Passion Project

Celebrated Designer Paul Helbers Bares His Very Own Brand.
 

- Joshua Glass

PAUL HELBERS, the former head of Louis Vuitton’s men’s program and protégé of Martin Margiela, was not always consumed by fashion. He remembers that his very first creations, potato-printed T-shirts at the age of 10, were less of an exercise in design and more of an outpour of sentiment; a particular red, shoulder-studded tee with “zutalors” placed across the chest harkens a generous chuckle today. “It means ‘fuck off,’” he smiles politely. Later in life, after leaving the prestigious Royal College of Art in London, half-consigned to the designer path, he still wasn’t entirely sold on industrializing the craft. “It felt very formatted,” he says. “I didn’t fit into the standard of what people thought a fashion designer should be able to do.” Today, as Helbers reveals his new, eponymous brand—a well-curated evolution of sophisticated menswear and untried design—a resolute certainty marks the scene.