Designers
Cristóbal Balenciaga, the Architect Whose House Refuses to Sit Still
The Basque couturier who closed his house in 1968 left construction standards every later designer measures against — and a name the market keeps reinventing.
Designers
Designers profiles the people making the collections: their training, their studios, their material habits and the constraints they work under. Coverage spans debut labels and established houses changing hands. Suited to readers who follow careers across seasons and want the background before the reviews arrive.
Designers
Vivienne Westwood: From King's Road Punk to the Corset That Outargued It
The schoolteacher who dressed punk ran for four decades on one proposition — that clothes carry political arguments — and built a house that still runs on it.
Designers
Dries Van Noten, the Antwerp Designer Who Let the Clothes Speak Last
A third-generation tailor's son turned independent house founder, Van Noten ran his own company for nearly four decades before stepping back in 2024.
Designers
Miuccia Prada Made Thinking a Fashion Signature
A political-science graduate who took over a family leather-goods house in 1978 built fashion's most consistent intellectual voice — and one of its largest groups.
Designers
Rei Kawakubo Built a Career on the Answer 'Why Not'
The Comme des Garçons founder, who showed in Paris first in 1981, made asymmetry, deformity and refusal into a design language — and a business.
Designers
Azzedine Alaïa, the Cutter Who Refused the Calendar
The Tunisian-born couturier built a house on cut alone, showed on his own schedule and stayed independent inside a conglomerate age.