black leather boots that are adding verve? Or the new soft leather bags with an adjustable strap that snuggle into torsos? Speaking about their ever-more popular accessories and outerwear—you can hardly look at a fashion show audience without seeing one of their Trivia bags (now in glitter!) or shearling coats—Laura says, “We don’t come at fashion from a perspective of product,” with Deanna pointedly adding, “We’re not merchandiser designers.” Thank god for it. The good ideas and great products that trickle out of Kiko HQ come from their shared spirit of experimentation, excitement, and passion. No wonder their clothes resonate with young women so much, and no wonder their delve into new territories comes with so much bite. The Fannings believe in themselves and their talent—and women believe in, and see themselves, in them.
5 March 2022
“It’s not too personal,” says Kiko Kostadinov of his fall 2022 menswear collection. “It’s a simple idea.” Both statements are true, but they belie the sense of self and thought present in the designer’s new offering. Officially called Xolo, after the Mexican hairless dog (a name used on account of the show being staged at the Diego Rivera Museum in Mexico City), but nicknamed City Elf by the KK team, the lineup is both signature Kiko and rife with new theories of men’s dress. This is most definitely a designer hitting his stride.For fall, he’s pushing his ideas to the max via a series of compelling slouched trousers, some with embroideries to evoke a silver wallet chain, others with blouson pleats suspended by metal studs, and still more with pockets that jut out at the waist. Colorful leggings—“not too tasteful because then what’s the point?”—anchor long anoraks, quilted shell coats, and asymmetric polos long enough to function as dresses. Styled with rugged, pebbled leather crossbody bags that nod to the look of many of the 2000s video games Kostadinov played—you know the vibe: post-apocalyptic frontier fantasy—and sandals whose leather uppers are hidden by knitted cuffs, the Kiko guys really do look like City Elves: waify warriors from another dimension.The throughlines are a sporty fixation on shoulder, the rounded pockets and attenuated hems of trousers, and a range of vibrant colors and rich textures that push the label away from its core black-white-neutral offering. Dainty embroideries, illustrations on cuffs that mimic the look of Kostadinov’s dog Dante, and a pink hoodie brought a little delicateness to these dudes.Amidst the classic tailoring seen on other runways, Kostadinov’s urbanites might seem unapproachable—especially given the extremity of some of his shapes. “The beauty of what I want to do is that you need to try it on,” he said. “We could do something more obvious, but I don’t want to waste people’s time discussing something that’sjust clothes.” Fashion that challenges yourself and others just might be the most Kiko idea of all.
21 January 2022
Summertime and vacation dressing are on the minds of many designers for spring 2022, but few are doing it with the emotion and compassion of Laura and Deanna Fanning. During a Zoom preview of their fantastic new collection, the sisters spoke about their balmy Australian summers and the way the beach represents a transitional place for them: It’s where girls became women, observed their bodies, found freedom and maybe even love.Their connectedness to the female condition led to one of their most direct collections yet. The palette is sunbleached and neon, and the silhouettes are classic Kiko twists on summer holiday essentials. A polo shirt comes with three collars that wind up the chest. Board shorts and jeans pull from surf culture, dotted with small fruit graphics or sliced with zippers to conceal or reveal a peek of the upper thigh. Their popular sneakers have been cut into mules—the better to slip out of when you hit the sand. As Australians, they had the luck to be able to hit the beach after school: Striped dresses and neon orange vests are their takes on Aussie school uniforms. They’ve also evolved their popular Trivia bag in new textures and colors and introduced a new spiral tote for the seaside in coastal hues like sun, sea, and mussel shell black.As thorough as they are about their theme, it doesn’t overwhelm the ability of their clothing to work in any situation. Black cargo jackets, azure slips with inset knit rings, and a sweet mini coat in lilac will work in any circumstance. Ditto for knit tanks with extra sleeves and a shell-dotted wrap miniskirt. Friends who attended their show in London’s Second Home couldn’t stop texting about their favorite pieces (producing a level of FOMO many of us will be experiencing in this season of canceled travel plans). Commenters on the Instagram Live stream were really jonesing for the trousers. I’m most compelled by the three-headed jersey tee; it can be worn countless ways. That’s the level of consideration and respect Deanna and Laura give their shopper; as unique as their silhouettes can be, the sisters always put her body and her mind first.
