2025 is the year for designers, with creative directors bouncing from brand to brand, talent emerging or even breaking out, somehow garnering the industry’s glut of attention and making fashion interesting again. Learn the names we’re obsessed with right now. By 2026, your friends will pretend they were the first to discover the name, and you’ll probably just nod your head in slight anguish.
Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen
You may know her from the pages of glossy magazines, her sculptural NYFW debut, her overt praise for Rosalía, Julia Fox’s napkin dresses, or Suki Waterhouse’s grandma-core florals. either way, Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen He’s a Brooklyn-based designer who has played visual tricks on me before. At first glance, her pieces feel like they came straight out of grandma’s closet in the best possible way, and a Victorian grandma might live in a museum as stylish as her old world wardrobe. Then you look at it again and realize you’ve done something antiques could never do.
Whalen has been creating pre-industrial, historically-based work in her studio since 2022. Using deadstock textiles, vintage linens, and found fabrics, we transform what most would call leftovers into collections that manage to exist somewhere between sculpture and wearability. The candlelit East Village performances, the corsets draped like armor, the shadowy studio settings are all atmospheric moments. Whalen not only lets me screenshot her intimate designs, but I half considered applying a vignette filter to them. There’s something creeping about that fresh effect.
Danial Aituganov and Imru Asha from Zomar
Somer is a very young label, officially founded in 2023 by designer Danial Aituganov and stylist Imru Asha. Aituganov was racking up resume points at Louis Vuitton, Chloé and Burberry, but then he developed an urge to do something unpredictable. Asha, on the other hand, built a reputation as a stylist and fashion director at Dazed long before she called the studio her own. They met in Amsterdam and had the idea for the brand for so long that they finally landed in Paris with a name that conveniently meant “summer.”
To be honest, Zomer wasn’t the brand I was looking for. Under this duo, the label clearly knows its way around contemporary art and culture, always playing with the trifecta of colour, texture and silhouette in a deliberate, dare I say subtly avant-garde way, mocking those who still think fashion should be well-behaved. The result is clothing that embraces childlike boldness and requires adult supervision to keep an eye on you.
Ellen Hodakowa Larsson becomes Hodakowa
When I was convinced that I understood what “upcycled couture” could achieve, Hodakowa Come and turn it upside down to shame your definition. The label started in 2021 with a very simple philosophy. Ellen Hodakova Larson knew what it meant to turn discarded materials into something people could breathe again. Larson grew up watching her mother rescue old clothes, and her resourcefulness and instincts are now the backbone of the brand. Each piece feels like a metamorphosis of an overlooked object, belts into skirts, antique buttons into dresses, even spoons and guitars, finding their moment on the red carpet next to an avant-garde, conceptual aesthetic.
There are very few labels that make you question why they bother with something “new.” Hodakova is doing that in Stockholm, digging through scraps and dead stock that her favorite names would otherwise throw away, but Larsson wants a word. Sure, she won the 2024 LVMH Prize, which included prize money and mentorship, but she’s happy to keep the trophy and the outfit makes a statement. Proving that the combination of fashion rejection and fresh vision can be more interesting than anything else in boutique peddling. It’s a boutique that manages to sell new items with a worn-in, post-90s charm. You might as well skip that act and support the people who are actually making remarkable clothes from the first stitch.
Steve Doan & Fan Hui for Fan Hui
How much love for craftsmanship and Vietnamese tradition can you bring? Fan Hui. There’s no story twist here, though it’s a haute couture house headed by another duo: stylist Steve Doan and…well, Fang Hui. Think intricate embroidery, silk weaving, natural vegetable dyeing, hand weaving, and Vietnam’s rich textiles – weapons. Huy has a different touch than your average breakout designer, with fairy-tale touches such as sculptural folds that create asymmetry, silhouettes that make you rethink the meaning of “fit,” and contemporary tailoring grounded in old-fashioned craftsmanship. Let’s talk about respecting tradition.
If Jhené Aiko believes in them, I’m sure so. The brand has only been around since 2023, but it’s already making inroads into the fashion world. SS26 did just that trick, popping up on the feeds of all the famous enthusiasts and reminding us that this atelier isn’t all there is to it. I never thought I’d be excited about Sparkle again, but here I am with half the couture industry, so it’s fun in a way, I’m not going to lie. Add sculptural silhouettes and interesting textures, and you’re bound to teach the new kids on the couture block a thing or two about runway fossils.
In between this year’s never-ending office swaps and recycled aesthetics, a few designers have put their heads down and given their work some weight. Call them emerging, breakouts, or whatever name helps you feel a little more organized. The key is to pay attention while you’re still building, not after you’re busy playing the same game of musical chairs in an industry that everyone swore they would never touch.
Source: Our Culture – ourculturemag.com
