Brandon Maxwell

Brandon Maxwell is a New York luxury womenswear label founded by Brandon Maxwell in September 2015. The designer arrived at garment authorship through photography and fashion styling, including image-direction work with Lady Gaga, before presenting the label’s debut Spring 2016 collection at Mr Chow in New York. Early collections concentrated on close-cut tailoring, controlled drape and eveningwear, and Maxwell received the CFDA Swarovski Award for Womenswear in 2016.

Between 2017 and 2020 the label broadened into a fuller American sportswear wardrobe while its runway productions grew in scale. Shows at the Classic Car Club and the American Museum of Natural History placed saturated colour, cinched suiting, fluid separates and eveningwear inside increasingly theatrical settings. Maxwell received the CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year award in 2019 and the AAFA Designer of the Year award in 2020, before the pandemic interrupted that expansion and prompted a more intimate phase of collection-making.

From 2023 the house entered what Maxwell described as a “brand renovation”, concentrating more deliberately on trousers, knitwear, denim, outerwear and everyday separates alongside sculptural dresses and tailoring. The brand opened its first standalone boutique at Via Riyadh in 2023, marked its tenth anniversary in 2025 and launched its first dedicated Signature Handbag Collection the same year. By August 2026 the label remained active under Maxwell’s creative direction, with direct ecommerce, international wholesale distribution and seasonal output extending through Resort 2027.

Maxwell’s design method begins with the body and with the camera. His training in photocommunications encouraged a practice of draping directly on the form and judging proportion through movement, light and image, while his years in styling sharpened an instinct for how a garment reads as part of a complete silhouette. Precise shoulders, exposed waists, elongated skirts and controlled volumes recur throughout the work, but the construction is usually kept legible rather than burdened with decorative complexity.

The early label built recognition through black-and-white eveningwear and rigorous tailoring, then expanded into high-saturation colour, fluid separates and a broader American sportswear vocabulary. After the pre-pandemic period of large theatrical shows, Maxwell increasingly reduced the distance between runway clothes and daily wardrobe use. The post-2023 collections favour tactile knitwear, denim, waxed cotton, trousers, jackets and pared-back dresses, using finish, proportion and material contrast to carry the visual force once supplied by spectacle.

That pragmatism does not eliminate glamour; it relocates it into cut, surface and repeat wear. Current collections move between restrained daywear and occasion pieces, while the 2025 Signature Handbag Collection extends the same preference for clear shape and polished construction into accessories. Production is not confined to one locality: specialist manufacture spans Italy and the United States, with the handbag line designed in New York and handcrafted in Scandicci.