Though the seat at the helm of the house remains empty in the wake of Virgil Abloh’s death, today in Paris, Louis Vuitton will present a menswear collection guest designed by a maths graduate that cut his teeth hustling t-shirts from the high-school cafeteria. Talk about a wildcard! But before you jump to any conclusions, there’s a treasure trove of designs, collaborations and facts worth knowing about Colm Dillane, the boundlessly creative New York native who’s about to show on fashion’s highest stage.
Better known by the moniker KidSuper – which he’s gone by since around 2011, when he first started his streetwear label-cum-collective – he first got started by creating a makeshift storefront in his college bedroom. When New York University shut him down, he took business elsewhere, setting up shop in Brooklyn. Hustling ever since, Dillane has built a business that bucks typical expectations of a luxury brands, offering accessibly priced designs to his ever-growing community.
Treating cloth as canvas, the self-trained artist blesses workpants, puffers and hoodies with his hotchpotch collages and figurative paintings, eschewing traditional fashion presentations for bizarre alternatives that often involve the audience. Indeed, his MO remains one of participatory creation, with the brand acting like a pressure cooker for his and his friends’ ideas. From his immersion in East Coast hip-hop to his trials and tribulations with fashion authorities, these are the highlights from his unconventional but illustrious résumé.
He’s fashion’s anti-hero
After three painstaking applications to show KidSuper during Paris Fashion Week, Colm Dillane’s motivation only grew. For him, La Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode’s rejection letters were less doors in his face than a foot in the door. “I actually was excited that they were rejecting me because it meant they were still looking!” he wrote on Instagram. True to his word, he printed said letter onto a dress for his AW20 collection, eventually copying the acceptance notice onto a work jacket in his SS21 collection – his official debut on the schedule.
His work is open to all
Despite his contested relationship with the fashion mainstream, Colm sees it as the most accessible art form. Where fine art, film and music video direction (where he also thrives) might call for certain credentials, the rag trade, he believes, is inherently democratic. Learning this early on, he attended the style-savvy Brooklyn Technical High School, where his peers were all rocking the finest Supreme, Mishka and 10 Deep instead of aspiring to jock or cheerleader status. What he did, nonetheless, feel is that a level of wealth was required to flex – in response to this, his penchant for T-shirt printing was born with his first label, Brick Oven T-Shirts.
“I went to Supreme at the age of 13, they just were so foolish towards me when I was there to potentially purchase a shirt,” he told the Council of Fashion Designers in 2022. “So, I thought, would it be cool if I created a brand that made you feel cool and inspired you to be great?” he continued. It was this thinking and distaste for exclusivity that led him to found KidSuper, a brand that acts like a super suit for its wearers, inviting them into his crew, rather than a queue.
Is it art, though?
As part of his mission to open up the arts, Colm blurs disciplines, despite being formally trained in none. At his SS23 collection, this meant enlisting Sotheby’s Lydia Fenet to orchestrate an auction of painted KidSuper designs that models showcased in real time. Culminating in a total of $529,000, the bids came largely from rapper Russ, one of Colm’s earliest co-signs, bringing performance, consumer and fashion into humorous conversation.
Jokes aside, though, Colm’s fashion ensembles can also be found in the Met Museum’s hallowed archives, while works better filed under ‘fine art’ have also been exhibited at New York’s Gallery 151 – the exhibition was aptly named, Flying Machine, in a nod to the maverick’s blue-sky thinking. Elsewhere, he’s shown a dab hand at claymation with his virtual SS21 runway show that was attended by Barbie-doll recreations of Anna Wintour and the Obamas alike.
He <3 NY
And New York loves him. As his teenage stomping ground from the age of 12, the Big Apple often inspires the figures seen in his watercolour paintings, but also feeds his make-it-happen mentality. “What I love about New York City is that everyone moves here to make it,” he told V magazine in 2022. “You don’t move here to settle down. There’s an energy and a drive, a feeling and a grinding.”
Beyond the hustle and bustle, it’s also where he found his contemporaries, immersing himself in Beast Coast’s milieu of rappers, from Joey Badass to his oldest, most ardent supporter, AK the Savior of psychedelic rap crew, The Underachievers. “This was me getting authentically New York people to rep it,” he told us.
He’s a collaboration king
What’s streetwear without collaborations? Nothing, so says Colm, who has teamed up with everyone from Jägermeister to Puma in the past few years. Treating both as opportunities to celebrate his love of the beautiful game – he’s a football fanatic – Colm used the former to mark Morocco’s milestone as the first African nation to reach a World Cup semi-final, and the latter to create footy boots, a doodled kit and kicks complete with pencil holders for your modern-day Renaissance man.
He’s also a familiar face at Louis Vuitton, where he designed his own digital hot-air balloon trunk as part of their 200-year anniversary project, Louis 200. LV aside, there’s a Tommy Hilfiger collaboration set for 2024, and Puma have yet to fulfil their promise of a KidSuper football pitch, so keep your eyes peeled.