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Harris Reed. Credit: Vladimir Marti

Never has the tiny portal of a Zoom frame been teeming with so much iconic-ness. A few days after his shoot with GRAZIA, 26-year-old British-American wunderkind Harris Reed joins me on a video call from his tiny atelier in London.

It’s just 12 days before the Met Gala – the industry’s most revered intersection of fashion and art – and behind Reed, a member of his design team delicately pins a corset to a mannequin before putting pedal to the floor at a sewing machine. To Reed’s right is his mood board – magazine clippings, Instagram saves, sketches – and to his left, the black, statement spherical headdress worn by Beyoncé on a 2022 cover of British Vogue. There’s a Seussical bumblebee yellow hat in frame, too. More design team members. More mannequins. And yet, contrary to the pace in which Reed speaks (the size of his headwear is perhaps symbolic of the thoughts brimming in his sharp mind), the creative director of both Nina Ricci and his own eponymous brand is remarkably composed amongst the chaos.

“Today, I am absolutely shattered – in a good way!” says Reed, flicking his enviable auburn waves behind his shoulders, before pulling them forward again. “We are wrapping a big collection at Nina Ricci, we’re working on the Met Gala where we have literally six days to get it together, and I’m doing a thousand things. I woke up today, I was tired. But I put on my three-piece suit, my big heels, my jewellery. I got my vintage bag, my massive sunglasses and was like, “‘let’s do it.’”

Born in California to parents Nick and Lynette (an Oscar-winning British documentary film producer, and American model and candlemaker, respectively), Reed graduated from Central Saint Martins, a London-based arts and design college which counts Alexander McQueen and John Galliano as alums. While still a student, Reed was tapped by celebrity stylist Harry Lambert who commissioned the budding designer to make pieces for his client to wear on tour. That client was Harry Styles. Today, Reed’s lavish, theatrical garb fuses traditionally masculine and feminine forms – demi couture creations deftly striving to start conversations around gender fluidity and inclusivity, and are loved by celebrities like Adele, Solange, Florence Pugh and Shania Twain.

But to fully appreciate Reed’s va-va-voom Fall/Winter 2023 silhouettes – the crinolines, and the yards of gold lamé which were actually made from recycled theatre curtains from all over London – is to understand the designer’s backstory: his young years in Arizona; the (at times) shame felt as a queer person; and how embracing these vulnerabilities via costume changed who he was destined to be.

SEE HARRIS REED’S FULL FASHION SHOOT WITH GRAZIA’S 14TH PRINT EDITION

PRE-ORDER GRAZIA’S 14th print edition “exhibition” here

harris-reed-grazia
Credit: Vladimir Marti

We meet again a little over a week later, this time in person inside Reed’s hotel room in New York City’s Meatpacking district. It’s now the day before the Met Gala and somehow in the midst of running between appointments across the traffic-clogged island of Manhattan, Reed has made time for a second chat. I decide to take the opportunity to tell him his shoot has made the cover of this print issue, and as he’s taking in the cover image, I read him back a beautiful quote he said to me on our Zoom call the week prior.

“For every big circle around the face, I am drawing attention to the things I would wear on a queer night out. My biggest fear as a kid was being punched in the face, so now as a young, queer individual, I want everyone to look at my f**king face. I used my own vulnerabilities to find silhouettes, structure and shape to make myself one to be gawked at, and looked it, and for me to be like, “F**k it, I am beautiful and confident.”

“Oh my goodness, wow,” Reed responds as he takes in the image and his own words. “I’m literally trying not to cry. To see this on the cover is really monumental because it feels very much a full circle of ‘kid in the bathroom hiding’ to a ‘couture level cover of GRAZIA for an Exhibition-themed issue.’

“The double circle hat is the radiance of everything I went through and everything I stand for,” he adds. “And I just – sorry I can’t stop looking at the photo. It’s extremely surreal.”

