Laura and Deanna Fanning have been living their lives on a loop, walking from their home to their studio and back again in London. The sister designers are not just wanderers on the streets of their adopted home, but wonderers; no sight on their path goes unconsidered. Their daily journeys led them to Lauren Elkin’s book Flaneuse, and its intimate portraits of women moving about the streets of London, New York, Tokyo, and Venice. Over a video call, Laura stressed that they wanted to design a collection that reflected “becoming part of the environment by sharing space with the people and the buildings you walk by.”
It’s a beautiful idea of unity within space: that the people make the city, that their clothes and their gestures are as integral to the meaning of London as the tube or the Thames. It’s also a boldly feminist thought: Walking around a city has always been a man’s game, defined by the dandy or the flaneur. In the Fannings’ world, women own the sidewalk and define the look of a city. Street magazine, founded by Shoichi Aoki in the ’80s, and the fashion editors and lovers who populate its pages helped color their understanding of on-the-street style as well.
Their version of 2021 street style is centered on multipurpose separates like the one in look eight, which features a striped top with two neck holes and their version of a logo (it’s the name Kiko Kostadinov modulated into a swirl) and a dot-print skirt that can be folded up into a halter dress. Suits have scarves built in, tucked through belt loops, and a sheer turtleneck top has sashes worked into the shoulders that can be layered or taken out and tied around the neck. Nearly every garment has this kind of dual purpose: pants with miniskirts stitched in, micro-cable-knit sweaters with removable eco-fur collars, trench coats with multiple arm holes. In this, it’s all about how you wear what you wear—and to really appreciate the Fannings’ work, you have to care about the art and grace of living in your clothes. Their first handbag is a warped leather baguette made in Italy; as Deanna explains the significance of the shape, she extends her arm and makes the gesture of taking out a pack of cigs. It’s design dictated by personality—not the other way around.
With Kiko himself, who designs the menswear, the trio of designers have built a brand centered on style and wit. It’s not just about how you look, but who you are, and in this their work stands apart from the tropes of mainstream fashion. Or maybe not. As other mega-brand collections trickle in from Milan and Paris’s digital fashion weeks, there’s a sense that conceptually tailored clothing you wear—that doesn’t wear you—is coming into vogue. Maybe that’s why I keep receiving messages from peers in London and Los Angeles and Paris saying, “Hmm, doesn’t this look like Kiko?” Maybe thoughtfulness will come back into style. The Fannings can say they’ve been doing it all along.
