Lily Fandre Lehigh Mountain Hawks Forward Vintage Shirt

“Of course I stayed up!” beams New York designer Mia Vesper over the phone. Her all-nighter is thanks to Beyoncé’s new visual album Black Is King, which was released on Disney+ at 3 a.m. today. Vesper had a special reason to burn the midnight oil: She designed a custom ensemble for Beyoncé and 60 additional looks for dancers and actors in the film. Featured around 44 minutes into the visual album on a track with Pharrell, Vesper’s outfit is a shimmering Impressionist gown with bias draping and ruching and a dramatic headpiece. “Zerina Akers, Beyoncé’s stylist, said she wanted something that was iconic. When I think of Beyoncé, I always think of a cape or a headpiece, so I started there,” Vesper says. “There were about 20 different headpieces we made. I was putting traffic cones on my head and draping fabric across them and putting shoeboxes, and putting planters on my head. It grew from there.”
Lily Fandre Lehigh Mountain Hawks Forward Vintage Shirt

Vesper experimenting with headpiece shapes in her studio The gown represents a step forward for Vesper too. The designer, who started out upcycling vintage tapestries into jackets and shorts in 2017, has been slowly and sustainably growing her business with a made-in-New-York ready-to-wear collection of sporty separates and flirty minidresses. Making something on this scale was a first. “I was thinking, How to make a gown? How to make a gown?” she says of her early sketches of the dress. “I ended up draping a bunch of dresses all on myself and sending Zerina selfies. She picked her favorite one. …I always let the textile tell me what it wants to do and then I kind of work from there.”

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