16 September 2021
One of the many problems of a phygital fashion week is showing the nuance of clothing in motion. As archaic as a runway show might seem, people walking around in person wearing garments remains the best way to understand how a drape flutters or a sleeve scrunches as the wearer tucks his hand into a pocket. Kiko Kostadinov’s digital presentations often take the form of a runway of some kind; this season he’s crafted a complex video shot at Brixton Market, overlaying scenes of day and night and models passing by in his latest collection. But more than just iterating on the virtual front, Kostadinov has built movement into the very seams of his clothes.There is no static or single ideal way to wear Kostadinov’s pointed shorts or plunging tanks with built-in pointed skirts. The garments are always jutting, rustling, alive. Laura and Deanna Fanning, who run Kostadinov’s womenswear operation, took a similar tack for their fall 2021 collection. The combination of COVID-19 lockdowns and Brexit have effectively trapped the team—of global origin, from Bulgaria to Australia to Japan—within the United Kingdom’s borders. Their journey this season was one through time with Kostadinov, who is sometimes hesitant to reference his own life, reflecting on his Bulgarian heritage. The collection’s sensual singlets touch on the Mr. Olympia competition for bodybuilders, popular in the Eastern Bloc in the 1990s. Traditional Bulgarian jewelry is linked together in new designs and draped over models.An overarching through line comes from the Bulgarian futurist artist Nicolay Diulgheroff. On our Zoom call, Kostadinov held up a tea set by Diulgheroff he purchased online; the aesthetic parallels are striking, inset circles in jade green and violet, squiggly handles, something beautiful and slightly eerie at once. In describing Diulgheroff’s work and the futurism movement in general, Kostadinov says, “It was about ending this still life that was so dominant.” Isn’t that, in some way, what life right now feels like, a sense of desperation to break away from stagnation and discover something new?Freshness abounds in this collection. Jackets are constructed with dual sleeves, so the wearer can pop out a blue-green panel from a black jacket. Shorts come with a frenzy of pointed hems instead of a straight line. A sensual suit is made from lace, while knits tie at the chest.
Skin is everywhere, including on hunky tanks belted with custom leather and rubber belts made by an American equestrian company. Giant bags are slung over shoulders—filled with what? Kostadinov is going somewhere—directly, surely, and passionately. Here’s hoping his fans follow along.
12 July 2021
Laura and Deanna Fanning have been living their lives on a loop, walking from their home to their studio and back again in London. The sister designers are not just wanderers on the streets of their adopted home, but wonderers; no sight on their path goes unconsidered. Their daily journeys led them to Lauren Elkin’s bookFlaneuse, and its intimate portraits of women moving about the streets of London, New York, Tokyo, and Venice. Over a video call, Laura stressed that they wanted to design a collection that reflected “becoming part of the environment by sharing space with the people and the buildings you walk by.”It’s a beautiful idea of unity within space: that the people make the city, that their clothes and their gestures are as integral to the meaning of London as the tube or the Thames. It’s also a boldly feminist thought: Walking around a city has always been a man’s game, defined by the dandy or the flaneur. In the Fannings’ world, women own the sidewalk and define the look of a city.Streetmagazine, founded by Shoichi Aoki in the ’80s, and the fashion editors and lovers who populate its pages helped color their understanding of on-the-street style as well.Their version of 2021 street style is centered on multipurpose separates like the one in look eight, which features a striped top with two neck holes and their version of a logo (it’s the nameKiko Kostadinovmodulated into a swirl) and a dot-print skirt that can be folded up into a halter dress. Suits have scarves built in, tucked through belt loops, and a sheer turtleneck top has sashes worked into the shoulders that can be layered or taken out and tied around the neck. Nearly every garment has this kind of dual purpose: pants with miniskirts stitched in, micro-cable-knit sweaters with removable eco-fur collars, trench coats with multiple arm holes. In this, it’s all about how you wear what you wear—and to really appreciate the Fannings’ work, you have to care about the art and grace of living in your clothes. Their first handbag is a warped leather baguette made in Italy; as Deanna explains the significance of the shape, she extends her arm and makes the gesture of taking out a pack of cigs. It’s design dictated by personality—not the other way around.With Kiko himself, who designs the menswear, the trio of designers have built a brand centered on style and wit. It’s not just about how you look, but who you are, and in this their work stands apart from the tropes of mainstream fashion.
