The Recent Central Saint Martins Grad Who's Already Designed Custom Pieces for Harry Styles and Paloma Elsesser – Latest Fashion Trends & Style Tips May 21, 2026 at 06:15PM
📰 The Recent Central Saint Martins Grad Who's Already Designed Custom Pieces for Harry Styles and Paloma Elsesser
{% if EntryImageUrl and EntryImageUrl != "" %}
✨ Fashion Insights & Trends:
While designer Macy Grimshaw was a fashion design graduate student at Central Saint Martins, chances are she wasn't spending her time on school projects. Instead, she was likely toiling away on the sewing machine, creating custom pieces for celebrities like Harry Styles and Paloma Elsesser. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
At 25 years old, she is already living a life many designers work years to achieve: She made a custom "Paper Doll" look featured in Styles' "Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally," album art; designed a rose petal dress PinkPantheress wore for an on-stage performance; and landed a feature in Vogue Portugal's September 2024 issue. Most recently, Simone Ashley sported Macy Grimshaw at an event during "The Devil Wears Prada 2" press run.
Photo: Luca Bass/Courtesy of Macy Grimshaw
Grimshaw's rapid rise in industry attention is largely thanks to her collaboration with stylist Harry Lambert. He reached out to her shortly after she started her master's program, commissioning her to do a custom piece for Emma Corrin for Vogue Germany. "That was the first of many," she tells Fashionista. "He just kept commissioning me really cool artistic pieces. He would come with me at a brief, and then I'd always come back with a lot of crazy ideas because I think he comes to me when he wants more crazy stuff."
Lambert also brought Grimshaw on for commercial projects: The young British-French designer produced four SKUs — a coat, gloves and two dresses — for the Harry Lambert x Disney collection sold at Selfridges. It was arguably one of her most difficult tasks, she reflects. "I was scared. Figuring out how to produce on a commercial scale in a really short time for a high-end client, where things would be sold at a high price, made me nervous. But I did it, and it was really fun."
But the designer's latest endeavor is by far her most challenging to date: figuring out her post-grad career steps. When you've already designed for A-list celebrities, been featured in Vogue and sold at a luxury retailer (all before getting your degree), what's the next step to take? That's a question she's still contemplating.
"That's everyone's first question, 'What are you doing next?' And I'm like, '[Mine] too,'" she says, laughing. "I am being quite intentional with my time and trying to figure it out...I didn't even realize this, but I skipped quite a lot of steps that I feel like I was not meant to do." For most recent grads, the career trajectory is to work for a company and then venture out on their own — first with a ready-to-wear label, followed, hopefully, by a VIP and customs business.
Grimshaw, however, was thrown straight into celebrity work. (Save for a couple of internships she did with Victoria Beckham and Barcelona-based designer Luis de Javier.) "I feel like I missed this middle ground," she continues. Now, she's weighing her options of continuing to do custom work, branching out into ready-to-wear or working underneath a designer. So far, she's leaning towards the former, but is still keeping an open mind.
Simone Ashley in Macy Grimshaw for a "The Devil Wears Prada 2" promo event.
Photo: Courtesy of Macy Grimshaw
"I've been quite enjoying making the bespoke one-of-one pieces because it's like I can spend a lot of time being really creative and making something super detailed and complex, which is my favorite thing to do," she says. "That's maybe the route I'm going to continue for now."
Part of Grimshaw's decision-making is considering who her target audience is. She describes her clientele as people who like wearing clothes that start conversations. "My pieces are quite bold," she says. "You see them from far away, and it might look like something else, but when you get up close, you're like, 'Wait, those are actually cigarettes,' or 'Those are pencil shavings.'"
That penchant for turning everyday materials into wearable art perfectly illustrates her brand ethos, she says. She first established that design approach while getting her undergraduate degree at Central Saint Martins.
Her B.A. collection, for example, was inspired by her grandmother's experience with Alzheimer's disease. Grimshaw used photographs from her grandmother's archives as inspiration for prints she created throughout the six-piece lineup. She also worked with paper as a design medium to "express the fragility of memory," she says.
Photos: Launchmetrics Spotlight
Fast forward to her M.A. thesis collection — styled by Lambert and presented during London Fashion Week Fall 2026 — which spotlighted leather-molded designs with printed graphics. It's Grimshaw's unique take on materiality that makes her work so distinct when worn by celebrity clientele.
One of the creative's favorite commissioned pieces is a paper-molded poem dress Paloma Elsesser wore for a Vogue Germany feature. "I just imagined if you had a poem written on a paper and you scrunch it up as a ball — that was the dress," she says. "I really didn't know if it was going to work. I was very surprised that it turned out really well. Now, Harry has the dress propped up in his studio on display."
Despite the strong portfolio and industry recognition, Grimshaw faces other challenges. The biggest is figuring out commission pricing. She's the first to admit she's underpriced some of her work. "I'm not very financially literate," Grimshaw confesses. "I accidentally lose money, low-key. Sometimes I've put things a bit too low, because I'll price the rate for three days' work, but it may end up being five."
Photo: Julia Noni/Courtesy of Macy Grimshaw
During one of her first commissions, a peer advised her to view each commission as the sole source of income. "She told me, 'Think about what you need to pay that month in terms of rent, covering the cost of making the things, and then make sure whatever price you're sending for this custom, it's going to cover that because you don't know when the next one is,'" she says. "I try to be reasonable, but I do always think about that advice, because it's true you never know when your next assignment will be."
It's also worth noting that Grimshaw understands that, as an emerging creative, exposure counts toward compensation. "As a young designer, you're trying to understand your worth, but you also don't want to miss out on the opportunity," she says.
Photo: Elinor Kry/Courtesy of Macy Grimshaw
Still, she's got time to figure it out. Now that she's a recent graduate, Grimshaw returned to her parents' home in Hong Kong, thinking about her next steps. For the time being, she's working on a handful of private client orders and a collection she's presenting at London Fashion Week Spring 2027.
"This is work that's going to hopefully support me, and I can just continue to make really beautiful art," she says. "I'm really young, and I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm like, 'Might as well try working for myself.' If it doesn't work, then I can go work for someone else after."
📌 Love fashion? Follow us for daily updates on our fashion blog! 🌟
🔹 #FashionTrends #StyleTips #OOTD #The Recent Central Saint Martins Grad Who's Already Designed Custom Pieces for Harry Styles and Paloma Elsesser
Comments
Post a Comment