It’s a Monday Bank Holiday in London when I sit down for my video call with the designer Conner Ives. The trees were restless beyond my window and the sky looked grey and heavy with unfallen rain. He’s in what looks like a home office, a star-spangled fabric occasionally peeking into the frame. He apologizes for us having to speak on a holiday, and I’m struck by his candor.
Within minutes, I learn that he’s a self-proclaimed “yapper,” his manifestation mantra “if you build it they will come” comes from the 1980s classic “Field of Dreams,” and that at eight years old, he knew he’d one day work with Rihanna. This playfulness carried through our entire conversation. Whether talking about the industry or himself, he approached it all with humor and honesty. His go-to phrase, “It’s not that deep,” sums up his ability to stay grounded in an industry that rarely is.
But beyond the charm is a designer quietly redefining what it means to create with purpose. Through upcycling Ives crafts garments that center Black women—not as muses, but as collaborators and cultural architects. His work is grounded in memory, driven by sustainability, and shaped by a deep respect for stories often overlooked in fashion. In a world of fast drops and trend cycles, Ives slows things down, making clothes that speak to identity, intimacy, and intention.
Born in New York in 1996, Conner Ives is a London-based designer known for his upcycled, Americana-infused aesthetic. One that blends sustainability with nostalgia, fashion history with pop culture. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in London, and first caught the industry’s attention in 2017 when he dressed British model Adwoa Aboah for the Met Gala. That single look, a repurposed t-shirt gown, sparked a career grounded in reinvention.
Today, Ives is the man of the hour. However if that hour spanned a decade, it would better reflect the breadth of his impact. He most recently won the 2025 BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund. While that milestone is significant, it’s merely the beginning.“The second I hear something like, ‘You did a lot of this that worked really well last season, do more of that,’ I just go in the absolute opposite direction, it feels stifling for creativity,” Ives tells me, leaning forward.
His resistance to repetition fuels his commitment to storytelling through clothes. It’s why his upcycled Americana doesn’t feel gimmicky; it feels personal. And it’s what draws so many women to his work. Where some designers treat clothes as statements, Ives builds narratives.
This approach resonates with Black women, who have long treated style as a form of personal, political, and cultural expression. This ideal is further explored when Conner recalls a personal moment from when he was eight. The designer says at this age he declared to his sister that he’d know Rihanna one day while a video of the global artist’s “Pon de Replay” was playing. “And then it happened,” he shared.
The candid reflection is reflective of how far he’s come as a designer: from fan to a culturally adept creative. Years later after Rihanna showed support of the piece he designed for model Aboah at the 2017 Met Gala it was off to the races.
Next, she invited him to collaborate on her Fenty line–to him, it was a full-circle moment. (His level of execution has led to women including actress Taylor Russell and British Vogue editor Chioma Nnadi showing up to red carpet affairs in his designs.)
When asked which Black women inspire him when he’s crafting collections, he doesn’t hesitate. Stylist and fashion muse Amanda Murray, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and his circle of friends all come up quickly. “The women around me have shaped the way I design,” he says. “They’re my sounding board and my filter.”
That influence is visible not only in his references but in the way his pieces make people feel. Artist and content creator Mikai McDermott shared that when she wears his clothes she feels “feminine, powerful, and flirty.” Her first Ives purchase was a patchwork dress made from deadstock vintage T-shirts.
Morenike Ajayi, a content creator and style writer, agrees. “I love how certain pieces are cut, like the shirred basketball jersey shirt. I appreciate how he reworks clothing for a woman’s body,” she shared. What she’s describing is a process Ives honed by watching his close friends get dressed, paying attention to how confidence and clothing often come together.
Even the designer’s Americana themes feel reframed through this lens. Brand consultant Summer Ellis-Ruddock discovered his work during his CSM years and immediately connected to his use of raw textiles and references. “It reminded me of my grandmother, who was a seamstress. Growing up with Jamaican roots, I saw how people made fashion out of what was available. Dancehall culture, especially, is all about turning limited access into limitless expression,” Ellis-Ruddock said.
Marketing consultant Sharla Farrell puts it plainly. “Rihanna wore one of his dresses, that blue one with ‘I’m retired’ across the chest, and I immediately wanted one.” Farrell isn’t alone. The virality of that dress wasn’t accidental. It’s part of a long tradition of Black women creating and amplifying trends on Instagram, TikTok, and beyond. “Black women have always innovated out of necessity. That’s what Conner’s work taps into—not by mimicking, but by listening,” Farrell shared.
Of course, designing with intention is easier said than done. As demand for Ives’ work increased, so did the pressure to scale, and that created new challenges.
“At one point, we were making six to seven hundred units a season, but maintaining quality control became a major hurdle,” Ives explains. Sourcing vintage T-shirts in bulk sometimes meant accidentally including problematic or offensive graphics, often due to cultural blind spots or language barriers. That experience prompted a shift in approach. Rather than mass-produce, Ives decided to slow down and focus on fewer, more carefully curated pieces.
He expanded on his thoughts about sustainability during this point of our conversation. “Sustainability isn’t just about using vintage or saying the right words,” the designer said. Instead, he expressed that it’s also about understanding limits. He adds that he’d rather sell out of a style than overproduce it. “I’ve been letting go of the idea that more is better.”
What’s so striking about Conner Ives isn’t just his eye or even his ambition,it’s his intuition. He doesn’t design from a rigid playbook. He creates from a place of curiosity, memory, and deep respect for the women who inspire him. His clothes may start with repurposed materials, but what he has built is something far more layered.
Towards the end of our conversation, I ask him what he hopes Black women or anyone who has ever felt unseen by fashion feel when they experience his work. He pauses and says, “That it’s for everyone. I think that’s almost been the workshop of having this brand for the last five years.” It’s a sentiment he’s returned to often, spending that time figuring out how to make his work feel truly accessible so that his values are more than just bullet points in a brand book, but something people can feel.In an industry that can feel obsessed with the next big thing, Ives remains grounded in the present, reminding us, with a wink and a slogan tee, that maybe it’s not that deep and that’s what makes Conner Ives’ designs so powerful.