Or maybe not. As other mega-brand collections trickle in from Milan and Paris’s digital fashion weeks, there’s a sense that conceptually tailored clothing you wear—that doesn’t wear you—is coming into vogue. Maybe that’s why I keep receiving messages from peers in London and Los Angeles and Paris saying, “Hmm, doesn’t this look like Kiko?” Maybe thoughtfulness will come back into style. The Fannings can say they’ve been doing it all along.
7 March 2021
A Kiko Kostadinov collection asks a lot of you as a viewer and wearer. You can’t only be an expert in fashion’s past and present—though it certainly helps—you must also be curious about how clothing can portray human complexity. In this, Kostadinov operates quite like Miuccia Prada, another designer-philosopher who asks big questions about being alive while making sure you are perfectly dressed for whatever life you want to lead.The question Kostadinov is taking on for fall 2021 is certainly his biggest one yet: how to be alive, and happy, in a totally fucked-up year. On a video call from his expansive new studio, he explains this season as a step beyond spring 2021, which he brands as “a pandemic collection,” and delves into the books he’s been reading: Patience Gray’s 1986 cooking memoirHoney From a Weed,which tracks her hot-blooded journeys through the Mediterranean. A Mark Fisher lecture led him to the 1977 Christopher Priest dystopian sci-fi novelA Dream of Wessex.The juxtaposition of those worlds, sizzling summer clay against the cold, stony British sea, struck up something in the designer. He spoke of life having phases, sometimes wishing for nothing but a far-off garden, other days thriving in the slickness and speed of the city. Rather than offer an either-or solution to the push-pull of human desires for rest and exhilaration, he wanted to offer both.So his fall 2021 collection is a collage of ideas that represent the sea, the city, the future, and the past contrasted against each other. Sometimes the references are obvious. For the countryside: a glitchy floral print and an apron that ties around the leg. For the sci-fi city: a slick jumpsuit, a knee-high boot. But rather than pick it apart, the collection is best read all together: the chaos of modern life. A knit-sleeve blazer and a sweater vest and a tomato red coat and a lace-up leg trouser, all born from a naive sense of play. Kostadinov is a great tailor, and the collection’s many new shapes, like a darted sleeve inspired by the drape of a pant leg, only strengthen the mash-up effect of the looks.In a fit of madness or genius (are they really that different?), Kostadinov styled the garments 90 different ways, 30 of which are shown here. The point being: This is not your car coat or vacation coat, an office trouser or a party pant, your date night sweater or your casual Friday uniform.
You don’t have to follow anyone’s fashion rules but your own, and even then, opposing urges can work together in harmony. It’s an idea that has done wonders for this collection—and could do more for the world at large too.
5 February 2021
The Kiko Kostadinov spring 2021 womenswear collection is written in the stars. The invite for the premier of the digital film by Esther Theaker is a starmap, a pentagram connecting celestial bodies around a central glowing orb. Were it not a digital invite transmitted via e-mail it could be mistaken for a philosopher’s map of the heavens. “When you’re by yourself and in your own environment, time can speed up or slow down,” says Laura Fanning, the co-creative director of Kiko Kostadinov womenswear with her twin sister Deanna. This idea of time and timeliness, with the star as its anchor, proved a starting point for the Fannings this season.The twins began working on spring 2021 while 10,500 miles apart, Deanna with their parents in Melbourne, Australia, and Laura in London. (Here you have to wonder what effect looking up at the sky and seeing different stars at night had on the twin Aries.) Both homebound despite the distance, they turned to ideas of Victoriana and women’s roles within the domestic sphere. Their interpretations are vastly different than most contemporary references to late 19th century dress; instead of pouf sleeves and cottagecore twee, the Fannings settled on check and windowpane prints, simple cottons, and smocking as key ideas for the season. Big archivists, they referenced dossiers of museum pieces, picking up techniques from history and repurposing them for their modern clientele. The puckering seen here builds on last season’s pyramidal cinches, which are already being worn by all the cool girls you want to be around in London, Milan, Tokyo, and New York.Victoriana also lends itself to starlit symbolism; in that era, the image of a pentagram signified a cultish black magick associated with womanhood. Tying that to the fondness for the symbol in the experimental ’70s, the sisters used the star as an insert on skirts and tops, as a rule for cutting (the top in Look 7 and knees of their trousers are both starred), and as the base of their new crocheted bag, which is covered in glass beads and cinches up like a late 1800s coin purse.There are ideas that are wholly modern too. One is the knit leggings that appear in sweet pink and rich aubergine. “A lot of girls wear leggings around the house, and we want ours to have all the features that we would want, like the engineered knee,” says Laura. Another is their new multi-purpose suit.
