For Steve O Smith, a garment begins with the stroke of a brush. Every collection starts as a drawing—hundreds of them, in fact. “Probably 0.1 percent of the drawings I do ever get made,” he laughs. “I have boxes and boxes of them.” It’s this obsessive commitment to drawing that defines Smith. “I was always sort of drawing when I was a kid—as soon as I could—from two to three years old,” he recalls. He was also extremely interested in drawing figures, which led to his love for fashion.

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Smith’s process feels more like that of a painter than that of a fashion designer. Research comes first—then hours and hours of drawing. “Since what I make is really about the drawings, I’m looking more for references in terms of use of colour, tone or materials,” he explains. His fall/winter 2025 collection, Awash, delves into the world of the Magic Realist painters of ‘40s and ‘50s New York. “They’d paint something completely realistic, then twist it ever so slightly,” he explains. “[Their works were] incredibly individual and against the grain, and I think that really resonated with me as a gay man.” Smith also drew inspiration from French fashion illustrator René Gruau. “[In his time] fashion illustration was often looked down on, and I think there’s an irony to placing it at the centre of the narrative.”

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After the drawing comes the pattern cutting and the resolution of technical matters such as how to hide the seams of a garment or incorporate them into its construction. “I think of the garments as drawings in their own right, and I’ve figured out this way of using fabric appliqué to sort of draw with fabric in the same way that I use mediums on paper,” says Smith. He sees his past three collections as a single body of work, which he expressed through a strict monochromatic palette. “It reinforced the idea of the clothes being drawings.” He adds that he “wanted to double down on concept, silhouette and fabrication” and that “traditionally, drawings have been monochrome in history. Working in black and white [also] gave us a really beautiful limitation that allowed us to build systems within which to work. And now that we have those systems, we’re able to start expanding what we do.”

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The fall/winter 2025 finale’s Arch Gown was worn by Ariana Grande at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards. Built on a lightweight pannier structure, it flares at the hips but lies flat at the front, creating the illusion of a two-dimensional sketch. Smith had barely gotten off the stage after winning the LVMH Prize’s special Karl Lagerfeld Prize when stylist Law Roach called. Within just a day, the dress was on a plane to New York. “It was very complicated [getting it there with so little notice] but very exciting to see it on a global stage,” says Smith. About to embark on his Karl Lagerfeld Prize’s mentorship programme, the designer, who is only beginning to execute what is surely the first of his many masterstrokes, says, “My motto is just to shut up and draw.”

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