Yes, when fashion becomes art, it’s powerful. But when Harris Reed does it, it truly moves you.

Enjoy our conversation.

harris-reed-grazia
Credit: Vladimir Marti

SEE HARRIS REED’S FULL FASHION SHOOT WITH GRAZIA’S 14TH PRINT EDITION

PRE-ORDER GRAZIA’S 14th print edition “exhibition” here

GRAZIA: As you know, the theme of this issue is Exhibition

HARRIS REED: I love that.

GRAZIA: Your brand is flamboyant, fluid, glamorous and bold – and aptly, this collection is named “All The World’s A Stage”. When it comes to fashion, what sort of feelings does the word “exhibition” conjure up for you?

HR: I love the word exhibition. Even before I knew this issue was dedicated to it, it’s always been a word that I use a lot. I’m a museum fanatic and am really obsessed with this idea of people being able to look at a garment as a piece of history. A piece of iconography that makes one dream, question and express. I love the word exhibition so much because it really relates back to clothing as art, and when clothing is done with great craftsmanship, it creates a spectacle. Something that should be gawked at, and looked at – whether it is in a museum being literally exhibited, or worn on the streets, or in the intimacy of your own home.

GRAZIA: Have you always enjoyed dressing up?

HR: F**k yes! [Laughs] Sorry, I curse too much. I was in Paris this morning and was talking to my team and they were like, “Did you always know you wanted to be a designer?” and I said, “No, I always wanted to be a ‘dresser-upper’”. That’s what I would tell my mum when I was eight years old – and she didn’t even question it! ‘Alright, cool! You’re going to do that, you’re a dresser-upper,’ she’d say. It was only in my late teens that I realised there were many job titles: creative director, art director, photographer. [When I was young] I just saw it all as being one. I didn’t see it as someone being a dancer and someone being a designer, I just wanted to put on intricately wild Halloween costumes and my mum’s dresses and shoes and dance around and be like [French-American artist] Louise Bourgeois. I always knew I wanted to dress up and have fun.

GRAZIA: You look immaculate today…

HR: For me dressing up in such an integral part of embodying an energy and being the best version of yourself. I also think it makes people take you seriously. A lot of young, queer people are looked at as being naïve or misunderstood. Fashion is a business that is run by a lot of money and straight men in suits. For me, dressing up really allowed me to build an extra layer of confidence – and an extra level of “I deserve to be here and I’m not going anywhere”.

GRAZIA: While Australians would be familiar with your silhouettes, they are just getting to know you as the designer behind the extravagance. How would your closest friends describe you?

HR: Trustworthy and probably a little bit naughty! As much as I can be self-deprecating, and hopefully grounded, I always have this feeling of, “I have two teams now to push, I have this part to play.” So, with my friends, I’m more comedic – I like to play tricks and pranks – and I like to watch bad reality TV. I also like to have deep conversations but I get to strip off a bit of the professional armour and just be a bit of a 26-year-old. I don’t even drink beer that much, but sometimes when I’m with my friends, I’ll just go drink beer and watch bad movies. All of that stuff is important for the 360. Because if not, I’d take myself way too seriously.

GRAZIA: When we look at even just one of these looks, they really do bleed the true transformative power of fashion. How did you dream these up? What got you inspired to create this collection?

HR: As we’re chatting, I’m at my studio in London. Everything for my brand is made within these four walls. I’ve never wanted a bigger space, I’ve never made pieces outside of the studio. I don’t have external seamstresses, I don’t have a factory. What people see on the red carpets, in magazines and on the runway, it’s all literally made here. The only thing that sometimes bounces between here and somewhere else are my hats which are locally made at my milliner. What inspires me is the craftsmanship and collaboration of my team in this space.

I’m obsessed with exhibitions and am always going to galleries and museums. So the inspiration really does come from history. But a lot of the starting points come from being a young person in London and the people around me who are always dreaming of a more decadent, more accepting, and more fabulous world. This notion will always stem down to my early childhood experiences and my queerness, and this feeling of just wanting to escape, and thus make escapism.

