Brian De Carvalho – the self-taught London designer on razor-blade gowns, Lady Gaga and why exposure doesn’t pay the rent.
There is a dress in a studio in South East London made entirely of razor blades. It has a full-length train and the strong shoulders of old-school couture, and nobody can wear it. That was the point. Brian De Carvalho built it after one too many stylists asked to borrow his work for nothing, and he wanted, for once, to make something everyone would want and no one could have. It is now the most requested piece he has ever made.
De Carvalho did not train in fashion. He studied fine art at Westminster, graduated in 2019 straight into lockdown, bought a cheap sewing machine and started cutting up bedsheets. A chance conversation with John Galliano at Vogue World London convinced him to quit his retail job within days. Within his label’s first year he had dressed Lady Gaga and landed a Vogue cover, and neither, he will tell you plainly, paid the rent.
What he makes is corsetry and evening wear rooted in the eighteenth century and worn on the outside, raw-edged, sometimes scorched, sometimes bloodstained, always carrying the marks of having survived something. He shows once a year. His last collection was staged in an abandoned hospital in East London, with numbered models walking past a seated audience as if at a mid-century salon.
He is candid to a degree that is still rare in this industry, about money, about who gets supported and who does not, and about how lonely London can be for a designer who came in through the side door. We spoke to him about all of it.
Brian De Carvalho In His Own Words
You trained as a painter and sculptor at Westminster and, by your own account, only picked up a sewing machine during lockdown, cutting up bedsheets and curtains. Looking back, what did the fine art degree give you that a fashion course couldn’t have?
When I began sewing, the entire language of fashion was alien to me. I did not understand fabric, pattern-cutting, measurements or sizing, but I knew how to manipulate plaster, clay, metal and wire. Those were the materials I instinctively reached for, so my earliest pieces were incredibly sculptural and, in some cases, perhaps not entirely wearable.
Coming from fine art freed me from many of the rules traditionally associated with fashion. I had not been taught that something had to be constructed in a particular order or that there was only one correct route to a result. Even now, the way I approach a garment can be very different from someone with conventional fashion training. My team might think in terms of stages one to ten, whereas I work in a much more fluid, instinctive way.
A fashion course would undoubtedly have given me an invaluable technical foundation, but fine art taught me to begin with an idea, an emotion or a material and then discover what it could become. I was not initially thinking about making clothes; I was making objects around the body. That distinction still shapes everything I do.
Your first piece was a corset, and you’ve said it restricts you while forcing you to stand tall. When did the corset stop being a historical object to you and become something you could say something with?
Corsetry is obviously historically loaded, although I became more aware of that history as I began making. I was drawn to the corset because it felt like a physical manifestation of what I was experiencing personally at the time.
I felt restricted in almost every aspect of my life. I could not wear what I wanted, do what I wanted or have the friendships I wanted. At the same time, I was going out with club kids and drag performers, so the corset felt like a completely natural place to begin. It belonged to history, but it also belonged to the world immediately around me.
I loved its contradictions. It tightens and confines you; you cannot bend properly and may struggle to breathe. Yet it also forces you to stand tall. You know that you look incredible and that everybody is looking at what you are wearing. It offers complete discomfort and entrapment alongside this extraordinary feeling of liberation and euphoria.
That contradiction gave me something to speak through. The corset was no longer simply a historical garment… it became a way to talk about constraint, visibility, power and the strange freedom that can sometimes exist within restriction.
You’ve drawn a line between the physical and legal restriction of women in the 1800s and your own experience growing up queer in a household that took time to accept you. How much of that comparison was worked out on paper, and how much of it came out in the making?
Almost all of it came through the making. I wish I could say I was highly analytical and began with pages of meticulous research, but I am extraordinarily Type B. For me, the idea does not truly exist until I have physically made it.
If I have a silhouette or an emotion in mind, I need to create something immediately. Only afterwards do I tend to work backwards and ask what it means, where it came from and how it relates to the wider history. The analysis follows the instinct.
At that point in my life, I felt restricted emotionally, sexually and spiritually. Simply being myself seemed to contradict everything my parents had imagined for me. The corset gave those invisible feelings a physical form. Crucially, however, it was a restriction I had chosen. I could control it, put it on and take it off, rather than having that sense of confinement imposed upon me.
I have enormous respect for history and the stories from which we come. Looking forward, challenging convention and creating change are incredibly important, but so is understanding the foundation beneath us. The comparison was not academically engineered; it revealed itself through the garment.
Historically the corset was hidden under everything else. Yours are worn on the outside, raw-edged and unfinished. What are you asking of the person who puts one on?
Historically, the corset was a hidden foundation. It was worn over a cotton undergarment, constructed from robust, relatively inexpensive materials and very likely became sweat-stained and dirty, but nobody saw it so that didn’t matter.
