28 October 2022 |
Conner Ives is living the life he always dreamed of. “That was the best day of my life,” he says. “It was truly a day I’ve thought about since I was four years old. And it sounds so clichéd, but there is no other way to put it.” We’re talking about his London Fashion Week debut in February, a career-shifting moment for any budding designer, but one that felt particularly triumphant for Ives, who has been carving himself out as a fashion megastar since his days at Central Saint Martins.
The New York-born talent, 25, has been creating capsule collections for big-name retailers since his first year of studying. He’s dressed Adwoa Aboah, Natalia Bryant and Sky Ferreira at the Met Gala, made it to the LVMH Prize finals on the back of just his debut collection and, most notably, was plucked by Rihanna to design for her Fenty clothing label before he even graduated.
“I was 21 at the time and was showing Rihanna sketches. There wasn’t a design director telling me ‘Rihanna wants this, Rihanna wants that.’ She was saying, ‘Let’s add a strap here. Let’s cut it lower here.’ I was working with people that were eons ahead of me in their careers. And I was sitting at the same table next to them, sharing ideas equally. I really was so blown away by the democracy that she created.”
A custom version of Ives’ hit bias-cut headscarf dress is being put together for the singer by the designer’s small team as we chat over a cup of tea in his north London studio. The spacious Tottenham loft couldn’t feel more dissimilar to the world Ivesen visions. His design lexicon is firmly tied to the States, with collections that so far have each toyed with American archetypes. He plucks each whimsical character from a rolodex of pop culture moments he’s been mentally bookmarking since he was a child, collaging different characters with memories of the people he grew up around in Hudson Valley and the girls he always dreamed of knowing.
“I had missed the Nineties fashion era when every girl was treated completely different: different hair, different makeup, everything was just all tailored to these individual moments,” he says. “I was so bored of those collections from the last ten years where every model looked the exact same.
His first catwalk collection kicked off with the Vogue Girl, played by Edie Campbell, who embodied the redemption arc of Andrea Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, dressed in knee-high patent leather boots, pea coat and a matching cap concocted from a reconstituted military blanket. Then came the Jersey Girlfit redolent of The Sopranos, with her oversized fleece and fringed halter dress; the Stay-At-Home Mum, cool as a cucumber in her cami top and matching flared lounge pants; The Editor, equipped with a Wintour bob; and The Bride, closing the show in a demi-couture crepe satin gown based on the dress Carolyn Bessette Kennedy wore on her wedding day.
What’s more praiseworthy than Ives’ pop culture catalogue is his devotion to working with deadstock. Each of his creations is reconstructed and remade using recycled and vintage garments. From the Swarovski crystals used through out the collection, which were reignited from landfill, down to the flowers peppered throughout, cut from offcuts of last season’s jersey.
It’s a smart approach that began with the brand’s signature patchwork T-shirt dresses, which have quickly become the namesake label’s bread and butter. “Last season, I think we made more than 700 T-shirt dresses, with 12 interns in the studio piecing them together,” says Ives. For each dress, his team combine four tees at random, all bought from a warehouse up in Sheffield stocked with piles upon piles of dead stock Noughties tees.
It’s an incredible feat seeing Ives succeed, especially as he was part of the Covid class of 2021, graduating without any final degree show and left to enter an industry in the midst of a massive state of flux. Yet he’s already having full-circle moments.A look originally supposed to make his graduate collection was chosen by Andrew Bolton to be exhibited at theIn America: A Lexicon of Fashion exhibition at the Met last September. “It’s a moment I’ll never forget,” says Ives. Forget chasing the American Dream, he’s already living it.
Taken from Issue 69 of 10 Magazine – PEACE, COURAGE, FREEDOM – out now. Purchase here.
