Today’s top models are the most in the know about emerging fashion brands. After all, they’re surrounded by clothes 24/7 and have access to the industry’s top stylists. So it’s only natural they get to wear the coolest underground designers first. Case in point: Bella Hadid, who stepped out in London last night wearing a top that reinterprets the classic Dickies workwear shirt.
The quilt-like top is by Axecents by Orah LeMaître, which specializes in applying patchwork onto more utilitarian pieces, such as Dickies shirts and Levi’s jeans. Its crafted, repurposed designs—no two pieces are alike—have already been spotted on stylish gents during Men’s Fashion Week but are bound to gain in popularity thanks to Hadid’s approval.
The line was launched last year by Joshua Coverdale, a fine artist turned designer from Bristol, Pennsylvania. He says the line is inspired by skateboarding culture—he’s a skater himself—as well as by “the colorful Caribbean scenery I’ve been exposed to by my family from Trinidad,” he told Vogue.
Coverdale’s foray into fashion felt like a natural progression from his art career. “I started off as a painter, creating abstract paintings and other visual art, but I’ve always had a love for fashion,” Coverdale said. “The brand’s graphics are all from original artworks I have created, primarily paintings and illustrations.” (He also named the label after his mother, Wendy LeMaître, who was a designer in Trinidad and helped him learn the craft.) He started repurposing vintage garments as a way of making clothes while learning about the production process. “When I wasn’t able to print clothing for a while, I had to figure something out, so I began thrifting for clothing to cut up, blend together, and patchwork,” he said, “which also led me to think more about sustainability.”
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The result of Coverdale’s process certainly seemed to flatter Hadid. She chose Axecents’s khaki Dickies shirt, a design patchworked with images of vintage maps. She wore it with a turtleneck underneath, khaki trousers, chunky combat boots (her favorite fall shoe), and a sharp shoulder bag. It all made for a winning look that put Hadid’s own supermodel stamp on this hip new brand.
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