Fashion

Daniel Fletcher has launched his first women’s collection—a by-popular-demand response to the fact that girls have been shopping the men’s clothes on his website. Fletcher competed in the Netflix reality series Next In Fashion last year, which has a lot to do with the uptick in interest in him in America—girls as well as his boy fans have been after the British designer’s bootleg split-hem pants, shirts and outerwear. Tiktok’s trans-girl identical twins Maddie and Margo Whitley—who hail from Texas—first became aware of Fletcher when they watched the show, too. By chance, they happened to be in London just when Fletcher had his collection together, so the girls stepped into his studio to be in his lookbook.

“Ultimately, it will all become one collection,” he says, “Because a shirt is a shirt, after all. But we’ve noticed girls have been saying they’d like my jackets with slightly shorter sleeves, narrower bodies and shoulders, and we needed to offer a different rise in the pants.” There’s a generational relatability about what Fletcher’s been building with his brand since he launched with his own shoppable DanielWFletcher.com site in 2016. He was 25 then, taking an entrepreneurial chance at the time the technology was available to make things look professional, but flying by the seat of his pants. It worked. “I mean, I never had any expectations that it would!” he laughs. “But I’ve always thought ambition without expectation is a nice way to go, because then you can enjoy yourself.”

There’s a bit of a ’90s-nostalgic flavor about Fletcher’s brand. “That’s completely by accident, really,” he says. “I was born in 1990 and I didn’t think about it when I was designing the collection, but going through it, yes, there are ’90s inspirations: the skirts over the trousers, the checkered mini skirts with big shearling jackets. Almost a bit like Gerri Halliwell and the Spice Girls.” There’s also an oversized ‘Diana’ coat, consciously inspired by all those paparazzi photographs of the Princess of Wales running to her car from the gym in the ’90s.

Add in the fact that Fletcher grew up in Manchester with a dad who was a fan of the Rolling Stones and The Who, and you have some background to his love of a hipster pant and a Mod checkerboard pattern. Most of his fabrics have UK provenance; he takes care to support local manufacturing and build his designs around zero-waste practices. The standout brown and white patchworked pieces here— mini-skirts, flares, a dress—were made from “denim and corduroy offcuts from last season,” he says. “We always go to the factory and gather up what’s left from our production. It’s more difficult to do—but what happens if we don’t? It would just go to landfill, I guess. We’re never going to make hundreds of them, so they’re going to be available only on our website.” Good for him, though. His girl-fans will be tracking that.