Heron Preston keeps it real

Heron Preston keeps it real

  

Heron Preston is a man who lives life at breakneck speed. At 34, the designer, DJ and influencer is still relatively unknown by the wider fashion industry, but Kanye West, Off-White’s Virgil Abloh and Nike dot his CV. He launched his own line only last year, but has already persuaded the New York Department of Sanitation to collaborate with him on a collection using upcycled workwear. (Clearly quite the negotiator, he approached them, W magazine says, with an email titled “Big idea”.) “It’s so weird but it makes so much sense,” he says. “There’s lots of similarities in what they wear and what I wear.”

The Heron Preston aesthetic, as seen in his second collection, for S/S 18, is bold colour, graphic print and 90s details such as bumbags and high-waisted jeans. Things that could easily walk into the wardrobe of a young hypebeast. The buzz is because “people want things that come from a real place. That’s what gets under my skin.”

Preston grew up in San Francisco and was printing T-shirts by the age of 18. He moved to New York to study design and management at Parsons School of Design. “I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer but I didn’t want to learn to sew,” he says. “I wanted to get my ideas out there.” He believes this is how the younger generation is thinking: “There’s a new class creating their own rules. You’re going to see that much more with the bitcoin generation.”

Preston is an inspiration to those coming next, especially as an African-American designer on the rise. “I don’t see colour like that but, yes, I am a black straight man in the fashion industry,” he says. “It’s important for kids to know that is possible.”

For him, the sky is the limit. “I’m using fashion to get out of fashion,” he says. “Heron Preston is a lifestyle brand.”