Fashion’s Last Great Weirdo Fashion’s Last Great Weirdo

With a new store in Los Angeles, a Levi’s collaboration and a growing international presence, Kiko Kostadinov is building that rarest thing in fashion: an independent, family-run empire.

In the past year, the fashion designer Kiko Kostadinov began to feel that everyone wanted to talk about one thing: money.

Journalists, store owners, employees in his studio — every conversation became about who was succeeding, whose finances are slipping, what mergers are bubbling out there. In short, who was winning.

“I feel like I’m on ‘Industry’ or something,” the Bulgarian-born Mr. Kostadinov said, referring to HBO’s high-wire financial drama. “The main topic is down, up, being bought. People don’t want to talk about the actual work or the design.”

He wishes they would. Since starting his label in 2016, fresh out of London’s prestigious Central Saint Martins, Mr. Kostadinov, 35, has been one the brightest lights in an increasingly dim British fashion landscape. He’s a sartorial Dr. Seuss offering clothes that are full of whimsy, wit and references that can only be called weird.

His ankle-high $935 Scarpitta boots look like something the freshest guy in medieval England would wear; his knits come in gelato-bar shades and have the texture of the plushiest bathmat in Target; his pants have so many pleats they rival Broadway theater curtains.

“He does a very good job of making a classic garment a little bit more interesting,” said Drew Romero, the men’s buyer at Dover Street Market in New York, which has carried Mr. Kostadinov’s line since 2016.