Kiko Kostadinov has always been so far ahead of fashion's curve that it took until 2024, about seven years after he founded his eponymous London-based label, for the rest of the industry to catch up. But it's about time: 2024 is about to be Kostadinov's year.
The secret to Kostadinov's success is hard work. Okay, end of article, thanks for reading.
But, really, Kostadinov's unflagging creativity is key. He's always overseeing a vast spread of projects beyond his own line, including the ASICS Novalis project, a series of At.Kollektive partnerships, IYKYK artsy label OTTO 958, and a host of itinerant collaborations.
Then, there's Kostadinov's true secret weapon: Kiko Kostadinov womenswear, overseen by sibling design duo Laura Deanna Fanning.
Fanning is the undersung engine powering Kostadinov's recent boom, though Kostadinov himself fueled his own rise since the start.
Combined, Kostadinov's oeuvre is authentic, exciting, fresh in a way that few other nearly decade-old fashion brands are.
It's in the right place at the right time. I've heard tell of a recent Fashion Week where some editors only left their hotels to attend Kostadinov's runway presentation, skipping all of the day's other shows. You've gotta be there.
Part of what's slowly pushed Kostadinov to fashion's cutting edge is the sheer variety of his output.
It's not just clothes, it's not just shoes, it's not really even limited to anything tangible.
Kostadinov's output dabbles in the realm of the post-human, where its far less about who's wearing what and what's wearing who.
It's shapes, colors, patterns, textures, zippers where you don't expect them and seams that flatter, then warp, then flatter the human form.
Kostadinov's practice is uncompromising and unfailing. He's hardly shifted tact at all over the past several years; if anything, he's doubled down and driven his brand directly against the grain, devising evermore lurid patterns, silhouettes accessories, and oddities.
If it seemed crazy at first, it now seems anything but. As is often the case with auteurs, Kostadinov was always beating fashion to the punch.
Kostadinov, an admirer of Yohji Yamamoto, infused his brand's first collections with a curious blend of Christopher Nemeth, Final Home, Vexed Generation, and complicated '90s-Harajuku styling.
At the time, Kostadinov's early work looked like the lunatic ravings of an alien tailor. Now, they look downright visionary in their sporty (in)formality, what with the paneled lab coats layered over deformed track pants and dad shoes.
Oh, the dad shoes.
Kostadinov was so dead-on about ASICS that he's probably the only person who could honestly cop to knowing that the world would collectively come around on tech-y running sneakers. His collaborative sneakers were jaw-droppingly prescient.
Look back at Kostadinov's original ASICS shoe, the GEL-BURZ 1, and recall that these first came out back in 2018, the era of the Triple-S. Sneakers just didn't look like this six years ago — they sure do now.
Kostadinov's successive ASICS shoes became progressively wilder, more colorful, shapelier. The shoes of tomorrow, now.
Like his clothing, Kostadinov's sneakers have always gone their own way.
To be clear, Kostadinov may not have been fashion's most mainstream designer but he was never that obscure, either.
His clothes have always been sold at tastemaking retailers like Dover Street Market and he was on the London Fashion Week calendar before moving to the one in Paris.
But he's long appealed primarily to a core audience of obsessives who got his appeal way before anyone else.
These are the folks who've been paying attention since the days of Kostadinov's de/reconstructed Stüssy collab, who remember the days when Kostadinov's clothes were printed with the number strings now found solely on his care tags — they now hoard clothes of that era.
Though his clothing and sneakers, the two core pillars of Kostadinov's practice, initially played to a smaller crowd, appreciation grew over time. He built it, they came.
Kostadinov's audience especially developed in the wake of the post-pandemic Y2K boom. Tastes shifted. Interests broadened. Kostadinov fit right in.
He already had the foundation for success and made a series of canny moves to capitalize on newfound interest, like opening a web store and collaborating with 40-year-old Japanese clothing label Hysteric Glamour.
That nattily overlapped Kostadinov's core audiences — the archival clothing collectors and Y2K-leaning shoppers aspiring to Ura-Hara style — while Kostadinov's subsequent team-up with Heaven by Marc Jacobs further cemented Kostadinov as the designer for new generation, all without ever selling out his design ethos.
It mst be said that Laura Deanna Fanning oversaw these joint efforts; their Kiko Kostadinov womenswear collections have arguably been as (or even more) instrumental in expanding Kostadinov's reach as the menswear that the brand was founded upon.
Without them, the Kostadinov womenswear buyer would hardly exist, if at all. Perhaps most importantly, Fanning have clarified the brand's aesthetic evolution enough that one commenter on a recent Kostadinov Instagram post succinctly summarized it as "Y2024K."
To be fair, Kostadinov and his team have been living here for the better part of a decade. The rest of us only just arrived.
