Photos: CVFF Finalists 2013
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20131/10Parabellum
Having essentially grown up in his father’s antiques store in L.A., accessories designer Jason Jones, 42 (shown here, right, with Oklahoma City Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook), learned early on the values of a kind of burnished quality. Parabellum, started seven years ago with business partner Mike Feldman, is Jones’s endeavor to reclaim that standard. His bags and leather goods are all cut from the sturdy hides of American bison, with each characterized by a deeply individual texture (many of Jones’s favorites feature scarred-over gore wounds) and layered with five or six different shades of dye. Fastenings and buckles are molded in technical ceramic developed by NASA, adding a futuristic component to otherwise old-school techniques. “American craftsmanship is artisanal, but in a hammer-and-nails sort of way; it’s crude,” says Jones, who is of Japanese and Hopi Indian descent. “We wanted to bring a Bottega level of quality.”
Menswear Editor: Michael Philouze
Fashion Editor: Tabitha Simmons
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20132/10Juan Carlos Obando
“I am an eveningwear house, not a daytime house,” says Obando (with models Anais Mali, left, and Jourdan Dunn). “That’s what we do.” The Colombian-born, Los Angeles–based designer, 36, was first a Fashion Fund finalist in 2008. Since then he’s concentrated on what he calls an “unassuming” take on cocktail dressing. It’s a point of view that he hopes will inspire women to shed traditional notions of formality and, perhaps, bravely pair a coral-hued peasant blouse and a Palatinate-blue hand-pleated silk skirt with one of his sculptural gold rings. “When you sit down with her,” he says, talking about the girl he has in mind when designing, “it’s not about ‘Who are you wearing?’ It’s about ‘What is your story?’ ” Another bedrock principle: “I create clothes knowing that you have to dance,” he says. “All areas of the dress have to be ready for a sudden shift of the hips.”
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20133/10Tome
Having first met in school nearly two decades ago—and having since trained at houses like Gaultier and Alberta Ferretti—Australians Ramon Martin, left, and Ryan Lobo, both 34 (with model Jessica Hart) set out two years ago to build a brand based on a kind of ruthlessly edited wearability. And whatever visionary women may be inspiring them at the moment—past muses include Georgia O’Keeffe, Ana Mendieta, and Pina Bausch—“humanness,” as Lobo puts it, is a guiding principle. Their soft take on daywear is expanding every season, with next spring’s collectsion (at 21 looks, their largest yet) showcasing an experiment with python and tweeds. Just don’t expect any dictatorial manifestos. “Isn’t personal style,” Lobo asks, “more beautiful than anything?”
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20134/10Ovadia & Sons
Ariel Ovadia and Shimon Ovadia (with Australian actor James Frecheville, center, of Adore) could have followed their father into the family business—a wholesale childrenswear line in Brooklyn where they’d both worked since they were teenagers. Instead, they struck out on their own in 2010. “We told our father the shirts were going to retail for $200 to $300,” Ariel, left, says. “He thought we were crazy.” Six months later, the twin brothers, now 31, were hosting their first menswear presentation in their apartment. Fast-forward three years, and the two are among _GQ’_s Best New Menswear Designers in America and are designing the contemporary York Street label for J. Press. Chalk it all up to the boys’ joint bar mitzvah: “Ariel wanted a double-breasted olive suit like one our grandfather had,” Shimon remembers. Did he find what he was looking for? “Something similar,” Ariel says, “but not quite.” And thus were a pair of designers born.
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20135/10Todd Snyder
If there were a word cloud for a conversation with menswear designer Todd Snyder, 48 (left, with _The Glass Menagerie’_s Zachary Quinto, center, and tennis pro Dustin Brown), balance would be front and center. It’s particularly relevant as Snyder discusses creative imagination versus business sense, something he learned a great deal about working at the Gap, Ralph Lauren, and J.Crew, and most recently on a collaboration with Champion. Snyder, an Iowa native, bases each of his collectsions on the idea of the American man in a foreign land—recent iterations have references to Paris, along with a kind of Saharan prep. He confides that he’s always debating just how far afield he can lead his customer without scaring him off. “It is,” Snyder says, “a very delicate balance.”