In images (looks 13 and 21 in the lookbook), it might appear as a blazer and skirt, but actually the jacket is a double layered piece that can either be worn with its long outer layer over a shorter inner one, or with the longer exterior tied in the back in a bow, lending to the jacket-and-mini visual. There’s little to say about the coordinating trousers with an ultra baggy draped knee—“it was like trapping a drape,” Deanna says of executing the idea—other than that they are brilliant.While apart, Deanna started to knit up the duo’s new shoe: A lace-up kitten heel made with glass beads on black yarn. The preciousness and tenderness of the shoes echoes in the jewelry, a new-ish category for the sisters. Pearls are preserved in resin cubes or orbs, one half kept clear, the other dyed a CMYK color. In a season of exorbitant mailers—boxes of pastas, pastries, and who knows what else will be delivered to our homes—the Fannings had a humbler take: a small box inside of which was every fabric from the collection stapled to a moleskine notebook. Photographs of the clothes accompanied it, as did a hand-written note in blue marker on blue paper, rolled up like a sea scroll: “Hoping next season we’ll all meet again.” There was also a sample of the pearl jewelry, a single small resin ice cube, half pink, half clear. Inside was the rare double pearl, two spheres smushed together like a cell about to split in two. A winning season for the Fanning sisters? Maybe it's also written in the stars.
29 September 2020
“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: Boring. Everything’s already happened. Nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again.”A thrilling film by Robi Rodriguez prefaced Kiko Kostadinov’s password-protected spring 2021 menswear show, where models spoke directly to camera, carried each other along the long Gothic Revival rooms of England’s Strawberry Hill House, and recited this sort of provocative statement, meant, maybe, to rile up the fashion crowd that has turned Kostadinov into a petit prince of menswear.Kostadinov, on the other side of a delightful 2-hour Zoom call yesterday, explained he had given Rodriguez carte blanche for the film, and was not keen to explain it or meditate on it. It speaks for itself. But it’s hard not to draw a connection between the messages—another: “Consumerism is honest and teaches us that everything good has a barcode”—and recent happenings in Kostadinov’s life and business. Over quarantine he launched his own e-commerce and moved offices to a larger space with its own photo studio which will help him build this branch of his company. At one point he offhandedly said, “if we make it through this,” as he projected the future, alluding to the ephemerality of his business. Being a young designer in today’s world means holding it all together by a thread—I hope he makes it, because his threads are among the most thoughtful, riveting, and challenging in the menswear world. (And womenswear, too, thanks to designers Laura and Deanna Fanning.)This collection is titled Sirokkó, a reference to the wind that blows from Northern Africa through the Mediterranean to Italy. (The idea came to Kostadinov while listening to a 2010 GHE20 G0TH1K mixtape called “Banging Bells of Hell.”) Florence, in particular, became a focal point through the Medicis and the 1973 Roberto Rossellini filmL’età di Cosimo de Medicithat Kostadiov VPN’ed his way into watching on the Criterion Channel. This is just the tip of the iceberg of his research, he says. He sees “designing and making the clothes as a means to research and educate myself and my team.” Here, the Kiko family became experts in 15th- and 16th-century dress, the hats and slender trousers of court bands and jesters, the blouson shapes of aristocratic portraiture, the rich jewel box colors of Renaissance masters.
Silhouette is the core of this work; the linings of slim jackets bubble outwards through slashes and seams, ultra-slim jersey pants are worn with shapely tunics, coats tuck around the body like a cocoon in a crinkled material, and giant tote bags hang like slings, stuffed with wonders Kostadinov’s imagined Cosimos, Giovannis, and Pieros might have gathered up from travels around the world.
