Last year, Atlanta-hailing designer Nigel Xavier was named the winner of Next in Fashion's second season, taking home a $200,000 USD cash prize, earning the opportunity to sell his designs on Rent the Runway and stitching himself a prominent place on the industry's saturated radar. In the spotlight, the "wizard of denim" has continued honing his signature upcycling design aesthetic, which, as his affectionate nickname suggests, includes lots of reimagined, distressed and patchworked jeans. But Xavier's sartorial language is not limited to one textile. In fact, the first-place fashioner has just unveiled a line of colorful crochet pieces that fit right into his maximalist lexicon.
"I upcycled vintage crochet blankets to create a lot of these looks," Xavier told Hypebeast of the line's conception. "I was drawn to tropical wardrobes and colorful architecture." A recent trip to Brazil, where the designer saw the country's ornate Baroque architecture up close, played a role in galvanizing his kaleidoscopic knitwear; but Xavier has wanted to make a larger splash with his crochet silhouettes for quite some time. "I was doing knitwear here and there, but I wanted to focus heavily on crochet for this collection because it's something I've always been interested in."
In classic Xavier fashion, the collection is filled with bold-eyed statements; so much so, the designer himself finds it challenging to point out a singular hero piece in the range. "All my pieces are hero pieces," he laughs. "It's hard to pick one."
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Some of his confident designs include baby blue crochet sweaters with floral decals on geometric grids and zip-up iterations with blue and red stripes running across the body. Elsewhere, cropped sweaters are frayed for dramatic effect; feminine off-the-shoulder tops sprout dangling flowers from their arms, and hoodies boast chieftain-inspired crochet designs.
Denim creeps into the collection on a selection of trousers, shorts and hats that cleverly blend Xavier's coined textile with floral knit sectionals. On distressed jeans, the designer's playful crochet pieces peek through pockets and scatter down the leg like a checkerboard; and on upcycled bucket hats, his yarns similarly spruce up the head with luminous pigments. Truthfully, it wouldn't be a Nigel Xavier collection without a splash of patchwork denim.
Nigel Xavier's "Crochet Collection" is now available to shop on the designer's webstore. Take a look at the lineup in the campaign, shot by Shamaal Bloodman, above.
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