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20136/10Nonoo
Sitting at Nonoo’s first-ever runway show in September, admiring the Gerhard Richter–inspired patterned trousers and silk jackets in aquamarine and muted lavender, one could imagine the Bahrain-born London native Misha Nonoo herself ambling down the runway. The 27-year-old (right, with model Dree Hemingway) simply embodies the woman for whom she designs. A business school graduate who started her line two years ago, she aimed high when considering collaborators for her show, eventually settling on Albertus Swanepoel for the boater hats and Manolo Blahnik for the mules. As for her move to the U.S.: “I don’t believe the spirit of entrepreneurship in America exists anywhere else in the world,” Nonoo says. “That inspires me.”
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20137/10Marc Alary
The Toulouse-born jewelry designer, 36 (with We Are What We Are actress Julia Garner), is enamored of opera, Russian literature, Luchino Visconti’s legendary 1963 film Il Gattopardo, and Eadweard Muybridge’s nineteenth-century photographic-movement studies. Those disparate inspirations have all found a place in Alary’s collectsion of fine jewelry, some of which depicts animals with movable limbs. After handling all of Marc Jacobs’s runway jewelry, he struck out on his own in 2009. The jeweler, who works exclusively with precious metals and stones (and, of late, wood), still remembers polishing his first piece of gold. “I could understand why people used to get crazy over the stuff,” he says. “I had gold fever.”
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20138/10Tim Coppens
Wherever Tim Coppens’s imagination runs when he is designing—whether to the Antwerp streets he skateboarded as a teenager or, for spring 2014, a 1970s Formula One racetrack—the designer, 38 (right, with model Candice Swanepoel and musician Dominic Lord), always envisions strong, solitary characters. “For me, that individual is very important,” Coppens observes measuredly. “He may be silent, but there’s a lot going on inside. He’s very focused.” He could be speaking about himself. After working for Adidas in Germany, consulting back in Belgium, and then leading Ralph Lauren’s RLX division for three years, Coppens had a 2011 solo debut, with an intricate tailoring of high-tech materials and modified silhouettes (elongated here, cinched-in there) that made the menswear market sit up straight in their seats. This season, Coppens showed his first womenswear looks. And guess what? They stick out from the crowd.
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 20139/10Veronica Beard
When hedge-fund COO Veronica Miele, 41, right, and Parsons graduate Veronica Swanson, 34, left (with model Lily Aldridge), first met in 2002, the only thing less likely than their marrying brothers was the notion of the two of them starting a booming womenswear line (now sold in more than 100 stores, including Kirna Zabête and Intermix). And yet over the past three years the sisters-in-law—with eight children now between them—have done just that, designing clothes based on the concept of a uniform that “feels like a Superman cape,” as Miele explains. “You can go from the gym to the office to a school meeting and feel done.” To achieve that have-it-all aesthetic, the designers seek inspiration in the hallmarks of stylish innovation. “We study what makes women memorable,” she continues. “Why do we remember the Helmut Newton image of Yves Saint Laurent’s le smoking?” The duo set out to bring these ideals back down to earth because, as Miele says, “we are mothers and we are homemakers and we’re businesspeople, too. It’s the Sheryl Sandberg era.”
Photographed by Sebastian Kim, Vogue, November 201310/10Public School
“This is our second coming,” says Maxwell Osborne, left, eyeing his partner, Dao-Yi Chow (center, with actor Netflix’s Hemlock Grove actor Bill Skarsgård). The duo behind Public School, 31 and 39, respectively, were recently forced to weather a four-season hiatus, which was spent regrouping in the CFDA Fashion Incubator. The pair sourced new materials from Italy and Japan and revised their approach to tailoring, and when Public School returned to present at Milk Studios last year, the label was possessed of an entirely new vigor. Osborne and Chow have since taken home the Swarovski Award for Menswear earlier this year, but the line’s original aesthetic—fusing streetwear silhouettes with suit components—thankfully remains intact. “New York City,” says Chow. “If we had a muse, that would be it.”
In this story:
Hair: Holli Smith
Makeup: Yumi Mori
Grooming: Patricia Morales
Set design: Mary Howard Studio