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Harris Reed. Credit: Vladimir Marti

“A lot of my starting points come from being a young person in London and the people around me who are always dreaming of a more decadent, more accepting, and more fabulous world.”

GRAZIA: Tell me about the moment where a college teacher was telling you to drop out, only for you to hop on the Tube that afternoon to West London to meet with stylist Harry Lambert and – unbeknown to you at the time – his client, Harry Styles.

HR: Those years at university were tricky. I specifically remember that moment where I had one teacher saying, “You’ll never be more than someone’s illustration assistant so give up on having a brand.” Another said, “You should drop out.” At the time, I thought, “What have I done? I’ve left America, I’ve moved to London, I don’t know anyone in the city to build a whole name for myself. Did I make a wrong move?”

That moment was quite soul crushing. And the fact that I literally had to run to West London to meet with Harry Lambert and Harry Styles was also very serendipitous. I think a lot of my life transitions have been made up of moments that have picked me back up to be like, “Remember what your talent is, remember what you can be and who you want to be.”

GRAZIA: Looking back, what did you learn from this inflection point?

HR: I think I realised that the only person who is going to give me the validation to live my true self and my dream was myself. It was a big moment when I realised that. In a really polite way, you can’t look to others to be validated.

I’m happy those moments happened because if I was just told I was great all the time, where would I be? Whenever someone said you can’t do something, I’ve either found love within my friendships, within myself, or within my clients like Harry Lambert and Harry Styles. Early clients who really brought me to where I am now.

GRAZIA: So there’s Harry, Harry and Harris sitting at a table. What do you talk about? What’s the vibe?

HR: I remember being extremely nervous. Harry Lambert really allowed me to see my vision, not just in my head, but in reality. I was sitting at that table with all my little hand drawn sketches and talking through my ideas and inspirations with the other Harry, and it was a very warm, beautiful space. A space that I felt was safe – which is crucial for young designers and a lot don’t get to have that. In that meeting, they could say why they liked it, why they didn’t like it, and then I could admit, “Oh, maybe there’s too many ruffles”. It was very collaborative, and I think that meeting set a beautiful tone for how I now always work with clients.

There’s a lot of VIPs, in a polite way, that I’ve chosen not to work with because it becomes five publicists, four stylists, managers, and agents. Everyone has an opinion! And then you sit there and think, “Well, this isn’t a collaboration anymore. This isn’t going to look like an artistic expression that is genuine to me.” It needs to be a safe space with people having a genuine conversation in a room.

GRAZIA: Prior to this meeting, Harry Lambert had asked you to sketch some pieces for Harry Styles with arch references to Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix. What does your design process look like? Take us into your creative mind for a second.

HR: For me, it’s always burning way too many candles which gives Phoebe, my right-hand brand director, a headache! I play music quite obsessively. When Harry [Styles’] album [Harry’s House] came out, I played in on repeat. When I was working with Adele, I played her music non-stop. When I was watching Euphoria, I played Labyrinth over and over.

I’m also a massive mood board person. I’ll take screenshots of Instagram, I’ll take photos of pieces I see in museums, I’ll cut-out pictures in magazines, I’ll get sketches that didn’t make the cut from previous seasons – and I’ll put that all onto one wall, and then I draw really, really badly which I think is important for people to hear. People’s biggest insecurity when they message me about wanting to be a designer, is “I can’t draw,” and I’m like, “F**k that!” I’m much better as a maker. When it comes to creating garments, my specialty is with my hands.

GRAZIA: How do you separate your brain between creating for Nina Ricci and creating for Harris Reed?

