Meet Patrick Church, the Joy-Inducing Designer Behind Instagram’s Biggest Fashion Statements
With smart and confident collections, British-born designer Patrick Church presents a playful, more daring future for fashion, where clothes are made to inspire joy.
And it’s a joy he intends to share in force. Last year, he made models of the guests at his NYFW presentation — myself included, as it was completely open to the public — dressing us in thousand-dollar garments for minute-long photo shoots on a set so stylized, it looked straight out of Vogue.
Instagram may be training us to online-shop with our eyes, but it’s also given young designers like Patrick Church a platform to defy conformity away from the echo chamber of the fashion elite. While Comme des Garçcns rightly took heat recently for sending white models in braids down the runway — and we see Black creatives snubbed routinely in fashion — it’s worth mentioning that Patrick Church is a real champion of inclusivity. He consistently casts queer people of color at the center of his campaigns and with body positivity in mind.
No wonder the artist-turned-designer captured our hearts, but he’s also risen to cult status among the celeb style set, from Katy Perry — who wore three custom jackets of his in her “Harleys in Hawaii” music video, then for the cover of Rolling Stone — to Lil’ Kim (“Sorry, that was epic for me”), Teyana Taylor, Queer Eye‘s Tan France and Antoni Porowski, Troye Sivan, Nyle Dimarco, and the OG Instagram baddies, the Clermont Twins. Oh, and Christina Aguilera wore one of his tees for her Christmas card this year. (“Honestly, so surreal.”)
The designer sat down with POPSUGAR in his Brooklyn, NY, studio to talk all things fashion and introduce his new collection, which would best be described as high-end statement dressing done right. With a bold use of color and ready-to-wear prints plucked directly from his art, his is a style that’s instantly recognizable. And if the paint splatters on his studio’s hardwood floors are any indication, there’s plenty more where that came from.
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