I wanted to reverse that relationship. I wanted to make corsets from finer fabrics, decorate them and transform this object that held, restricted and caged the body into the very thing people were meant to see. When I wore mine, I would usually dress in one simple colour so that the corset stood apart. Looking back, that was probably a commentary on how I felt personally: I was desperate to be seen, to be let out and to show all the work that had been taking place behind the curtain. Perhaps I felt like the corset.
The raw edges began partly because I genuinely did not know how to finish them. I was teaching myself through every garment and, for a long time, did not even use patterns… I drafted each piece from the one before it, so every version was slightly different.
That unfinished quality has since become fundamental to the brand. The fraying and exposed edges give a garment history and life. I was not perfect, either as a designer or as a person discovering himself, so why would the clothes pretend to be?
Some of your very first clients were drag queens who came to you because nothing on the rails fitted them or excited them. How did dressing performers shape the way you now cut for everyone else?
Dressing performers is a craft in itself, and I think theatre, costume, film and music are far more technically demanding than people sometimes assume. In fashion, a garment may only need to be worn for a photograph or walked briefly down a runway. A performer has to jump, bend, dance, sweat and inhabit an entire character while continuing to look extraordinary.
Working with drag performers taught me where the body requires movement and where it can tolerate restriction. I learnt which materials function under pressure, where an adjustable element might be needed and how a concealed fastening could make the garment easier to change into without disrupting its appearance.
Those early clients were incredibly generous in supporting the brand, wearing the pieces and making noise about what we were doing. At the same time, they gave me a practical education I could never have gained from a static mannequin. They were not simply wearing the clothes… they were living through them.
Many of the techniques and little tricks we still use today came directly from those experiences. They taught me that drama and functionality do not have to oppose one another. A piece can transform somebody visually while still allowing them to command a stage.
The Galliano story has become part of your legend, a conversation at Vogue World that saw you hand in your notice within days. What did he actually say to you, and has anything he told you proved wrong since?
I still struggle to believe that encounter happened, and I do not think I have ever fully processed it. It was such a surreal, out-of-body experience. I did not have a brand at the time and, ironically, I had stopped sewing. I felt lost and deeply insecure. I had spent a year or two making things while stuck at home, but once the world reopened, I convinced myself I was not good enough to continue.
I was standing in front of someone whose work I had idolised, explaining that I had taught myself to sew on a machine from Argos and did not really know what I was doing. The extraordinary thing was that he barely seemed interested in me… he was entirely absorbed by the corset. He followed the boning channels with his eyes and examined the raw edges, which were enormous insecurities of mine at the time.
In a strange way, he said precisely what I needed to hear. The elements I believed exposed my lack of training were the ones he responded to most strongly. He told me, essentially, “You should do this. This is real fashion.”
When somebody you have admired leaves you with those words, you do not have much choice. I could hardly return to my old job and pretend it had not happened. Has he been proved wrong? I still question myself constantly, but everything that has happened since suggests that the instinct he recognised was real.
Your pieces are often damaged on purpose, bloodstained, set alight, salvaged. You’ve said a garment has to go through a struggle before it’s finished. Where is the line between a flaw that gives a piece character and one that simply ruins it?
The distinction is intention. Any damage has to make sense within the context of the garment, the collection and the person for whom it is being made. You cannot simply make a dress, burn it and declare it finished. The intervention has to further the story.
Much of it is emotional and happens while I am working. A garment begins to tell me what it needs. Burning one dress may feel completely right, while applying the same treatment to another would destroy everything interesting about it. One gown might need to be shredded; another may already be speaking through its fabric, construction or stitching and should be left alone.
Knowing when to push and when to stop is a conversation with the piece. The fabric, colour and silhouette all respond differently, so even the destruction has to be considered.
It is easy to reduce what I do to, “He burns and shreds his clothes,” but not every piece needs that treatment. What matters is that the garment feels as though it has lived. I want it to arrive with a history so that, when somebody wears it, it can continue acquiring new lives and meanings. If the damage silences the garment rather than giving it a voice, then I have gone too far.
The razor-blade gown came, you’ve admitted, from a place of anger at an industry that wanted everything for free. How did you go about actually building it, and were you surprised that the piece nobody could wear became the one everybody asked for?
The razor-blade gown was absolutely my mad-scientist moment. At that stage, any insecurity about whether people wanted the brand had disappeared. We were receiving requests constantly, from Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Tatler and major celebrities across Los Angeles, New York, Dubai and Korea. It was urgent request after urgent request, yet I was making no money.
