The Overcoat Is Your Weird New Outerwear Obsession From Fashion’s Inner Sanctum

The fashion biz is filled with people whose personalities are so familiar that we pretend to know them on a first name basis—Dries, my man! Hedi, my guy! We may never stop by McDonald’s with Jil on the way to her German ski chalet, or gaze at the George Condo in Raf’s apartment above a Paris flower shop, but their brands (personal and corporate) feel like our friends. But behind that marquee of household (or at least penthouse-hold) names is a sprawling, basically anonymous network of artists and artisans—brilliant people who bring designers’ big fantasies to reality. Manipulators of fabric, sketchers, sewers, dyers, people who embellish stuff: generally, the people who solve the problems inherent in constructing crazy and expensive clothing. Mostly, they remain unknown, occasionally lurking in the background of a designer documentary, or maybe even making their way into the designer’s inner circle. Once in a blue moon, they emerge from the ranks of the atelier to take control of a brand themselves (like Alessandro Michele at Gucci). Other times they create something on their own–a brand!–that offers a small part of their own personality to the world. Read more at GQ.