AV Vattev is the London-based menswear model creating sluggish vogue with a subcultural twist

Bulgaria-born designer Antonio Vattev stands at a crossroads in his profession. Confronted with the prospect of scaling up his label, AV Vattev, the London-based rising designer has chosen, as an alternative, to stay to his weapons. Now eight collections in, Vattev used his newest providing to cement the codes he’s been honing since 2020, when he first arrange store. Leaning into his knack for unconventional pattern-cutting, he has since solid a coherent imaginative and prescient of the AV Vattev man – one rooted in panelled outerwear, straightforward silhouettes and the kind of fabrication that lasts a lifetime, not a season. 

In his model’s nascent days, he needed to introduce a brand new trope every season. ‘However that does not work for a brand new model as a result of it makes it tough for patrons, consumers and press to recognise the model,’ says Vattev, pragmatically. Newly enrolled into the Sarabande Basis – an east London studio-space-cum-initiative supporting creatives quick on capital however huge on concepts, based by Lee Alexander McQueen – Vattev has gained severe traction, garnering press and well-known devotees, from Headie One to A$AP Rocky. Regardless of this success and the temptations that observe, he’s staunch in his dedication to sluggish vogue, utilizing a minimum of 70 per cent (typically extra) deadstock materials and turning down stockists if it means compromising on any of those tenets.

AV Vattev: the London-based label creating sluggish vogue with a twist

A Central Saint Martins alum tutored by fellow London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner, Vattev earned his stripes interning as a stylist at Lanvin and on placement at Incotex – the latter, he says, offering an perception into all the things he didn’t need his label to be. He later landed a task throughout the Saint Laurent menswear design crew, the place he quickly honed a watch for tailoring. This has been a via line of his private work, whilst he started introducing sportier designs into the combination. ‘I do not assume that my work is as sharp as Saint Laurent, and I am not truly eager about doing it that means,’ he says. Fortunate, then, that these tasselled and grommeted skirts, plus the plaid-flapped work shirts on present for A/W 2024 learn as something however.

When Vattev went it alone, he shortly made his title with a melange of cultural references, from Sixties and Seventies icons reminiscent of Mick Jagger, Grace Jones and a coterie of wonderful artwork greats like Robert Mapplethorpe, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, not least his perennial favorite, Georgia O’Keefe. The final two influences, particularly, emerge on this newest assortment within the undulating, spliced hems – uncooked or razor sharp – and the normal Bulgarian embroidery, referred to as ‘gaitan’, which he splayed throughout nappa leather-based and drawcord-adjustable tracksuits like wilting flowers.

Elsewhere, different signatures come to the fore. The distinctive jukebox closure, arriving as both interloping collars, layered knee strips or crossover lapels on chocolate brown pinstripe fits, are each a playful quirk and a reminder of his USP: a knack for the geometric. Certainly, it’s no shock to be taught that Vattev had initially utilized for Central Saint Martins’ graphic design basis, earlier than being rejected and advisable for the style course.

The theme for this outing, pulled from Syd Shelton’s legendary Rock In opposition to Racism photograph e book, was much less a direct nod and extra a free information, reminiscent of a heady second of subcultural cross-pollination that rose from the dirt-caked floor up. Mud-stain denim prints be a part of hyperbolically lofty bomber jackets – every with a cutesy, laser-cut floral adornment – and washed-out dyes on parka coats. ‘It was a really fascinating course of as a result of you must measure the garment, how a lot it shrinks the material, after which do the measurements once more to create a brand new cloth with new measurements,’ he says of his dyeing trials. ‘I discovered this native producer, they usually’ve been extraordinarily supportive.’

After all, it’s this borderline-obsessive, grassroots-only strategy to garment design that’s so welcome in at present’s vogue area, the place fickle tendencies can generally drown out the slower experimentation, color swatching and artistic restraint that goes right into a label. Making garments is a enterprise, positive, nevertheless it’s additionally a artistic pursuit – and that, as Vattev will attest, can’t be rushed.