LaQuan Smith

LaQuan Smith makes clothes for being looked at. The label was formally launched in 2013 by a designer who grew up in Queens, learned to sew on his grandmother’s Singer machine, and was turned down by both Parsons and FIT before he ever showed a collection. He built it anyway. Today the house is a fixture of the New York show schedule and a CFDA member, and it is one of the very few luxury eveningwear labels still designed and manufactured in the United States, from a studio in Long Island City.