Kiko Kostadinov
Overview
Kiko Kostadinov is an independent London-based fashion label founded in 2016 by Bulgarian-born designer Kiko Kostadinov after his studies at Central Saint Martins. The brand began with men’s ready-to-wear shaped around uniforms, workwear and technical pattern cutting, then expanded into womenswear under the creative direction of Laura and Deanna Fanning. That authorship gives the house a clear internal split: Kostadinov’s menswear follows a numbered, system-minded sequence, while the Fannings’ womenswear uses colour, historical femininity and narrative references with its own rhythm.
After its early London period, the label became a regular presence on the Paris menswear and womenswear calendars. Its wider structure includes mainline clothing, in-house accessories and footwear, and a set of long-running external projects, most visibly ASICS, ASICS Novalis, Camper, Mackintosh, Hysteric Glamour, Heaven by Marc Jacobs, Levi’s, Crocs and New Era. The result is a young house with a studio model: independent, collaboration-literate and unusually precise about how product, runway language and technical construction reinforce one another.
Philosophy
The label’s design logic begins with the built garment. Kostadinov’s menswear returns to work jackets, multi-pocket trousers, protective layers and modular fastenings, but the emphasis is not costume or nostalgia. Pattern cutting, seam placement, textile choice and engineered volume determine how a piece sits on the body and how it moves. The best work has a practical chassis: dense, sometimes austere, but animated by oblique colour, industrial detail and a controlled sense of distortion.
Womenswear broadens that system without simply translating the men’s line. Laura and Deanna Fanning work with brighter palettes, historical craft codes, knit structures, body-framing panels and a more cinematic sense of character. Across both divisions, Kiko Kostadinov treats fashion as a studio practice built from research, construction and repeated testing. Collaboration is part of that practice, especially in footwear, where the ASICS partnership turns technical tooling, colour work and model families into an ongoing design language rather than a string of isolated drops.
Recent events
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Creative timeline
Button TextThe ASICS relationship expanded from external collaboration into recurring SportStyle curation, with the studio contributing to product families beyond visible co-branding.
The 2019 LVMH Prize semi-finalist placement gave institutional visibility to Kostadinov’s young menswear label without changing its independent structure.
The ASICS collaboration moved Kostadinov’s technical colour work and footwear interests into performance-runner silhouettes, later expanding into studio curation and ASICS Novalis.
Deanna Fanning joined the Kiko Kostadinov womenswear project from its launch, working with Laura Fanning on a division defined by colour, knit structure, craft references and body-framing construction.
Laura Fanning joined the Kiko Kostadinov womenswear project from its launch, helping define a women’s line with its own colour, craft and narrative language.
Kiko Kostadinov founded the label in London with a menswear practice shaped by uniforms, workwear, technical cutting and the material discipline of construction.
Kiko Kostadinov divisions and related structures
Kiko Kostadinov has grown from a London menswear label into a compact studio system with clear internal authorship. The brand’s structure is built around Kiko Kostadinov’s menswear, Laura and Deanna Fanning’s womenswear, a studio-led collaboration practice, technical footwear, accessories and a small retail network that gives the label its own physical frame.
Mainline collections
- Kiko Kostadinov menswear
- Menswear mainline / runway structure
- The menswear mainline is the brand’s original core and remains the primary site of Kiko Kostadinov’s own design authorship. Its numbered seasonal system gives the line an industrial cadence, while the clothes work through uniforms, workwear, articulated trousers, technical outerwear, layered tailoring and fabrics chosen for structure as much as surface.
- Kiko Kostadinov womenswear
- Womenswear mainline / designer-led division
- Kiko Kostadinov womenswear has been directed by Laura and Deanna Fanning since the first women’s collection. It belongs to the same house, but its language is distinct: brighter colour, narrative styling, knitwear, historical femininity, offbeat decoration and a more openly cinematic relation to the body. The division needs to be read through the Fannings’ authorship, not as a simple conversion of the menswear line.
Studio, product and retail structures
- Kiko Kostadinov Studio
- Design practice / collaborative office
- Kiko Kostadinov Studio is the working structure behind the label’s collections and its longer external projects. The name appears especially around ASICS SportStyle and ASICS Novalis, where the studio acts as a design and curation partner rather than a seasonal guest collaborator.
- Mainline footwear
- Product category
- Footwear is one of the brand’s most visible product worlds, spanning runway shoes and the larger ecosystem of ASICS, Camper, Crocs and related partnerships. Across those projects the category becomes a place for hybrid tooling, unusual colour work, industrial fastening and the crossing of performance footwear with fashion construction.
