Six fashion designers to watch in 2021

Priya Ahluwalia

2020 was a breakthrough year for menswear designer Priya Ahluwalia. The 28-year-old Londoner was one of eight winners of last year’s LVMH Prize, and she showed a short film as part of Gucci’s online fashion week, GucciFest. She tells the FT that 2020 has “been a rollercoaster . . . but ultimately, the business has had a really successful year”.

Ahluwalia uses vintage and deadstock textiles to create her vibrant, often patchworked, sportswear-inflected designs, which are stocked in Browns and on MatchesFashion.com, among others. She describes her aesthetic as “future-facing with hints of nostalgia, graphic, detail-orientated and worldly”. Her Spring/Summer 2021 collection is full of colour and character, with polo shirts and sports tops slashed with ochre, pistachio and china blue.

Ahluwalia plans to build her direct-to-consumer business in 2021.“2020 and all the fractures it has caused across industries has made me realise it’s important that as a business we can be independent and not rely too heavily on external stakeholders,” she says.

Charles de Vilmorin

It was during France’s first national lockdown that Charles de Vilmorin decided to launch his namesake label via Instagram. His punch-bright and psychedelic bomber jackets and coats — painted, printed and moulded with hearts, eyes and flowers inspired by the French sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle — immediately caught the attention of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode, which invited de Vilmorin to unveil his next collection during the couture shows later in January. Aged 24, he will be one of the youngest designers to ever show during couture week.

In an email, de Vilmorin says that his next collection will show a “darker side” than his first: “The patterns will be more frightening, depicting naked bodies and wounded faces.”

While de Vilmorin’s business is in its infancy, he has displayed a promising commercial streak: In late September, he unveiled a six-look capsule collection of safari-style jackets, shirts, trousers and shorts that will soon be available on his website from €300.

Nicholas Daley

Craftsmanship is central to Nicholas Daley’s modern, global and very wearable menswear designs, and for every collection he works with artisans to create custom textiles and details. His Spring/Summer 2021 collection examines the interplay of reggae culture and martial arts in the 1970s. The clothes have a loose, utilitarian, martial arts feel with high-waisted trousers and karate Gi jackets in custom Japanese sashiko material, while Japanese dye specialists have created two new tie-dyes in blue and olive that appear on T-shirts and shirts.

Daley graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2013, launched his eponymous label in 2015, and in 2020 he was one of eight winners of the LVMH Prize. He has collaborated with British brands Fred Perry and Lavenham, and the exhibition Return To Slygo, at the Now Gallery in Greenwich in February, will explore his Jamaican-Scottish roots and love of music.

Harris Reed

When Harry Styles made headlines in November by becoming the first solo male cover star in American Vogue’s history, he also turned heads for the gender-nonconforming outfits chosen by stylist Camilla Nickerson in the accompanying photo spread. That included a sharp-shouldered black evening suit worn under a dashing hoopskirt of crinoline and hot-pink satin designed by 24-year-old Harris Reed, who graduated from Central Saint Martins last summer.

This is not the first time Reed has designed for Styles. After Reed posted to Instagram an all-white ensemble of hat, bustier top and flared trousers in 2017, stylist Harry Lambert got in touch asking to borrow the look, and for Reed to sketch some designs for an unnamed client. That client turned out to be Styles, and Reed has continued to create ruffled blouses and balloon trousers for Styles’ world tours ever since.

This year, Reed plans to create a demi-couture collection and is set to announce a design collaboration that will launch in February.

Maximilian Davis

Following his Fashion East debut at London Fashion Week last September, 25-year-old Maximilian Davis’s women’s and unisex Spring/Summer 2021 collection was immediately picked up by retailers including Net-a-Porter, Browns and Ssense. He also has plans to launch a capsule collection with Browns early this year.

“A reclamation of black elegance” is central to Davis’ tailored designs, according to the show notes for his Carnival-inspired debut, which included hammered silk skirts trimmed with goose feathers and sensuous eveningwear. His lean, graceful silhouettes, love of bold colour, and feathered and horned headwear (designed by Nasir Mazhar) draw on his Trinidadian heritage and the aesthetics of contemporary black artists such as rapper Lil’ Kim.

“For a long time, black people haven’t been in charge of their own narrative, and I wanted to see them in a different, regal light,” he says of the collection.

Maisie Schloss

Chicago-born, Los Angeles-based Maisie Schloss, the designer behind the one-and-a-half-year-old womenswear label Maisie Wilen, has a knack for creating designs that resonate on Instagram. Her ‘90s-inspired stretch-jersey dresses and body-con knits have found fans among Kanye West, the Kardashians, and stockists including Net-a-Porter and Selfridges.

In fact, West is one of Schloss’s backers; the pair met shortly after she graduated from Parsons in 2013 and she began working at his own fashion label, Yeezy.

In contrast to other young designers, who tend to favour the artisanal and hand-made, Schloss is a fan of digital design, creating all of her colour palettes and prints in Photoshop. Her last collection, shown as part of the mostly digital New York Fashion Week in September, explored the differences between how clothes appear on screen and how they appear in person.

Schloss describes her aesthetic as “playful and print-driven”, and says she’s focused on expanding her offering and collaborating with more artists in 2021.

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This article has been amended since its original publication to correct information about Maximilian Davis’s stockists