10 July 2020
Over their past three collections, Laura and Deanna Fanning, the twin designers of Kiko Kostadinov’s womenswear operation, have found magic in shell-shaped raffia bags and earthen metal jewelry shapes, citing goddesses and spirits as their muses. But for this show, they entered a new dimension. The sisters were thinking about how much of their clothing is consumed in two dimensions on mobile phone screens, rendered into flat, doll-like versions of the multifaceted garments they make. And so for fall 2020, they violently exploded their work into the “fifth dimension.”They used the essentials of women’s clothing as their templates: slip dresses, V-neck sweaters, prepster plaids, fur coats, little black dress, and khaki tailoring. To Fanning-up these pieces, the sisters employed various handicraft techniques: pintucking diagonal segments of a slip dress into a cascade of texture, embroidering conical pulls into trousers and tops, and knitting sweaters into mind-bending pyramidal shapes that look like deep space or deep sea-patterns. Their LBD was in faux fur, poking out over a neon-piped sheer top and black trousers with diamond-shaped darted knees.Each piece so wrought and crafted that language can fall short of describing the techniques—and of how covetable each piece looks in the three dimensions the Fannings’ human clients can perceive. The handwork continued on a bag collaboration with Medea. Against a vortex backdrop, the sisters Fanning proved that they’re a commanding force on the British fashion scene. Time for the world to enter their dimension.
14 February 2020
There were moments in this painfully scheduled show—between Yohji Yamamoto and Dries Van Noten on a strike-struck night—when plans went awry: a sound issue at the start, a foot-support that flapped from behind a backless Vibram-soled clog. However, these were only occasional misfires in a Kiko Kostadinov collection that was, for the most, bang on target.Kostadinov’s technique runs in two directions: One is to cleverly render the functional abstract and decorative; the other, to explore the potential of the abstract to serve a functional purpose. Here he took aim at archery as well as the World War II piloting career of the artist Kenneth Noland and the sculpture of his daughter Cady. All this lead to a strongly defined and discreetly ornate seasonal livery.To a boom-boom-boom soundtrack (eventually) overlaid with the sound of arrowheads thudding into bull’s-eyes, we saw sharply darted suiting (some sleeveless and long-skirted) or separates set in chevron panels colored, sometimes, in a sky blue that hinted at Royal Air Force uniforms. There were full batwing sleeves and shawl-collared zippered gilets. Pants came delicately sliced in a sort of un-encircled Mercedes-Benz logo shape just above the knee. The front-strapped jackets with contrasting perforations and panels were Kostadinov distilled sublimations of the grip-strapped and chest-protected garb of Olympic archers, carrying outlines of arrow holsters and functional billows pockets. This designer enjoys exploring sharp contrasts in color and texture, which played out in the faux python fabrics, roughened suede, and knits. An opera sleeve overcoat in a heavy-looking, light-feeling fabric with contrasting paneling at the shoulder was teamed with one of the show’s beanie/scarf hybrids—it was Kostadinov’s good-looking last shot down the runway. The designer confessed that he has never tried archery; the clothes are an authentic enough reflection of his urge to take long-evolved sporting attire and process it into something shaped purely according to his own aesthetic aim.
24 January 2020
Genesis is woman’s work. Sister designers Laura and Deanna Fanning birthed a collection that connected the real and the spiritual for their Spring 2020 presentation for Kiko Kostadinov. Their starting point was Urania, a Greek goddess of astronomy and a symbol of the female connection with the ephemeral, emotional world. From there, they connected with the circle through the work of Rosie Grace Ward, having the artist build metal amulets to adorn the shoulders of their bias garments. (Ward’s work also served as a set for their runway.) Leo Lionni’s 1976 bookParallel Botany, of imagined organic shapes, inspired accessories that evoked a spiral, or a shell, or a constellation. To the fashion sisters Fanning, it’s all connected under the aegis of divinity and perfection.If this all seems a little woo-woo and impractical, it’s a testament to their ingenuity as designers that they can build abstract references into useful and compelling clothes. The sisters generate every garment from scratch, so that what might seem like a simple black tracksuit is actually an intarsia of circular satin shapes winding and pulsing around the body. Their knitwear comes with tiny juts and curves and their dresses, well, those are draped like classical garb with the carefree vibes of a modern woman. Modernity and ease are, in fact, chief on the designers’ minds. They spoke backstage about wanting to make clothing that felt in and of their era. If their sculptural ready-to-wear still feels quite conceptual, their collaborative pieces with Asics of draped tops and trousers made from technical fabrics are exactly the fix.
