One of the best things about fashion? The new. The next. The unexpected. It’s what fashion thrives on, and is increasingly important in an era where it seems harder and harder to surprise or to make clothes that have the kind of energetic bite or emotional pull that means anyone gives a shit. To us optimists, it comes as no surprise that there is an emerging group of designers working in London who are taking the codes of menswear – and a lot of them don’t even want to call it ‘menswear’ or even see it as such – and are readily rearranging them, however they see fit. From turning the gaze queer, to hand-dying your designs in a saucepan or perhaps even creating an internet fashion graduation meltdown with a roll of fabric (or six), let’s expect the unexpected, and get dressed up accordingly in delight. 

“The collection centres around the white dress Mick Jagger wore in 1969 on stage in Hyde Park. We re-worked this piece into a long shirt, with a pointed 70s collar which gave us the opportunity to explore fresh silhouettes,” says the 30 year-old Bulgarian designer of his namesake brand Av Vattev’s SS24 Sweet Summer Sweat collection.

Developing notions of a modern androgyny and a sensitive masculinity, this season, shirting comes with corset-style lacing, shorts are short, sequins are sprayed on mini-skirts whilst check suiting features the brand’s signature ‘Jukebox’ closure (an overlapping fastening device) alongside mini-houndstooth cycling shorts and leather blazers.

Vattev says being born and raised in Bulgaria but educated in London has shaped his cultural perspective. “I find inspiration in creating a dialogue between various artistic expressions, including music, performance, and visual arts. This approach enables me to craft collections that tell captivating stories,” he says. A graduate from Central Saint Martins, Vattev worked as a designer at Saint Laurent, setting up his label in 2020.

His next collection for FW24, Superculture also saw Jagger on the moodboard alongside the likes of Liam Gallagher and images from various British subcultures, such as mod, skinhead and punk. The designer was particularly looking at the 1970s Rock Against Racism movement and specifically Syd Shelton’s photography book, Rock Against Racism – 1976–1981. “It highlights the creation of an activist identity through deliberate choices in clothing, accessories, hairstyles, makeup, and body language,” says Vattev.

Butchers or fishmonger aprons, Carling Black Label beer bar cloths or Jameson whiskey ones transformed into clothing that mingles alongside a super-cropped rugby shirt, nipples out, worn with football shorts or a granny-ish floral tank. Welcome to the SS24 collection of Adam Jones, whose universe is built out of a certain British/Welsh sensibility, his love of the pub, and car boot sales.

Jones, 33, who is based in Deptford, South London, was born in Wrexham, in a tiny village called Froncysyllte. “Growing up where I did there was no fashion as such to influence me, it was something I had an interest in but could only see via the pages of the Sunday paper supplements my grandma would keep for me,” explains the designer. “She spotted my interest and encouraged it by drawing with me, showing me old films and family photographs of her in clothes she had made for herself when she was younger, allowing me to dress up in her old clothes.”

Everything is made by Jones himself who creates only one collection a year and is resolutely working to the beat of his own pint glass. “I think it’s important to try different methods to change the way the fashion industry works, fashion is supposed to be all about the new, so let’s try something new,” he grins. He references the way the YBA’s worked in the 90s as his personal work blueprint. “The Shop that Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin had, I wish I had been around then, the way they used to make enough just to live, but they were able to party and collaborate and enjoy life.”

“Barns, farmyards, Bavaria,” are the three words that roll off of Olly Shinder’s tongue when questioned about his inspirations for this season’s are we in touch? offering, shown on the Fashion East runway, modelled by a group of queer artists and pals, with music mixed by Wolfgang Tillmans. It opened with a whiff of Lederhosen and a soupçon of red gingham. Sportswear and workwear, hi-visibility and ropes of silver shower cord, playsuits or zipper tops revealingly undone all followed, underscoring the young designer’s interest and exploration of masculine codes and queer night spaces which he has quickly established as the thrust of his namesake label. “My work is very autobiographical. I’m constantly pouring myself into it,” he says.

Shinder, 24, who grew up in North London, started his brand straight out of his BA at Central Saint Martins in 2022; he spent a year in Sweden working at clothing company Snickers who make uniforms worn by construction workers. In addition to Fashion East, which he says was a “dream come true” Shinder has the backing of Dover Street Market’s influential Adrian Joffe, and is part of DSM Paris, an incubator for emerging talent.

