MARQUES‘ALMEIDA

The duo behind this London-based label, Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida, met a decade ago in their native Portugal before heading to London’s Central Saint Martins to pursue master’s degrees in womenswear. While researching their joint thesis collection, they looked through ’90s issues of i-D and The Face and had an epiphany: Nearly every shoot featured denim. Inspired, the pair cut raw indigo fabric into oversize tops, slashed-open pants and one-sleeved dresses for their fall 2011 debut. “Jeans feel lived in,” says Marques, 28, who defines each collection’s mood while Almeida, 29, is the technician. “That seems more special to us than an expensive fabric.” Their frayed creations—which this season evolved to include brocade, ’50s-style silhouettes and denim in richly saturated hues—struck a chord with idiosyncratic retailer Opening Ceremony. They also impressed a jury composed of couturiers like Karl Lagerfeld, Phoebe Philo,  who handed them this year’s LVMH Prize for Young Fashion Designers, which offers 300,000 euros ($330,000) and mentoring to the winner. Says Marques, “We want to create a product that feels valuable but accessible at the same time.”
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JACQUEMUS

Self-taught designer Simon Porte Jacquemus, 25, often looks to his late mother and to his own childhood in the village of Brame-Jean, in southern France, for inspiration for his experimental designs. “I grew up running barefoot in the fields and swimming every day,” says Jacquemus, who founded his Paris-based label in 2009 when he was 19 years old. His process is similarly free-spirited. Of working on his fall 2015 collection, he says, “I was like a kid, cutting up pieces in my studio”—which he then rearranged into deconstructed designs like a patchwork wool and cotton dress with a shirt sleeve across the front. The designer frequently posts personal photographs to his and Facebook feeds. “Sometimes I feel like a blogger because I’m on the floor in my studio taking a picture. I’m very connected to my generation,” he says. So far, it must be working: His line is carried at 85 locations including Dover Street Market, the concept stores owned by Japanese brand Comme des Garçons, for which Jacquemus once worked as a sales clerk.

THOMAS TAIT

Canadian designer Thomas Tait, 28, has been on an upward trajectory since trading his hometown of Montreal for London: In 2010, at 22, he became the youngest student ever to graduate from Central Saint Martins with a master’s degree in womenswear. The next February, he launched his self-named line out of London, and just three years later, in 2014, LVMH awarded him the inaugural Prize for Young Fashion Designers. Tait, who describes his aesthetic as “the glamorization of horror,” draws inspiration from touchstones like the 1990 satire Edward Scissorhands, artist Gregory Crewdson’s photographs of banal American life and the films of Italian director Dario Argento. The results are precisely executed designs with slightly surreal details, like oversize trouser cuffs or a leather jacket’s elongated sleeves from this fall’s collection, and even a print composed of blurry screen grabs from favorite Argento films.“I started the brand with absolutely no money and no idea what I was doing,” says Tait. “LVMH gave me hope about the future.”

VETEMENTS

Parisian label Vetements, the seven-person design collective led by 34-year-old Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia, has quickly gained momentum since launching last year. Gvasalia—who studied economics before graduating from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts and designing for Louis Vuitton and Maison Margiela, where his six cohorts also worked—blends motifs from hip-hop, street culture and his own friends. “We work on clothing that people recognize,” says Gvasalia, whose collection is now sold in 80 stores. “Then we put it in a context of being modern so they see it in a new way.” For this fall, that means utilitarian uniforms that play with proportion and scale: cargo pants paired with bold-striped sweaters, and deliberately oversize trousers and suit jackets. “It’s a lot about attitude,” says Gvasalia. “The woman I dress is the ultimate designer of her clothes and her style.”

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