Bulgaria-born designer Antonio Vattev stands at a crossroads in his career. Faced with the prospect of scaling up his label, AV Vattev, the London-based rising designer has chosen, instead, to stick to his guns. Now eight collections in, Vattev used his latest offering to cement the codes he’s been honing since 2020, when he first set up shop. Leaning into his knack for unconventional pattern-cutting, he has since forged a coherent vision of the AV Vattev man – one rooted in panelled outerwear, easy silhouettes and the type of fabrication that lasts a lifetime, not a season.
In his brand’s nascent days, he wanted to introduce a new trope each season. ‘But that doesn't work for a new brand because it makes it difficult for customers, buyers and press to recognise the brand,’ says Vattev, pragmatically. Newly enrolled into the Sarabande Foundation – an east London studio-space-cum-initiative supporting creatives short on capital but big on ideas, founded by Lee Alexander McQueen – Vattev has gained serious traction, garnering press and famous devotees, from Headie One to A$AP Rocky. Despite this success and the temptations that follow, he’s staunch in his commitment to slow fashion, using at least 70 per cent (often more) deadstock fabrics and turning down stockists if it means compromising on any of these tenets.
AV Vattev: the London-based label creating slow fashion with a twist
A Central Saint Martins alum tutored by fellow London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner, Vattev earned his stripes interning as a stylist at Lanvin and on placement at Incotex – the latter, he says, providing an insight into everything he didn’t want his label to be. He later landed a role within the Saint Laurent menswear design team, where he soon honed an eye for tailoring. This has been a through line of his personal work, even as he began introducing sportier designs into the mix. ‘I don't think that my work is as sharp as Saint Laurent, and I'm not actually interested in doing it that way,’ he says. Lucky, then, that those tasselled and grommeted skirts, plus the plaid-flapped work shirts on show for A/W 2024 read as anything but.
When Vattev went it alone, he quickly made his name with a melange of cultural references, from 1960s and 1970s icons such as Mick Jagger, Grace Jones and a coterie of fine art greats like Robert Mapplethorpe, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, not least his perennial favourite, Georgia O’Keefe. The last two influences, especially, emerge in this latest collection in the undulating, spliced hems – raw or razor sharp – and the traditional Bulgarian embroidery, known as ‘gaitan’, which he splayed across nappa leather and drawcord-adjustable tracksuits like wilting flowers.
Elsewhere, other signatures come to the fore. The unique jukebox closure, arriving as either interloping collars, layered knee strips or crossover lapels on chocolate brown pinstripe suits, are both a playful quirk and a reminder of his USP: a knack for the geometric. Indeed, it’s no surprise to learn that Vattev had originally applied for Central Saint Martins’ graphic design foundation, before being rejected and recommended for the fashion course.
The theme for this outing, pulled from Syd Shelton’s legendary Rock Against Racism photo book, was less a direct nod and more a loose guide, harking back to a heady moment of subcultural cross-pollination that rose from the dirt-caked ground up. Mud-stain denim prints join hyperbolically lofty bomber jackets – each with a cutesy, laser-cut floral adornment – and washed-out dyes on parka coats. ‘It was a very interesting process because you have to measure the garment, how much it shrinks the fabric, and then do the measurements again to create a new fabric with new measurements,’ he says of his dyeing trials. ‘I found this local manufacturer, and they’ve been extremely supportive.’
Of course, it’s this borderline-obsessive, grassroots-only approach to garment design that’s so welcome in today’s fashion arena, where fickle trends can sometimes drown out the slower experimentation, colour swatching and creative restraint that goes into a label. Making clothes is a business, sure, but it’s also a creative pursuit – and that, as Vattev will attest, cannot be rushed.
AV Vattev is available from Farfetch, and other stockists worldwide.