13 September 2019
During a church-hushed backstage convo pre-show, Kiko Kostadinov eventually ventured that the starting point for this collection was his viewing of the Kentucky Derby episode of7 Days Out. “They spend a year in intense preparation for an event that takes just a few minutes,” he said of the Netflix documentary. “And that reminded me of the fashion industry.”The agonized packing of great emotional and intellectual effort into a gesture that lasts for just a few minutes is indeed a caterpillar-to-moth-like bananas activity. But there was great value in Kostadinov’s fleeting riff on equestrian wear. It looked like he had also watchedThe Favourite, whose Regency tailoring—the source of ridingwear as menswear archetype—permeated his topcoats and slightly dubiously dreadlocked wigs. From that earliest expression—the starting gun—this collection relaxed into subversive rewrites of fabric-layered jockey’s colors and faux-pocketed mohair wool riding suits through to totally contemporary synthetic pieces strafed by the colorful emblems of imaginary trainers. The tricolor Camper boots and eye-wateringly paneled Asics sneaks raced him across the line in terms of total look commitment, via a connecting membrane of pulsating violent-color steeplechase socks. Underneath all of the incongruous tonality—look at the two black-on-black nylon looks near the final straight for confirmation—were some stupendous sportswear pieces. This was a designer galloping gleefully to his own rhythm at a glorious pace, with no thought for the race unfolding around him.
7 June 2019
Twin sisters Laura and Deanna Fanning may have only graduated Central Saint Martins one year ago, but they have already developed a thorough design language that’s instantly identifiable. It’s a gorpcore-meets-witful-knitwear proposition with a side dish of rabid, almost feral beauty. All those lines came together in their sophomore collection for Kiko Kostadinov, a partnership with the menswear designer they describe as two worlds within the same universe.The outdoorsy-ness was present in their fabrications—see a royal purple and sky blue dress in windbreaker nylon—and their first collaboration with Asics. The running brand provided the sisters with stretchy base layers and helped them to create their first sneaker, a cross-strap style that rebukes the clunky sneaker trend. An incredibly smart pair of burgundy trousers with black insets at the knees was drawn from hiking pants, while another shoe collaboration with Camper produced knee-high hiking boots with Victorian lace-up details.Knitwear is the Fannings’ strongest suit; this season, they have grown their offering in delightfully strange ways. Bias-draped knit skirts are paired with blouson-sleeved sweaters in all manner of stripes, while too-large hoods-turned-collars shrugged down past models’ shoulders. The most intriguing pieces are the curvaceous sweaters with trompe l’oeil bustiers and built-in hips, color-blocked to evoke the cinched silhouette of turn of the centurybandidas. The sisters name-checked the Mexican and Central American femme fatales as an inspiration for their ability to clash with the popular culture of their time. That freewheeling spirit was present on the catwalk today, heightened by nomadic hair and makeup inspired by the 1988 cult filmOn the Silver Globe.On top of all this, they added ropelike scarves and grape-cluster necklaces and the occasional gauntlet that flared out at the elbow like a medieval knight’s glove. It is impressive that, in their early 20s, the sisters have created such an all-encompassing vision from daywear to dresses to accessories and collaborations—but will people join in? If it looks a bit brash on the runway, know that up close on a hanger, these are perfectly salable garments. Retailers, take note.
