Who Is Daniel Fletcher From Next In Fashion?

If you haven’t binge-watched Netflix’s Next In Fashion, the rather addictive challenge-based show hosted by Alexa Chung and Tan France that dropped in February, then you might not have heard the name ‘Daniel Fletcher’. Let’s get you up to speed. After gaining experience at luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Victoria Beckham, Burberry and Lanvin, Daniel founded his eponymous menswear label after graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2015. He’s also the menswear artistic director of Fiorucci, launching his first menswear collection this January, with a collection of tiger-print muscle tees, wet-look trousers and short-sleeved boilersuits that came with a big serving of Italian sex appeal.

His own label and many of his winning looks on Next In Fashion draw inspiration from British heritage, riffing on sporting uniforms like racing silks and rowing jerseys. Tan France was recently photographed in one of his pastel pink jockey shirts, while the activewear challenge, where Daniel looked at traditional rowing uniforms and devised an outfit of a striped jersey top, neoprene leggings, ripstop shorts and a long neoprene scarf, was where he really started standing out as a designer.

As well as staying impressively calm under pressure, Daniel impressed the judges with his sustainable approach to certain challenges, foraging through his fellow contestants’ scraps to make a patchwork dress during the denim episode. It’s also the reason he doesn’t think that producing a catwalk show every season is the right thing for his brand.

Speaking on London Fashion Week’s first-ever digital-only platform, Daniel said: ‘Brands should do what’s right for them. I don’t personally believe that doing a show every season is the right thing to do. From a sustainability perspective, producing that many clothes is not the right thing to do for our planet.’

He also says that the direct-to-consumer approach that he’s taking with this collection is right for now. ‘I think it makes sense for the world we live in,’ says Daniel, echoing sentiments that are rippling through the fashion industry about resetting the fashion system so that summer/winter clothes are available when consumers actually want to buy them. ‘People want to buy it when they see it now,’ says Daniel, whose favourite piece is a shirt embellished with tiny horse and cat charms. The collection is also unisex, with the e-commerce shots showing both men and women wearing the clothes. ‘Since Next In Fashion people have been saying, ‘When are you going to do womenswear?’ For me, they’re just clothes, there’s no gender to them. It’s just shirts, denim, knitwear, anyone can wear them.’