HR: It’s been weirdly easy. That was everyone’s biggest question, whether it was from my team or Nina’s. Anyone around me was like, “How are you going to compartmentalise these two separate entities with two very different identities, but still share a common ground of fluidity?” I think it landed with Harris Reed’s last show at Paris Fashion Week. I feel like I really fell into what the brand was about. It was like this deep London romanticism. Fluidity, yes of course, and gender expression, and diversity across size and models, but for me, it fell into this space where Harris very much feels avant-garde, and really allows me to push the theatricality. Whereas for Nina, it’s me playing with a treasure trove and using a lighter colour palette with a bit more of a universal client in mind.

Nina is ready-to-wear, whereas Harris Reed is made to measure. A [Harris Reed] corset can have 82 seams in it, whereas Nina has two because we need to be able to commercialise it in a very beautiful way. It has got to be sold on a rack at Nordstrom Saks.

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Credit: Vladimir Marti

GRAZIA: How do you personally manage living between Paris for Nina Ricci and London for your eponymous brand?

HR: It’s definitely a lot. When I leave Paris, it’s very easy for me to leave all of Nina in Paris. My brain is always thinking creatively but I’m very much a physical person: On a shoot or with a talent, I immediately am all consumed in that world. I almost forget my own name when I’m in a room with an artist I love! It’s been great for me to go to Paris and be this American girl in Paris, and then come back to London and be the American girl in London!

GRAZIA: You grew up in Arizona, a state that runs red and where being anything not attached to the binary is largely unaccepted. What was your childhood like?

HR: My childhood is the thing that I am most happy and proud of because it made me who I am. We moved like 27 times before I went to university.

GRAZIA: Wow! What?

HR: Twenty-seven different houses. A lot of people don’t know that. I lived in Arizona for four or five years, then California, Washington, Oregon, New York. I was so all over the place and I had to get really good at an elevator pitch of like, “Hi, I’m Harris, I’m gay.” I had to know who I was so quickly because I was moving around so much and meeting so many new people.

It was very hard to be so unapologetically myself so young because there was no blending in. [In Arizona] I was wearing my pink shirts, bowers, rhinestone Havianas and getting beat up in the boys’ bathroom. Thank god I have amazing parents, and my mum was like, “We’re getting out of here” and we moved back to Los Angeles. My mum was always super protective and f**k, thank god, because who knows where I would have ended up. It was so integral to have parents who were understanding, which is such a privilege that so many people don’t have. I can’t imagine going through life without that. They were accepting when the world wasn’t.

That was my base. It dates back to me saying I wanted to be a dresser-upper, and playing with clothes because I didn’t have friends. I just danced around my house in big Halloween costumes, mum’s shoes, fishnets, and bras. It was kind of where a deep passion and obsession for clothing came about: I was a queer kid that really was just lonely.

GRAZIA: You’ve spoken in the past about how your clothes are powered by the shame queer individuals can feel. How did these experiences shape you and, ultimately, your brand’s messaging?

HR: In my early years at university, I was designing womenswear and menswear as very much “womenswear” and [separately] “menswear”. It was very stereotypical. There was a time when I was like, “I’m a young queer person full of shame, full of all this crap that I need to get rid of.” I thought, “I’m going to dress flamboyant and fabulous” and once I started creating that, the Internet lit up, especially because it was during worldwide lockdowns and people were on their phones seeing me make big blouses and big hats. I realised my pieces were being so well received when I was being so uncomfortably vulnerable within my own trauma.

“For every big circle around the face, I am drawing attention to the things I would wear on a queer night out. My biggest fear as a kid was being punched in the face, so now as a young, queer individual, I want everyone to look at my f**king face. I used my own vulnerabilities to find silhouettes, structure and shape to make myself one to be gawked at, and looked it, and for me to be like, “F**k it, I am beautiful and confident.”

Find the beauty in the vulnerability, find it in being uncomfortable. It would be so easy for me to write my traumas on slogans and make it quite dark but I’ve always tried to look at it with a level of light. When you look at the pieces, it does come from so much trauma and playing with all my insecurities and adding a luminescence to my face or my body.