- Accessories
- Product category
- Bags, small leather goods and other accessories appear inside the mainline collections rather than as a separately named line. They extend the same attention to utility, fastening, texture and compact construction that runs through the clothing.
- Kiko Kostadinov retail
- Retail structure
- The brand’s stores in Tokyo, Los Angeles and London give the label a controlled physical setting outside the wholesale circuit. They gather menswear, womenswear, footwear, accessories and special projects into a more complete expression of the studio’s world.
Kiko Kostadinov collaborations
Collaboration is one of Kiko Kostadinov’s main operating languages. The brand’s strongest projects do not simply apply a name to existing product; they tend to rework a partner’s archive, tooling or category from inside, whether through ASICS running technology, Mackintosh rainwear, Camper outdoor footwear, Levi’s denim, Hysteric Glamour graphics or Crocs foam-clog familiarity.
Footwear, performance and technical partnerships
- ASICS x Kiko Kostadinov
- Long-term footwear collaboration
- The ASICS partnership began with co-branded sneaker releases and became one of the label’s defining external projects. Models such as GEL-BURZ, GEL-Delva, GEL-Sokat Infinity and GEL-Kiril moved ASICS performance language into a sharper fashion context, using technical tooling, dense panel work and colour palettes that felt closer to design research than ordinary sneaker decoration.
- ASICS SportStyle curated by Kiko Kostadinov Studio
- Studio-led product curation
- After the first co-branded phase, the relationship with ASICS shifted into a deeper studio arrangement. Kiko Kostadinov Studio has worked on ASICS SportStyle product families where the designer’s name is less visibly foregrounded, but the curation of materials, colour and model selection remains part of the product logic.
- ASICS Novalis
- Collaborative apparel and footwear line
- ASICS Novalis is the most developed form of the ASICS relationship: a unisex line of clothing and footwear created with Kiko Kostadinov Studio. It brings Kiko Kostadinov, Laura Fanning and Deanna Fanning into the same technical wardrobe, connecting ASICS performance systems with knitwear, outerwear, everyday uniform and new footwear shapes.
- Camper Together x Kiko Kostadinov
- Footwear collaboration
- The Camper partnership reworked outdoor and trekking references through the Spanish brand’s Together programme. Kostadinov’s versions of Camper forms, including Teix-related projects, pushed hiking and utility footwear towards heavier volume, Gore-Tex treatment, layered construction and a more architectural sense of the sole.
- Crocs x Kiko Kostadinov
- Footwear collaboration
- The Crocs project translated the foam clog’s familiar ease into a tougher work-shoe register. Grained leather, honeycomb mesh, toggle lacing and split-sole construction gave the collaboration a more armoured surface while keeping the slip-on logic that makes Crocs recognisable.
Fashion, denim and youth-culture projects
- Stüssy x Kiko Kostadinov
- Early capsule collaboration
- Kostadinov’s early Stüssy projects used reconstructed deadstock and cut-and-sew methods before the full launch of his own label. The capsules helped introduce his interest in remade garments, workwear fragments and Dover Street Market-adjacent independent fashion culture.
- Mackintosh 0001
- External designer-line appointment
- Mackintosh 0001 placed Kostadinov’s structural language inside a British rainwear house. The project exposed seams, tape and garment engineering, using Mackintosh’s outerwear heritage as material for a more industrial and architectural designer line.
- Kiko Kostadinov x Hysteric Glamour
- Capsule and image project
- The Hysteric Glamour collaboration connected the label to Tokyo youth culture, graphics and image-making. Apparel, ASICS-linked footwear and the photobook Pretty Hurts gave the project a subcultural frame that matched the Fannings’ womenswear world as much as the broader Kiko Kostadinov studio.
- Heaven by Marc Jacobs x Kiko Kostadinov x ASICS
- Three-way womenswear and footwear capsule
- The Heaven by Marc Jacobs project placed Kiko Kostadinov womenswear and ASICS footwear inside a younger, more pop-coded fashion context. The collaboration sharpened the Fannings’ interest in girlhood, distortion, nostalgic media and footwear that feels deliberately off-centre.
- Levi’s x Kiko Kostadinov
- Denim collaboration
- The Levi’s collaboration brought the studio’s pattern logic into denim, with articulated knees, custom darting and altered 1990s silhouettes appearing across menswear and womenswear pieces. It was a useful meeting of Levi’s familiar jean language with the Kiko Kostadinov habit of cutting movement into the garment.
- New Era x Kiko Kostadinov
- Headwear capsule
- The New Era project used caps as a compact product surface for the studio’s material vocabulary, including upcycled seasonal fabrics. It is small in scale, but it extends the label’s interest in uniform accessories and recognisable everyday forms.
