5 Young French Menswear Designers to Know
New talent is making waves in the fashion industry. Here are the rising menswear designers to watch.
While most brands took a step back during the turbulent COVID pandemic, these young French designers saw an opportunity to build their menswear labels, supported by institutions and their own communities. “Beyond their creative talents, we are impressed every day by their courage and their ability to bounce back and move toward the future,” says Christelle Cagi Nicolau, Emerging Brands Project Manager at the Fédération de la Haute Couture de La Mode. Meet the five designers who have emerged with points of view all their own.
Anthony Alvarez
On his 30th birthday, just three years after launching his brand, Bluemarble, Anthony Alvarez took home the Pierre Bergé Prize at the 2022 ANDAM Fashion Awards. Raised in the United States, the Franco-Filipino designer left his finance job at 26 and used his life savings to travel the world and launch the menswear label, now based in Paris. Bluemarble, named after the first complete photograph of Earth taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, is inspired by youth culture and the designer’s global adventures, resulting in vibrant collections that are marked by notes of American sportswear and Filipino adornments with a European flair. When designing, Alvarez looks to his own memories, each garment a letter to past experience.
Florentin Glémarec and Kevin Nompeix, Egonlab
Florentin Glémarec and Kevin Nompeix, co-designers of Egonlab, are motivated by a desire for inclusivity. Their extended community is dubbed the “Egonlab Family.” When Glémarec, 27, and Nompeix, 29, met in 2018, the two were eager to create a unifying brand, genderless and free from convention. With technical know-how but an iconoclastic “tailored urban-punk” style, the duo aren’t afraid to jostle buyers with the unexpected, adding an edge to classic silhouettes via punk and horror-inspired graphics and creative tailoring. The label also uses sustainable materials and environmentally conscious practices, even working with fabrics that absorb carbon dioxide from the air.
Steven Passaro
Visionary, technical, and cerebral, 30-year-old designer Steven Passaro describes his driving force as a love of complexity. A graduate of the École Duperré, Passaro completed his Master’s degree in Menswear Fashion at the London College of Fashion before launching his eponymous brand in October 2019. As the first lockdown was announced in France in March 2020, the designer rushed to Paris’ Sentier neighborhood to buy fabrics, and subsequently locked himself in his home for two and a half months to work on his first collection (as well as dive into 3-D fashion design software). The clothes are created from European deadstock fabrics and manufactured in Paris, and, for Passaro, construction of the garment is essential—resulting in refined collections with a subtle English-tailoring inspiration.
Naomi Gunther
Just six months after Naomi Gunther graduated from Parsons School of Design, her fledgling label was plucked from obscurity by rapper Offset, who wore one of her first designs during Paris Fashion Week in 2019, to much fanfare. Three years later, the 27-year-old’s brand—simply named Gunther—is still going strong. Influenced by an American streetwear spirit, Gunther offers menswear with oversized silhouettes and a Parisian savoir-faire, which it produces mainly via pre-order, sourcing deadstock fabrics from across the continent and spinning them into garments in Paris-based ateliers.
Louis-Gabriel Nouchi, LGN
Louis-Gabriel Nouchi has an eye for perfection and believes in putting in the work—and he has the experience to back it up, beginning his career at Vogue Paris before a stint in design at Raf Simons. Nouchi’s design chops earned him nominations at the 2014 Hyères Festival, where he took home the Camper and Palais de Tokyo prizes. The 34-year-old Parisian launched his menswear label, LGN, in 2017, and has since created capsule collections with Paris-based retailers Galeries Lafayette and La Redoute. Nouchi utilizes vintage fabrics and sustainable practices in creating collections that fall outside of the gender binary.
