May 13, 2026 |
Few areas of our lives are as deeply entangled with the idea of change as fashion. With every passing season, silhouettes shift, trends dissolve and new systems of expression emerge. To participate in fashion is to embrace a state of perpetual transformation. It follows, then, that the industry’s internal frameworks are often shifting, with roles, hierarchies and power dynamics constantly being renegotiated.
Yet in today’s turbulent climate, that typically generative force risks tipping into chaos. Hard-won progress around inclusivity, representation and creative freedom is increasingly met with backlash, as rigid and oppressive ideologies are making a comeback. The question, then, is not whether fashion will evolve, but how? How do we continue to amplify the right voices? How do we safeguard the openness, experimentation and plurality that so positively define what we do? Ultimately, how do we ensure that we change for the best? To map the challenges and possibilities of the present moment, we spoke to figures at the forefront of this shift who are shaping both our taste and the wider structures and responsibilities of the fashion industry today.
Conner Ives
CONNER IVES, designer
“At the beginning of my career people told me that I was crazy for wanting to make clothes out of old things and grow my business at my own tempo. They said I would never succeed.” Designer Conner Ives has clearly been moving on his own terms. The New York native and London-based founder of his eponymous label has built a reputation on genuinely conscious clothing, with more than 75 per cent of his seasonal output now made from deadstock, recycled materials and repurposed vintage pieces. Yet, as he tells me, sustainability for him goes beyond materials, becoming a guiding principle that helps him stay at the top of his game. In practice, this also means making things sustainable for himself, rejecting the industry’s cut-throat pace and “not going into production until I’m really confident in the idea, as I do believe that good things take time”. Ives’s practice, which turns T-shirts into dresses, cheerleader outfits, pompoms and black tuxedos, offers a playful, fluid take on Americana. Still, at his most recent AW25 show during London Fashion Week, it was a simple white T-shirt he wore while taking his bow that made international headlines. ‘Protect The Dolls’, it read. Since then, the slogan tee has been worn by countless celebrities in solidarity and has sold by the thousands, with profits donated to Not A Phase, a trans-led, UK-based charity. It stands as a powerful show of support for trans women, many of whom are Ives’s muses and walk his runways, and who have increasingly become targets of prejudice amid rising right-wing invective. “The T-shirt was born out of this feeling of dread for my trans friends and how powerless I felt when confronted with the threats they receive,” Ives says. “It has since grown into a global movement and it’s by far the proudest moment of my career.”
Photography by James Anastasi. Taken from 10 Magazine Issue 76 – CREATIVITY, CHANGE, FREEDOM – out NOW. Order your copy here.
