How Kiko Kostadinov Won Fashion in 2025
And then there is Dante, their fifth show of the year and the first time they’ve put men’s and women’s on the runway together. The collection falls somewhere between inside joke and earnest experiment. Kostadinov, who grew up in Bulgaria before moving to London as a teenager, explains that he never really identified with British culture. When he got Dante some four years ago, his distinguished, long-snouted terrier became his strongest link to his adopted home. “Everything we do is a diary or a moment of time in our lives, each collection and reference,” he says.
He and the Fannings (who hail from Australia) started the line as a way to explore the essence of the British countryside, working with corduroy, wax fabrics, and hunting garments like shooting blazers, which Kostadinov re-shaped with his signature pattern-making wizardry. The garments were made with function in mind, specifically what you might throw on when taking the dog out in the morning. There’s a Japanese jersey sweatshirt embroidered with an “Official Dog Walker” logo, which Kostadinov found on a vintage Orvis sweatshirt (he wore it to his June show in Paris), and a lightweight washed cotton parka and trousers with belt loops fashioned out of leather dog bones. The crazy dog dad vibe is kind of the point, a nod to the little-known line Oliver by Valentino, which Valentino Garavani launched in the ’80s as a tribute to his beloved pug.
“It was so cute,” Kostadinov says, fiddling with a pair of deadstock Oliver socks embroidered with a tiny pug logo that he had on his desk. “I think they even did a show with Naomi Campbell closing, which is really funny.”
In a juxtaposition that feels very Kiko, the Dante gear was already hanging on the racks of the store next to a wall-sized projection of Stunt Tank (2016), a trippy short film by Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch. Playful fashion merch alongside avant-garde art installation. It’s the only store I’ve been to where you’re greeted by museum-quality wall text on your way in, which speaks to Kostadinov’s goals for the space, which is to keep it flexible, able to accommodate talks or events or whatever their next big idea is. “It’s not just built to sell clothes,” Kostadinov says, “it’s something else.”
It’s this imaginative, spontaneous philosophy that draws such a long list of partners to Kostadinov. Large brands in particular can have a tough time appealing to the high-fashion-IQ customer, the kind who would buy a cardigan embroidered with the motif of their favorite designer’s dog, inside of a recontextualized art installation off the beaten path of the East London retail scene. Case in point, Leo Gamboa of Levi’s says that Kostadinov was one of the first people he reached out to when he arrived at Levi’s in 2021. “Kiko is one of the best patternmakers in the world,” Gamboa says. “I was like, this is going to create a point of difference. This is going to adjust the perception of Levi’s in a way where people will see it through Kiko’s lens.”