15 February 2019
Kiko Kostadinov referenced two films when going over his Fall collection:Midnight Lace(the thriller from 1960) andThe Ring(the horror movie out of Japan circa 1998). Yet when the clothes were seen in motion—and softly padded by an ominous, what-might-lurk-in-the-woods soundtrack, along with show notes that spoke of monsters, one couldn’t help but think of Netflix’sBird Box(the meme-factory movie of 2018). This was mainly felt in instances where stringy wigs covered the models’ faces, along with pseudo-blindfolds rendered in rhinestones.What that’s all meant to imply: Kostadinov is pretty good at giving a salable touch to darker themes, and here he even imbued a whisper of camp into what was arguably his most commercial collection to date. “It’s much bigger this time,” he said. “And it’s really focused more on the outerwear.” Kostadinov recently departed the British heritage label Mackintosh, where he learned the complexities of the genre. The best pieces were at the start: big, arc-shouldered jackets that were worn large over skinny, pant-less legs. “It’s a ladylike, ’50s-era silhouette,” said the designer.Swing coats, inverse-butterfly bomber jackets, and trenches rounded out the winterwear; there were also notable ponchos and capes, one in eggplant-purple, and “kind of baseball-style” gloves mixed in courtesy of an ongoing collaboration with Asics. And while the hair and jewels-over-the-eyes made for a filmic visual, the garments themselves registered, mostly, as fundamental—even if in a broodily glamorous manner.
6 January 2019
Kiko Kostadinov’s mushrooming label grew yet further today in London; he introduced womenswear, which is being overseen by the twin sisters Deanna and Laura Fanning. Admirably, the Fannings only just graduated from Central Saint Martins’s master’s program seven months ago. Extra points to Kostadinov for giving such young designers such a senior role—and more kudos to the Fannings for a stable first effort.“When I had tried womenswear before,” said Kostadinov backstage, “I was a bit distracted by it. But I felt the potential was there, so I asked Deanna and Laura to come on board.” He’d been asked why he didn’t just design the line himself; the answer was honest.Kostadinov’s developing aesthetic—one that mixes a sort of grungy-occult vibe into sportswear—was echoed in the Fannings’ “collage of images.” “We end up with a hybrid,” said Deanna of their design process. “Hybrids of color, sports influences, and elements of glamour.” (She specializes in textiles, Laura in construction and wovens.)Their show notes mention 1940s MGM Studios costumes, as well as looks from 1982’sBlade Runner, as inspiration. (Regarding the latter, see an armor-like cape effect atop a tan-and-pink overcoat. Likewise colorful sci-fi boots made in collaboration with Camper.) But most of it felt more rife with the artfulness associated with Central Saint Martins alumni, dovetailed into Kostadinov’s often seductive weirdness (he too went to the school). Sleeveless tan tops had clown-like rainbow parachute material paneled amorphously across the chest. That same nylon was given a corset-like pinch elsewhere, on a color-blocked dress. Stronger still was a blocked knit column gown, with Lurex-woven knits around the legs, a clashing Yves Klein–blue torso, and an anemone ribbon of more Lurex, in gold, along the shoulder line. If there were hints of JW Anderson’s consciously awkward tailoring and silhouettes, it didn’t really deter from what was, mostly, an enjoyably strange debut.
14 September 2018
Give this lede a minute to get through: For Spring, Kiko Kostadinov looked to a piece by German artist Martin Kippenberger calledThe Happy End of Franz Kafka’s Amerika. Kippenberger took one of the posthumously published book’s ideas, communal job interviews, and crafted it into an installation. Of the piece, the artist said, “[It’s] a circus in town . . . outside the circus tent, in my imagination, there would be tables and chairs set up for job interviews.” Fascinated by this premise, Kostadinov then decided to place the whole notion in an extrapolated fictional town set on the Ganges river in India. In fashion layman’s terms, let’s put it this way: WhereMoschino’s Los Angeles big topfrom just a few days ago was all surface sugar, Kostadinov’s act was swayingly cerebral. It was a long shot, but it mostly cohered and convinced.In regards to the employment element, Kostadinov said backstage that these men were at different stages of their professional lives. A striped short-sleeved button-down with geometric prints and papery jacquard pants may have represented someone on the more junior side of things; plaid blazers near show’s end seemed to suggest someone higher up the ladder.But all the same, this was a far cry from possible corporate garb, and more in line with a neo-bohemian complex of, call it, legalized-weedwear marries athletic-weekendwear (a collaboration with Asics continued). Fisherman jackets, twisted and cropped and wrapped trousers, and curving-seamed jumpers all registered. It would be hard to see these clothes as relatable in any way to job-interview styling, but, conversely, they didtheirjob, in their rightly weird ways, by making us think about just how out-there some people are willing to think. Conclusion: So long as the backbone is behind that thinking and it’s not all just hot air, that’s a good thing.