“I like to subvert masculine codes of dressing,” he says, name checking The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier at the Barbican as his first clothing-related memory. He isn’t a fan of the term menswear and would prefer to not use it, and when asked if his work is meant to be sexy, replies simply: “I don’t intentionally make them sexy or unsexy, I just do what I do.”

The sixteen handmade and hand-dyed looks created by Paolo Carzana for his London fashion week SS24 show, titled My Heart Is a River for You to Bend, were a sublime act of sculptural beauty captured in raw off-white, rose antique silk chiffon, sheer lemon yellow or matte black McQueen deadstock (courtesy of the Sarabande Foundation). Silhouettes made up of seemingly haphazard knots and tucks, the occasional slash of flesh, pieces layered close against skin, are invested with deep emotion, meaning they tend to ripple with the sensual and are infused with the romantic.

Kate Bush in movement was an inspiration whilst Carzana again worked with Nasir Mazhar on the show’s headwear. The designer also wanted to pay homage to his late friend Sophie. “I like to think about strength and fragility as an expression to what I do,” explains Carzana from his studio at the Sarabande Foundation in Tottenham. “I am truly driven by emotion, and through the story telling of construction, form, cut and colour I like to illustrate the tension between those two.”

Carzana, 28, was born in Cardiff, Wales. He attributes his interest in fashion to his school art teachers introducing him to Gianni Versace and Alexander McQueen. Having studied at Westminster and Central Saint Martins, his Another World collection of 2021 made during lockdown from leftover fabric dyed in a saucepan with plants and spices was his breakthrough, attracting the attention of Sarah Mower, Vogue critic and the British Fashion Council’s ambassador for emerging talent. His work will be shown later this year as part of Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The six clever looks crafted by Eden Tan for his Central Saint Martins BA collection On Borrowed Fabric that scooped the school’s top young talent prize last summer and duly went viral online were nothing short of an experimental performance in fabric. Tan’s garments appeared still very much attached to the un-cut roll of cloth they had been rendered in – all fabrics were donated – with models either carrying the fabric rolls themselves or having others following behind doing so.

There was a fantastic, bluntly fashioned strapless dress in pea soup green latex with an oversized button worn by a male model. Denim repurposed from Bossa Denim in Turkey was airbrushed with bleach. A tartan ensemble from Strathmore Woollen that looped around the model’s body had the designer himself carrying the fabric roll behind, climaxing when the designer stopped and the model carried on, so the fabric peeled off the roll in spectacular fashion. “I want to make a collection of clothes that could be as easily reprocessed into new garments as if the fabric had never passed through my hands,” Tan said after the show.

At just 23, Tan, who was born in Hammersmith, to a Malaysian Chinese father and an English mother, says that most of his work starts with waste materials; he currently sells upcycled bags through Instagram. On the future of menswear he muses: “‘Menswear’ is the tradition that I have assigned myself to, to me ‘menswear’ is not necessarily gendered, it’s just a well-established process of making clothes, so, although the name might need updating, I don’t think it needs scrapping.”

“The starting point of SS24 was my team,” says Goom Heo of her latest collection Bad Sports, which features a locker-room aesthetic that swings between cut-out denim corset tops, thigh-hugger shorts and slashed, zippy jersey tracksuits. Last season, Heo’s collection Riders unpicked another masculine archetype – cowboys – with trademark fizz, and depending on your point of view, a homoerotic splashiness. “My team are all from different cities and although we have different backgrounds, how we bond together and work towards one goal is amazing. I wanted to show this energy we have through the collection so that we are like a sports team with great energy.”

“I always wanted to be an interpreter since I was young,” says the designer. “One day I was watching TV and there was a documentary about the world’s most famous fashion schools and after watching it, I really wanted to apply for Central Saint Martins. It was one of the schools in the documentary. It was so random.” Heo, 32, was born in Jinju in South Korea, moving to London to do both her BA and MA in fashion at CSM. She was awarded the school’s top new talent prize for her MA in 2019, showed on the Fashion East roster in 2020 and was an LVMH prize semi-finalist in 2022. Wherever possible, Heo sources and uses techniques that she only finds in Korea and brings them into her process and collections. She splits her time between Seoul and London.