Another Fashion Month has come and gone, and beyond the viral runway moments and celebrity front-row sightings, there’s a slew of emerging designers to keep us interested, inspired, and constantly guessing. These strong new voices often put the most unconventional and captivating designs out into the world, not infrequently shaking the fashion world to its core. Some even go on to creative director positions at the most established houses all over the world, but wherever they end up, one thing is always certain: They are worth keeping an eye on.
Selected from hundreds of shows across New York, London, Milan, and Paris, here are 12 emerging designers from the Fall 2024 season.
Agbobly
Jacques Agbobly founded Agbobly in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and since then the brand has gained a cult followings for its bold, playful hues and for embracing West African craft. The Fall 2024 collection was full of expressive colors and rainbows of stripes. “As a designer and texture enthusiast, I wanted to push the boundaries of the print,” Agbobly tells us. The prints were a collaboration with painter Harlan Hue, who used oil on linen—a technique the artist often uses in his work. “This involved creating a small-scale painting, which we then scanned and digitally enhanced with certain motifs. It became a blend of traditional craftsmanship and digital manipulation—a reflection of personal identity development, a theme in this collection,” the designer says. Agbobly linked the prints to the cracked paint walls in Togo, where his aunts and cousins used to pose for pictures. “It’s all about embracing a blend of influences,” he says, “and taking up space in the world—a sentiment embodied by this striking coat.”
Caroline Zimbalist
Mixing bioplastics with a wonderland of fantasia-inspired colors and flounces of fabric, Caroline Zimbalist uses natural elements as a focal point to create captivating fashion that combines surreal texture with brilliant hues. The rising star combines the bioplastics with light, ethereal materials for the ultimate contrast and says her Fall 2024 collection is “like a painting coming off the wall and wrapping around a body.” She also likes to use natural fibers. “For many of my couture pieces, I molded traditional fabrics into bioplastic,” she says. “The biomaterial is natural and, interestingly, only adheres to other natural materials like silk, cotton, or wool. It will not stick to polyester or synthetics.”
Zankov
Founder Henry Zankov brings personality to knitwear through fluid prints, expressive stripes, and overwhelmingly joyful pieces that defy norms. The designer worked under several LVMH-owned brands before striking out on his own to launch Zankov in 2019. In his Fall 2024 collection, the focus is on sensual textures and sumptuous silhouettes. “I moved back to New York City just over a year ago,” says the designer. “Upon my return, what touched me the most was that I felt an immediate embrace. This collection is all about coming into contact with that feeling.” From bold stripes to chunky, textural experiments, the brand is rethinking the concept of knitwear with an injection of personal style.
Taottao
Chic acid-washed denim and soft-pastel-toned plaid lace come together to form the ultimate juxtapositions in the world of Taottao. Designer Yitao Li founded the brand in 2022 after interning at Monse, Thom Browne, Tibi, and Kim Shui. Her work is unequivocally feminine, with a cool, dark undercurrent. “My goal as a designer is to create visual experiences that evoke joy and empower self-expression,” she tells us. “I believe dressing up can be a powerful tool for embracing confidence and celebrating individuality, allowing wearers to let the clothes speak for them and evoke a sense of excitement in embracing their true selves. Similar to the allure of discovering a hidden gem, I aspire for my creations—like the coverall bodysuits—to be that unexpected delight for those who encounter them.” The brand’s Fall 2024 collection was its first ready-to-wear collection, inspired by vintage cartoons and focused on coolly remixed denim and plaids.
Jack Irving
London Fashion Week has a knack for supporting the most experimental fashion talents, and Jack Irving certainly falls into that category. The rising designer, who could be considered more of an artist, presented his collection of inflatable, wearable sculptures in shades of turquoise and cobalt blue. His work has drawn fans like Lady Gaga, who started wearing his over-the-top creations nearly 10 years ago, when he was still a student. Because of the heavy art influence, Irving flies further under the radar than other, more commercial fashion labels that showed in London, but he is still undoubtedly one to watch.
