He pauses. Then smiles. He sees how people might assume that.
“I’m a cis, white male from upstate New York,” Ives says, “Bedford [a wealthy town], more specifically. It’s very easy for people to fill in the blanks there.” But Ives’s father is a minister, and his mom “is a self-made pediatric orthodontist who put herself through 12 years of medical school,” he says, “that work ethic has been embedded in me.”
Does he think people think he’s a nepo baby because he has nepo baby friends?
He laughs. “Well, yes,” he says, “But we’ve been having this conversation for years without moving the dial in any kind of way.”
Does he care if people think he’s a social climber? It’s one very American trait, after all.
“No, I don’t,” he says. “I came up in an era where that relationship,” between a wealthy patron and a young, skilled designer, “was maybe more common than it is now. But it is a symbiotic relationship.” John Galliano had a supporter in Portuguese aristocrat Sao Schlumberger. Karl Lagerfeld’s muse was a baroness by marriage, Amanda Harlech. And Lee Alexander McQueen was chummy with socialite Isabella Blow.
“I will always seek out inspirational, powerful women,” Ives says. “That is a beautiful archetype for a woman. I don’t think my woman is quiet or that she is meek. When I think of Sara or Lauren, I think of elegant, chic, powerful women who have moved heaven and earth for me. I love watching them get dressed, and talk to them about fashion. If you have a friend who likes what you are doing and has the power and means to support it, why would I turn that down?”
Perhaps Ives’s willingness to get closer to power is what ticks off his cohort. Designers of his ilk and generation like to say no to the establishment. It gives them a sense of purpose. “It just feels so strange to do fashion in 2026 in this edgelord kind of way,” Ives says.
Clout aside, Conner Ives, the brand, is very much a real thing.
“We cannot keep his clothing in stock,” Santo Domingo says at Moda Operandi, which has carried Ives’s collection since the spring-summer 2026 season. The retailer saw the demand for Conner Ives accelerate starting with his fall-winter 2026 collection earlier this year, having done nearly $500,000 in sales off their fall trunk show in March, which a representative for the retailer says “is an extraordinary result for an emerging independent designer.” It helped, of course, that Santo Domingo, an online influencer in her own right, wore a look by Ives to Vanity Fair’s Oscar Party around the same time. Only one week after Ives’s fall collection went live in Moda’s channels earlier this month, it’s already at 75% sell-through. It’s the retailer’s strongest fall collection launch of the season so far.
