How to Be KidSuper

Colm Dillane doesn’t have any technical training in fashion; in fact, his career as a designer was far from intentional. “Fashion was just my hobby,” he says over FaceTime upon returning to New York from Paris, where he not only staged a fully-fledged comedy special for KidSuper‘s Fall/Winter 2023 show, but also debuted as the first designer to co-create a menswear collection with Louis Vuitton following Virgil Abloh‘s death. “It was really just this fun thing I did in my free time,” Dillane says. “Imagine that becoming your full-time job. It’s quite exciting.”

Where there wasn’t artisanal expertise, there was an artistic gift. For his entire life, Dillane knew he was a talented illustrator and painter, so when it came to founding his fashion label, those skills proved imperative. “It was a huge part of KidSuper’s originality,” he explains. “What’s more original than original artwork?”

Thanks to its artful roots, KidSuper is anything but understated. Among its myriad canvas-to-textile silhouettes, the label’s “Face Knit Sweater” caught fashion’s eyes for its striking, illustrative depiction of the human form on clothes. Dillane’s latest “Kissing” series takes that concept further, hosting tasteful makeout sessions on the clasps of trench coats, puffer jackets, and handbags. “People come to KidSuper for statement pieces,” Dillane said. “The number of people that text me to tell me they were stopped on the street when they were wearing my clothes is insane.”

Being artistically inclined is one thing, but the designer’s go-getter attitude is wholly responsible for where he is today. You can see this through the over-the-top (and oftentimes tongue-in-cheek) nature of his KidSuper fashion shows. Before the punchy label appeared on the official calendar, Dillane would print his fashion week rejection letters onto the imprint’s runway designs. “That’s what the brand’s about—the journey and the unrealistic goals. It’s never about being accepted,” Dillane said. Naturally, when he debuted on the Paris Fashion Week calendar in 2020, he opened his first official show with a design emblazoned with his acceptance letter.

At that time, the pandemic forced Dillane, along with the entire fashion industry, to rethink what a fashion show could look like. While many rightfully struggled to adapt to a quarantined format, Dillane embraced the “new normal” with a slew of short films that, for a designer, were anything but normal.

“Nothing KidSuper has come out of nowhere.”

The first of these short films, Everything’s Fake Until It’s Real, was an animated claymation runway show that included star-studded “appearances” from the likes of Salvador Dalí, Naomi Campbell, Stephen Hawking, Pele, and more. It was quite the impressive spectacle for a fashion week debut, one so thought-provoking, in fact, that it earned KidSuper a place in Dover Street Market’s stores.

His subsequent shows grew bigger and bigger. In October 2020, he delivered the pilot episode for SCRAM!, a limited animated series that starred Usain Bolt, Westside Gunn, Jessie Reyez, and Lil Tecca. In it, cartoon iterations of the aforementioned figures sported the latest KidSuper designs as they discovered their superpowers while adventuring through New York City. The following year, KidSuper’s “What Do You Want To Do Before You Die?” initiative (which accompanied his SS22 collection) turned strangers’ lifelong dreams into realities. The label asked 300 random people the collection’s titular question and actually helped fulfill 20 of their goals. Among them, KidSuper assisted a man in hosting a family reunion, flew a mother and her son to Paris and organized a skydiving trip for a stuntman.

“KidSuper is so much about the world we have created,” Dillane said. “That’s why each piece is a statement and one-of-a-kind, because the person who can wear such loud pieces has a bit of daredevil in them.”

For his first in-person show at Paris Fashion Week in June 2022, Dillane staged an auction, where models presented looks alongside the paintings that inspired them. Guests, including Westside Gunn and G-Eazy, were handed paddles to bid on pieces on the runway. Russ, who previously lived in Dillane’s basement for several months, shelled out $210,000 USD for the portrait of a woman that appeared on the show’s invitation.

In January 2023, KidSuper produced a one-hour comedy special titled Funny Business. Located at the Casino de Paris and hosted by Tyra Banks, who changed into 10 different FW23 looks throughout the show, the spectacle featured performances from famed comedians, including Yvonne Orji, Jeff Ross, Andrew Santino, Fary and Andrew Schultz. It was a scene so massive that the police were called to quell crowds outside the venue.

The fashion-turned-comedy special felt innovative on the Paris Fashion Week stage. But for KidSuper, hosting a comedy show is nothing new. “I did my first KidSuper comedy show six years ago. People don’t know that because nobody was writing about me then,” says Dillane. “Nothing KidSuper has come out of nowhere.”

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Dillane was filling the biggest shoes in fashion, and he was very well aware of the pressure that came with putting them on. “I was expecting a ton of hate,” he admits. But in his instance, taking the mantle felt less scary than it did noble.

Two months prior to his passing, Abloh served on the LVMH jury that crowned Dillane a winner of the €150,000 EUR prize. To fill Abloh’s shoes two years later was a full circle moment for Dillane. “What I loved about Virgil is that, in his last couple years of life, he wanted to leave an impact,” he reflects. “He wanted to collaborate. He wanted to make it so that you couldn’t even open your door in New York without seeing his influence. That, to me, was inspiring. So when I got to Louis Vuitton, I wanted to shoot for the stars.”

For the stars he shot, Dillane’s work at the label was largely met with an industry-wide thumbs up. He skillfully infiltrated Louis Vuitton’s codes with his emblematic artworks—think monogram-covered workwear staples backdropped by KidSuper faces and sharp trench coats plastered with sparkly graffiti and human silhouettes. While making it his own, Dillane still upheld the French fashion house’s storied identity; and in doing so, he tastefully paid tribute to Abloh.

For an artist with no technical fashion training, Dillane’s ascension to one of the industry’s top tables is a remarkable feat. It not only validates the designer’s place in high fashion (which, in the past, was oftentimes disregarded for his prioritization of art over tailoring), but it proves the sheer power of creativity in design. “This was not in my cards, but it definitely changes things,” Dillane says of his stint at Louis Vuitton. “It was the cherry on top of the KidSuper sundae.”

KidSuper is still becoming, and the designer’s vision will continue to evolve under a much larger microscope (Dillane has plans to open a “10,000-square-foot, multidisciplinary Brooklyn warehouse” under the imprint later this year). Nonetheless—what Dillane dreams, KidSuper does. And what KidSuper does, the world will watch.

“That’s what [Kidsuper is] about—the journey and the unrealistic goals. It’s never been about being accepted.”

The foundation that holds KidSuper’s brand story together is Dillane’s unwavering persistence. “I never quit,” he says. “I had no expectations and I didn’t feel like I deserved anything. Any bit of success felt like a luxury.” In September of last year, his tenacity earned him his biggest accolade to date: a coveted seat at Louis Vuitton’s high table.

After months of on-and-off meetings with the French maison, Dillane got the official call. “They said, ‘Hey Colm, we’d like you to guest design the next LV collection,’” he remembers. “I was like, ‘Cool, I’ll start in January.’ And they were like, ‘No, no, you start tomorrow.’ I came with 500 pages of ideas.”

HYPEBEAST Magazine Issue 31: The Circle Issue is now available on HBX.