Paolo Carzana
Since making his London Fashion Week debut in 2022, Paolo Carzana has built a cult following for his unique look and techniques. Carzana often hand-dyes his pieces using natural pigments from plants, and his pieces are designed with rare textures and lots of cool layering, textiles piled one on top of the other to create new silhouettes that feel strikingly different than what anyone else is doing. His Fall 2024 collection was titled “Melanchronic Mountain” and focused on a symbolic journey—his models wore pieces that looked like they had been well-worn or dipped in dust or mud, aged incredibly perplexingly.
Rave Review
Taking the idea of upcycling and making it more real-world, Rave Review works with vintage and deadstock fabrics to create chic mixed-print dresses, cool skirts, and top combinations. Josephine Bergqvist and Livia Schück founded the line in 2017 and are now rightfully getting more attention—having taken their Fall 2024 show to Milan Fashion Week after spending previous seasons closer to their native Sweden, in Copenhagen. The brand also focuses on street casting and using models of different sizes and ages—a practice that, at the present moment, fashion desperately needs more of.
Hodakova
Taking the old and making it new again—or rather, subverting it—is key for Hodakova. The brand was founded by Swedish designer Ellen Hodakova Larsson in 2021 and has cultivated an insider following for its leather bags and repurposed horse-girl tropes. For Fall 2024, the designer doubled down on her brain-bending silhouettes—like dresses made of horse ribbons, leather briefcases deconstructed, or bent silver dining trays. It was all about the everyday, yet done in a refreshingly real and gloriously weird way—which stands out at a time when the runways have never been more hom*ogenous.
Róisín Pierce
Designer Róisín Pierce is bringing her angelic, ultrafeminine new vision of handcrafted luxury to the forefront of fashion. The Irish designer founded her namesake line in 2020, after studying textile design at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Her Fall 2024 collection was titled “O Lovely One, Fallen From a Star” and was rendered all in white, in glorious diaphanous textures or ruffles and sheer delights. Pierce was looking at imagery of female worshippers to inspire the collection. Her unique, soft aesthetic will keep all of us watching and coming back for more.
Marie Adam-Leenaerdt
Young designer Marie Adam-Leenaerdt is taking elements of deconstruction and bringing them to the forefront of fashion. The designer graduated from Belgium’s La Cambre National School of Visual Arts in 2020 and launched her namesake brand soon after. She formerly worked for Balenciaga and Givenchy, and it’s easy to see some of those elements in her work—like the oversize campiness or streamlined, slightly futuristic aesthetic. For her Fall 2024 collection, she seemed to interrogate the working woman’s wardrobe with a unique and humorous point of view. Shoulders, puffer coats, and dresses came supersized, while bags were blown up in massive, memelike proportions.
Germanier
Standing strong with an unapologetically maximalist viewpoint, Germanier was founded by Kevin Germanier in 2018. The Central Saint Martins grad began his journey by creating incredibly stylized, brightly colored beaded dresses with upcycled materials. For Fall 2024, Germanier took guests on a journey of over-the-top creations encompassing feathers, sequins, and unconventional materials usually reserved for floral arrangements. “I’m a storyteller, and I feel like my clothes tell a lot, but sometimes my show—even though I love all the shows I did—lacks that extra dimension that I’m a storyteller,” he tells us. The Ancienne Cécilia Orchestra performed live during the show to add that extra over-the-top feeling. “And this season, it was a full showgirl. I really embrace it. Sometimes people think of my work as costume, drag queen, cabaret … . What’s wrong with that? I really wanted to lean in, and I think I should really embrace my DNA.”
Reverie by Caroline Hu
Few designers are challenging the idea of wearability as interestingly as Caroline Hu. Stepping into one of her presentations, you can expect to see big, bulbous forrefms that present as dramatic visions of dreamlike intricacies. The line was founded in May 2019 by Hu, who splits time between New York and Shanghai. Her Fall 2024 collection tackled the “exploration of the idea of distance and space between people,” or “how perceived distance can feel vastly different depending on the relationships and situation that one finds themselves in regardless of the physical distance,” according to the show notes. That manifested in stunning, otherworldly dresses with puffs of pillowlike appendages and trains of tulle or a sea of ribbons flowing down an off-the-shoulder dress—an inherently feminine point of view that makes you really think. And that’s what great fashion should do, after all.
