Why Harris Reed's gender-fluid creations will be everywhere in 2019

Several pairs of boots line Harris Reed’s Holloway Road hallway: gold platforms, leather knee-highs, a pair of crocodile-skin platforms. None of them is subtle (although they do look quite comfortable), but that is as you’d expect.

Harris Reed is the fashion designer who, while still halfway through a BA in fashion at Central Saint Martins, dressed Harry Styles, walked the Gucci catwalk (as well as interning there and becoming one of the brand’s fluid creatives), caused a stir with that 6ft 8in (in those platform boots) gender-fluid look and has now become a face of Gucci’s first gender-neutral perfume, Mémoire d’une Odeur.

Apologising for wearing pyjamas — a chic grey jersey ensemble — Reed (who prefers the pronoun ‘they’) admits to rolling out of bed to work, having turned a second bedroom into a studio. Sitting among a bouquet of crystals, stacks of books, some Polaroids and candles, Reed glows — despite having had food poisoning the day before. ‘Usually I have a full face of make-up on and a look… but you know.’

Try to describe Reed’s clothes and you could be reading a David Bowie lyric: part Victoriana, part glam rock, with frilly blouses and ruffley cuffs. The clothes are sexy, in an androgynous way, with one foot in the past and one glittering platform in the future. ‘I make clothes that start a conversation,’ says Reed. ‘Maybe it’s as basic as men don’t have to dress one way and women don’t have to dress another. I don’t think in terms of gender — it’s completely blurred. I hope to break down those preconceived barriers that people have.’

Growing up between LA and ‘a number of places, we moved all the time’, Reed came out as gay to their film producer father and perfumer mother at the age of nine. By the time they moved to London, Reed had acknowledged their gender fluidity. ‘I realised I don’t fit into a box. I found my message when I moved to London aged 19. The floodgates opened. I was walking through Bank at 3am and saw a man in a wedding dress and a pink wig going one way and a guy in a suit walking the other way. I realised that, although s*** goes down, London was a safe space for me to explore who I am.’

Reed’s work quickly gained a cult following, as well as a few celebrity customers. ‘Harry Styles really is the kindest human being. When his stylist approached me I made a mood board and Harry wanted to know all about me. I sent him all of these documents about my coming out journey and what I stood for. The fact that he pioneers this idea of treating people with kindness really sits with my ideals. I can’t think of a better person to work with.’ In between studying, Reed made an array of diaphanous-sleeved blouses, sharply tailored waistcoats and flared trousers that emphasised the pop juggernaut’s every jiggle.

Reed admits that finding the strength to get the bus in a green Gucci satin gown, a full face of make-up and Swarovski crystal gloves comes deep from inside. But ever polite, even about their detractors, Reed finds a silver lining. ‘Every other person on the bus was looking at me; I knew this older gentleman was talking about me. I’d love to say it doesn’t bother me, but it does. Whenever I feel like that I check my DMs and see all the people who have messaged me saying that they have felt helped in some way. I see a trickle-down effect: by living my best life maybe someone else will feel like they can, too. That is my hope, at least.’

Reed claims to never leave the house without feeling ‘100 per cent myself — that often involves flared trousers, a boot and a sheer… thing. It’s quite in people’s faces.’ By creating a decadent and fabulous world, Reed has made a bubble of protection from the realities of the otherwise cisgendered world. Gender politics are complex — there is an entire generation of people who do not feel as if they have to perform traditional roles. ‘The way I perceive my own gender is different to how I perceive it with a partner; is different to how I perceive it when I am talking to someone I don’t know. So being gender fluid is natural; I look at fluidity as something that is bigger than just attached to gender. All of my work is about fluidity.’

Last year Reed was summoned to Milan to meet Gucci’s creative director, Alessandro Michele. In a crazy turn of events, Michele saw a picture of Reed on Instagram, received their CV and saw them in a magazine, all within 24 hours. Reed was flown out to meet him the next day. ‘I’d sewn a pair of trousers the night before and I could see him scanning every detail of me, as if he knew what he wanted to do,’ says Reed. ‘I am not a starstruck person, but he is like a god.’ After walking in Gucci’s 2019 Cruise show, Reed then interned for the brand, ‘touching fabrics I could never have dreamed of’, before, last month, becoming a face of the label’s first gender neutral fragrance. Was Reed’s mum, a perfumer of 25 years, proud? ‘It was so beautiful to share the news with her. I flipped out and she ultra quadruple flipped out. The fragrance really does smell like nothing you’ve ever smelled before; I love it.’

Reed is planning to launch their mini-collection in mid-August, which, I point out, is quite far off the usual London Fashion Week schedule. ‘I feel like people are always craving something for August.’ True, it’s a fallow month for fashion excitement. ‘And I wanted to do something for myself. The show will be based on three quotes: one by Oscar Wilde, one is from a short news piece in GQ about me, and one is from a text from my dad at 3am, which reminded me of the power of being a creative person in 2019. It was just what I needed to hear at the moment I needed it.’