That’s why I’ve always liked a massive shoe because you get to kind of rise above everything. You get to have fresh air – I felt like I was drowning as a young kid.

GRAZIA: How long did it take you personally to arrive in a place where you felt physically safe to be your true self?

HR: That’s such an amazing question and my response would be that I don’t even know if I’m fully there yet. I think it’s a thing where I found safety in how I wanted to dress and express myself and how I want to design. I’m now privileged to be able to take cars to places, I have people around me that protect me – I’m not really on the bus or Tube anymore in big stilettos and a thong and crystals. But in all honesty, I still don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe. I was getting into Paris super late this week and the taxi didn’t arrive and I had to find a way to get around. I’m there at the station dripping in my costume jewellery and my big flares and I’m in France, which I love, but it is also a place that can be narrow-minded.

GRAZIA: It’s a scary train station…

HR: It was scary. It’s a feeling that I still feel from time to time. It was like, “I’m so confident in being who I am but I’m still so scared.” There’s so much hate out there and people just don’t understand.

I don’t want to respond to you and say, “When I was 19 everything was fabulous and great”. It’s a step-by-step thing. I’ve told people you need to start building safe spaces in the communities around you. From my late teens to now, it’s been about building those safe spaces to best show who I am. I always tell people who are nervous or live in a space where being gay is illegal (which blows my f**king mind on top of all the countries where it’s already scary to be yourself) if you can’t be safe being yourself outside, at least go in front of the mirror and dress up and have fun. Find a way that you can be you because I cannot imagine not being able to express who I am.

GRAZIA: How do you deal with controversy? Do you take the criticism home with you at night?

HR: Yes. [Laughs] It’s funny, I take personal controversy really well. When it’s about me, I don’t care that much because I’m so used to it. I take [the criticism] home with me when it is much more about my work. Because my clothing has so much meaning, when someone doesn’t like something, I take that very personally. My fiancé will take my phone off me after a show. When you’re going off zero sleep and one person says one thing, you hold onto it. It’s something I’m working on. Maybe I’ll need to lock my phone and laptop in a box every time I do a big project!

GRAZIA: We need to ask about your haircare routine. You have luscious long, shiny hair. What products do you use?

HR: I travel so much that I’ll literally be in the back of the Eurostar combing glitter and gunk out of my hair and using a hair mask that I bought at the duty-free store. One of my favourite models of all time, Kirsten McMenamy, told me to, “always braid it, try not to use too much heat on it, and use a lot of hair oil,” so I try to live by that. But I still use too much heat because I’m a dumb 26-year-old that likes to have big hair. [Laughs]

GRAZIA: You’re only 26, and are engaged, have gone to the Met Gala, secured a job as the creative director at Nina Ricci, and started an eponymous label. What’s next for you? And the brand? How big will the hats get?

HR: It’s my running joke that I’m going to have a bunch of kids and retire! [Laughs] No, I think as a creative person, you always just create new goals for yourself. I have massive aspirations. In 2023, I think being a fashion designer can be so many different things so I’m looking at [my brand as the] “House Of Harris” and questioning what it has inside. Being able to tell stories outside of clothing really excites me – books? Film? Because at the end of the day, I’m a storyteller with a lot of sh*t to say.

SEE HARRIS REED’S FULL FASHION SHOOT WITH GRAZIA’S 14TH PRINT EDITION

PRE-ORDER GRAZIA’S 14th print edition “exhibition” here

CREATIVE DIRECTION MARNE SCHWARTZ & DANÉ STOJANOVIC
PHOTOGRAPHY VLADIMIR MARTI
HAIR JEAN LUC AMARIN
MAKEUP FRANCESCA BRAZZO
LIGHTING ASSISTANT MARTIN EITO
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER JEAN-MARC MONDELET
HARRIS REED’S PRODUCER ALEX BLAGDEN
MODEL ALINE SOUZA / MADEMOISELLE AGENCY
FASHION HARRIS REED