The Designer Duos Proving Fashion Is Better With Friends

Pop culture would have you believe that the fashion world is like high school: full of petty gossip, vicious backstabbing, and fierce rivalries. Sure, there might be some truth to that—Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld’s bitter feud lasted decades. But the reality is that, much like in high school, you need good friends in order to survive. Anna Sui and Marc Jacobs have been going on dinner dates for decades. Prada’s Raf Simons, Chanel’s Matthieu Blazy, and Versace’s Pieter Mulier all began their careers as pals and collaborators in Belgium. One of fashion’s biggest revolutions started when six young design students from Antwerp decided to rent a van together and crash London Fashion Week in 1986. They became known as the Antwerp Six; two of them, Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten, still trade gardening tips. Today some of fashion’s most exciting young designers have rejected the myth of the lone creative genius in favor of teaming up with their friends. As these three brands prove, fashion is at its best when it’s about collaboration.

AUGUST BARRON

Bror August Vestbø and Benjamin Barron

Photographed by Michella Bredahl

In 2015, the week Bror August Vestbø moved from Norway to New York, he wound up at the launch party of an indie magazine called All-in and met its cofounder, Benjamin Barron. They barely talked that night, but kept running into each other at art openings. Eventually, they started dating, then collaborating. Together, Vestbø, 29, and Barron, 33, turned All-in into a full-on fashion label. (The duo relocated to Paris in 2021 and renamed the brand August Barron in 2025.) Their designs are “about the success and failure of trying to create something perfect,” says Vestbø (above left). (Think scrunched-up cardigans worn with dramatically oversize ball gown skirts.) Everyone from Charli xcx to Anya Taylor-Joy to Elle Fanning is a supporter. “When we meet someone who does this alone, we realize how amazing it is that we always have someone to talk through everything with,” says Vestbø about their partnership. As Barron adds, it’s “exciting that it feels communal.”

VAQUERA

Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee

Photographed by Osma Harvilahti

Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee could have been rivals. In 2014, DiCaprio was already an assistant to the New York–based stylist Avena Gallagher when Taubensee was brought on to help. “I was like, ‘Oh, she’s taking my job.’ I was mad before I’d met her,” says DiCaprio, 36. Meanwhile, Taubensee, also 36, took an immediate liking to DiCaprio. “He was wearing a UPS driver coat. To me, that’s so much more fashion than a lot of things that were happening at the time,” she says. After talking, the pair realized they were both disillusioned with the fashion world. They decided to start Vaquera, a label that gleefully subverts expectations with unconventional silhouettes, odd juxtapositions, and riffs on other brands’ house codes. “Patric has an explosive energy and is full of ideas and excitement,” says Taubensee. “I’m more about funneling and distilling that, and figuring out how we can actually make it work.” After years in New York, the pair moved to Paris in 2025. “Our whole lives changed, except for each other and the business,” says Taubensee. “We’re all that we have at the end of the day. Thank God for that.”

CHOPOVA LOWENA

Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena-Irons

Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena-Irons, both 35, met on their first day of fashion school at London’s Central Saint Martins and quickly bonded over their shared love of folklore. “It feels impossible that we found each other,” says Chopova (above right). “Even rarer than finding the love of your life.” By the time they graduated, in 2017, they knew they wanted to start a label together. What one can’t do, the other excels at: Lowena-Irons is totally offline, while Chopova is totally online; Lowena-Irons is better at navigating paperwork and bureaucracy, while Chopova deals with factories and sourcing materials. For nearly a decade, the pair have remained on the same creative wavelength, making clothes for “rebellious, sensitive, and emotional” souls, as Chopova puts it. The brand’s signature carabiner skirt, a punk version of a schoolgirl uniform, has been worn by pop stars ranging from Conan Gray to Madonna. “We have to both love what we’re doing,” says Lowena-Irons. “If one of us doesn’t like it or is not happy with it, then something’s wrong.”