10 June 2018
Kiko Kostadinov’s fifth collection—called Obscured by Clouds—featured some firsts: a debut womenswear capsule (“totally different than the men’s,” said the designer) and a debut handbag (a knitted pouch covered in stud beads that was a high point in the show). Beyond these things, he will also present his first runway collection for Mackintosh, the British heritage label at which he is creative director, in Paris in a fortnight’s time.Bulgarian-born Kostadinov’s references were particularly nuanced for Fall: A West German magazine calledTwen, which was published from 1959 to 1971, Barbet Schroeder films, and Yves Klein’sThe Foundations of Judoall served as inspirations in one way or another. Perhaps recognizing the breadth of his wellsprings, valid though they may be, the designer admitted that what the season really boiled down to was “looking to escape from reality, and going back to having hobbies.”His particular hobby is a passion for research, possibly instilled in him by the grueling demands of Central Saint Martins’s master’s program, from which he matriculated in 2016. There’s a sense of thoroughness in Kostadinov’s work—you get the sense that he doesn’t just do things for the sake of the effect, but because of either the information that justified the decision or the technical challenge of implementing it. This was seen most clearly with trousers on the menswear side, which were actually an evolution of a shape he designed for his graduate collection: Triple darted and broken in, they looked not quite skater but not quite slick, either. Slouch by architecture isn’t easy to do. When examined closely, some of these pants had bell-bottom-like flares, but with visibly cut pleats at the ankle.His women’s edit was earthen (especially with juniper and baby’s breath headpieces fashioned by Katsuya Kamo) and simple on the surface, toggling “sportswear and mid-century dressmaking techniques.” It wasn’t as convincing as the men’s, but it was a solid first go. For the guys, which departed from the surgical austerity of last season, other points of interest included raggedy jumpers (some with inlaid forms taken from Bulgarian pottery) that reminded this writer of the famous sweaters worn in the originalThe Matrixfilm, and pants with forcibly graphic velcro belt closures. A collaboration with the sportswear giant Asics continued, with footwear, tees, and more.
As for those above-mentioned knit bags, worn by both genders, they were very appealing in a simultaneous stoner-y and rave-y sort of way. Kostadinov mentioned that his business has basically doubled since last season, after first premiering in the U.S. at Dover Street Market. We wouldn’t be surprised to hear of more growth after this round, too.
7 January 2018
There was a stirring strangeness to Kiko Kostadinov’s Spring collection, shown in London tonight. This upstart designer, now on his fourth season, has received early buzz and recognition. After completing his graduate degree at Central Saint Martins in early 2016, he very quickly received support from the British Fashion Council’s New Gen initiative. Soon thereafter he was named creative director of an unlikely British legacy label: Mackintosh, known for its traditional coats (the company will keep those; Kostadinov oversees a more “designer” branch).Clearly, the man brings something to the table. And for Spring, he delivered a honed take on a dark, perplexing reality in 2017: that the “concept of evil has become entertainment.” It’s one of those sound bites that takes a second to settle in, but then it makes total sense and becomes a hard pill to swallow. Something horrible happens, news ratings spike, Twitter explodes, and so on.The clothes had anAmerican Psychosterility and effeteness to them, and they moved from oddly tailored pieces to sportswear ensembles, some in a ghastly—but, then again, entertaining—“toxic” green. The opening look featured a skinny-trousered suit with a zippered blazer and sutured symmetric seams from armpit to abdomen. A clinical topcoat had slits through which a wrap (sleeves?) knotted around the waist. Then came a thinned-out hazmat suit in hospital-clean white. It all appeared mostly well-made and methodically conceived—see also a collaboration with Asics on footwear, which boasted a thin latex wrap in parts. Surgical and spooky.There’s a risk in pulling inspiration from something so bleak, but Kostadinov didn’t glamorize it. At the end of the day, he designed a thought-provoking collection—with some pretty wearable pieces mixed in—and sounded an intelligent siren that pricked up the ears of many an observer. Watch this headspace.
12 June 2017