That contradiction made me incredibly angry. People were relentless about borrowing the clothes, but whenever I explained that there had to be a fee (to cover shipping, dry-cleaning, repairs and the likelihood that the garment would return damaged, if it returned at all!), the value of the work suddenly disappeared.
Rather than exploding publicly, as perhaps I once might have, I channelled that anger into a garment. I wanted to make something physically aggressive but so beautiful and intriguing that everybody would desire it. The point was: you can want it, but you cannot have it. It needed to feel dangerous, dark and essentially unwearable.
From a distance, the gown still appeared elegant. Only on closer inspection did you realise, Oh shit, those are real razor blades. It took 11 months, thousands of individually coated blades and somewhere between ten and twenty pairs of hands. Each blade was sewn on individually. Some people thought the idea was too extreme and chose not to participate, which I respected.
Was I surprised everybody wanted it? Perhaps not. Fashion is often most attracted to the thing it has been told it cannot possess.
Your June 2025 couture show was staged in an abandoned hospital in East London, with numbered models and a “famine of beauty” as its refrain. Why that setting, and why present couture in the manner of a mid-century salon show rather than a conventional runway?
Fashion has become obsessed with next, next, next and instant, instant, instant. There is a reason celebrities increasingly wear archive and why we continually romanticise fashion’s supposed golden age… we are losing the time, dedication, craft and care the medium requires. If designers are expected to produce four or five collections every year, how can every one of them possibly be extraordinary?
The abandoned hospital allowed me to challenge what people consider beautiful. I wanted to reject the assumption that beauty must mean a pristine pink beaded gown with a perfect French rolled hem. This was the collection containing the razor-blade dress, and I wanted the audience to experience a degree of discomfort. The building was dingy, strange and unpolished… even the chairs felt slightly sticky. It was very much, I have been subjected to the system’s bull***t for the past year, and now you are entering my territory. You will experience this on my terms.
The salon-style presentation reinforced that sense of control and scrutiny. Rather than allowing the clothes to flash past as conventional runway imagery, the numbered models became specimens or characters presented for close examination. The format carried the ritual of old couture but placed it within a setting from which conventional beauty had been stripped away. That tension augmented the collection’s power.
You show once a year and put menswear and womenswear on the same runway, with male models in heels and nails. Is that a creative decision, a practical one for a small studio, or a refusal to accept the calendar the industry sets?
It is honestly an amalgamation of all three. Menswear is not celebrated in the same way as womenswear; it receives less attention and press, and many of our male clients end up wearing pieces from the womenswear collection anyway.
I am also a man who sometimes wants to wear his own brand. There were moments when I was invited somewhere and realised we had created nothing specifically for somebody who presents as male. On a practical level, we are a small, self-funded studio and producing two separate shows would be difficult… but creatively, I do not understand why they should be divided in the first place.
It is one brand, one collection and one universe. Within any world, there are male- and female-presenting characters. Showing them together creates a richer narrative. A womenswear look may appear, followed by its menswear counterpart, allowing the two to answer or disrupt one another.
We are a queer brand and I have always presented with a degree of femininity. I simply do not subscribe to the idea that men cannot wear heels, nails or make-up. The mood board is the mood board; everybody is on it.
Showing once a year is partly financial, but I also believe collections deserve time. I would rather create one world with conviction than exhaust the studio trying to satisfy a calendar that was never designed with businesses like mine in mind.
You dressed Lady Gaga and appeared on a Vogue cover within your first year, yet you’ve said neither paid your rent. What did those moments change for the brand, and what didn’t they change?
When I hear those achievements spoken back to me, I still think, No, that cannot possibly be right. They are extraordinary moments, but their impact was much more complicated than people might imagine.
The Vogue cover changed the way the industry perceived and treated me. Stylists became nicer. Publications approached me differently. Even designers who had previously paid me dust suddenly became friendly and polite. Until then, there had been this sense of, He did not study fashion; he is not one of us. What is this boy doing, throwing things together? The cover forced people to take the work seriously. They could no longer conveniently ignore what we were achieving.
Dressing Gaga had a similar effect. It was not simply a placement; the image appeared on an album cover, merchandise and clothing sold internationally. Coming amid a succession of premieres, shoots and custom projects, it established that the earlier attention had not been a fluke. The brand was here to stay and the craftsmanship was real.
What neither moment changed was the financial reality. Prestige does not automatically become income. They did not pay my rent, cover the studio or ensure I could eat. They gave the brand cultural legitimacy and opened doors, which was incredible, but an open door is not the same thing as a sustainable business.
You now turn down loan requests, including from major Vogue editions, unless a fee is paid. That is unusually candid for a designer at your stage. What made you draw that line, and what has it cost you?
It is difficult because I know designers who are more established than I am and will happily lend to a major celebrity or publication for free. Visibility does have value, and there are still occasions when I debate whether an opportunity might be worth it.
The difference is that I do not have a financial cushion. My parents do not fund the brand. If I am not paid for a custom piece or rental, I do not eat. I have bills, home rent, studio rent and a team to pay. However creative it may be, this is still a business.
The publications are paid. The stylist and photographer are paid. Fashion needs to move beyond this idea that a designer should accept exposure in place of money. What am I meant to do – print out my Vogue cover and present it to my landlord?
We have had exposure: Vogue, Lady Gaga, premieres, album covers and billboards in New York and Canada. Those moments were exciting, but they did not create financial security. A famous person may not tag or mention the designer, so sometimes even the promised exposure never materialises.
Drawing that line has undoubtedly cost me opportunities and perhaps slowed the brand’s growth. Word may have travelled that we do not work for free. But I would rather know that our clients value what we create than return to being everywhere, dressing everyone and appearing on every cover while facing eviction from my studio. That version of success makes absolutely no sense.
You’ve described London as having a punk, throw-it-together energy but very little money, with most of your custom work coming from clients in New York, Paris, Dubai and Los Angeles. Who is the client who books you, and what do they come to you for that they can’t get elsewhere?
That is difficult for me to answer because I cannot know exactly what every client sees in the brand. I am still coming to terms with the fact that I am a designer, that the brand exists and that this is now what I do full-time. It often feels like a strange, foggy dream.
I hope clients come to us for the attitude. There is something raw and visceral in the clothes, but also a profound respect for the craft of dressmaking. We try to push boundaries while acknowledging history… to respect it and then change it.
Whatever we create, it must still flatter the person wearing it. I want them to feel confident, look extraordinary and enjoy being in the garment. But each client arrives seeking something slightly different. Some apparently regard me as “the corset girl,” so they come because they want a very good corset, which is a reputation I am delighted to have.
More broadly, I think people book us when they want to feel slightly undone, boisterous or against the grain. They are not looking for anonymous perfection. They want a garment with energy – something that feels as though it has a life before they put it on and becomes entirely theirs once they do.
You’ve spoken about how difficult it has been to find friends among other London designers, and that your closest collaborators are photographers, stylists and make-up artists instead. Is the industry’s competitiveness something you’ve made peace with, or something you’d still like to change?
Oh my, I think it is deeply challenging.
When I started the brand, all I wanted was designer friends. I was so excited to enter this world, participate in it and learn from the people around me. I was like a sponge; I wanted to absorb everything. I realised quite quickly, however, that many people did not want to let me in. They did not necessarily want me to learn, grow or challenge anything.
To this day, I know other fashion designers, but I would not say I have many genuinely close designer friendships. There is often an underlying sense of you versus me, which I have never truly understood. Perhaps it is because I came from fine art, where painters, sculptors and performance artists could all occupy the same gallery without believing that somebody else’s presence removed their own opportunity.
A degree of competitiveness can be healthy, but it makes more sense to compete with yourself. Look at your last collection and ask how you can push it, challenge it and evolve, not how you can defeat the person next to you.
Multiple designers can be successful simultaneously. One person’s achievement does not diminish anybody else’s potential. So no, I have not made peace with the culture entirely. I would still like fashion to become a place where community is not mistaken for weakness and where people understand there is enough room for all of us.
You take on interns with minimal sewing experience if they have hunger, and you’ve said pieces that don’t make you feel anything get taken apart for fabric. Ten years from now, what does Brian De Carvalho look like as a house, and what would you refuse to give up to get there?
Ten years sounds completely insane… I sometimes struggle to imagine the brand a year from now! But if I allow myself to be idealistic, of course I would love storefronts, international studios, financial success and a fully established team.
What I hope we never lose is the energy that makes us who we are. I do not want the house to become overly corporate, overly “fashion” or consumed by a sense that you can’t sit with us. I want to retain that slightly unhinged, fluid, on-the-fly feeling – the sense that somebody can enter the room, believe in the idea and become part of making it happen.
I hate when corporations say, “We are a family,” because that is generally when they are preparing to ruin your life. But within our studio, I genuinely look for kindred spirits – people who believe in the language of the brand and share its values. Their gender, ethnicity or conventional background does not determine their worth to me. Hunger does.
I did not study fashion or textiles, and I have still been fortunate enough to build this. Why would I not extend that possibility to somebody else – a journalism student, a videographer who wants to sew or a first-year student who has never touched a machine?
I want Brian De Carvalho to become a substantial, successful international house, but I also want it to demonstrate that success can be built differently. You do not have to follow the prescribed road, become cut-throat or diminish other people to take up space. We can bend and break the rules, create our own path and succeed on our own terms. That is the one thing I would refuse to surrender.
