Fashion
All-in Is Blowing up, Just Ask Charli XCX and Rihanna
On the top floor of the Montparnasse office building during Paris fashion week in late September, the designers behind the label All-In, Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø, were about to show their Spring 2025 collection. The space was bare, save for some benches and a raised, rickety catwalk. The whole scenario looked like an old discarded set from an 1980s movie about a slimy, brick phone-wielding stock trader.
Soon the lights on the catwalk turned up and the soundtrack for the show, by the Norwegian electronic duo Smerz, began to hit: blips from the beginning of the Sex and the City theme song remixed with the sound of the show’s PR maven Samantha purring “Dirty martini, dirty bastard,” interspersed with snippets from David Bowie’s “Fashion,” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Then the procession began: one model dressed in a deconstructed acid wash denim jacket (part of a collaboration with Guess Jeans) and mini scarf skirt layered over pants, her hair in Farrah Fawcett waves and nails decorated with globular plastic pearls. Another model wore a draped baby blue blouse and a pencil skirt fashioned from a blazer and trench coat. Colin Jones, a model with a vixen stare and a strut to kill, was second to close the show in a ruffled, Swiss dot tulle dress with an asymmetric hem and a belt made from a hacked-off bit of the waist of a pair of jeans.
This is the world of All-In, the fashion brand with famous fans that include Rihanna, Charli XCX, and Kylie Jenner that has very quickly become beloved for its playful, provocative assortment of clothes and accessories made from upcycled materials.
Barron initially began All-In in 2015 as a magazine, with Vestbø joining him shortly after to help concept and style shoots. They treasure-hunted local thrift stores together and DIYed their own looks for editorials, which led them to designing their own pieces and eventually full collections, often with fictional characters like a pop star and a debutante in mind: think draped mixed-material dresses; jeans decorated with costume jewelry; or their cult Level boot, which is made to look like a heel with a sleeve attached that is quickly become the it-boot for those in the know.
All-In’s Spring 2025 collection was styled by Lotta Volkova, a muse and sometimes model for the brand who has previously styled alongside Demna at Vetements and later Balenciaga, on top of her current styling work for Miu Miu. Barron explains that this season was partly inspired by the 1988 film Working Girl and its protagonist Tess, an assistant at a financial firm who masquerades as a high-flying exec. “We were inspired by this character who is crossing over from a different background, ends up impersonating someone and then the failures that occur when you’re trying to take on a new type of identity,” he says.
All-In is now stocked at SSENSE and Dover Street Market Paris and has a growing direct-to-consumer business. “I think it’s been inspired by the fact that for the first time, we’re seeing people wearing our clothing,” Vestbø says. “This [the brand] isn’t just an image anymore, it’s actually taking on a life out in the world.”
Barron and Vestbø are part of a new wave of emerging brands in the luxury price-point space that are choosing independence over mass appeal, an intuitive non-formula that is proving to hold a lot of weight in the market right now. Julie Gilhart, former Fashion Director of Barneys New York and Founder and President of Gilhart & Co, says that as the label continues to grow “it will speak to a young-in-spirit customer who craves fashion and wants their style to be original.” She added, “Ben and Bror’s expressions are more playful than serious and that is what makes them a stand out.”
In an industry landscape where luxury houses are price gouging and over-producing, and there’s been a middle market cutout by the proliferation of affordable, Instagram and TikTok-first fast fashion labels, customers seem to be putting a lot more of their spending power behind brands that put ideas forward, rather than investing in straight-up product. Just look at the continued success of Rick Owens, a designer who represents the pinnacle of someone who cultivates individualism through a communal drive to self-express–and sells a lot of clothes and accessories too. Then there’s Miu Miu, a high-fashion house that has once again been named the hottest brand on the Lyst Index for Q3 this week, thanks to the draw Mrs. Prada elicits with her emphasis on quirk, playfulness and personal style. Also, let’s not forget about Tory Burch, a company that bet big and won on a bottom line focused on personal style and sartorial evolution over prescribed trends.
In the realm of the celebrity, All-In’s aesthetic matches up with those aforementioned fans of the label, those like Charli XCX and Rihanna who are influencing the younger generation to play dress up and ditch the logo’d, head-to-toe looks in favor of a magpie, DIY vibe that is open-ended.
These are the kind of fluid worlds that the most well-dressed, fashion-obsessed people want to buy in to right now.
Nick Tran, Head of Buying and Merchandising at Dover Street Market Paris has observed that All-In taps into a similar psychological desire to use dress as a way to evolve. “While their vision is so singular and direct, the appeal is so wide,” says Nick Tran, Head of Buying andMerchandising at Dover Street Market Paris. “The products elicit an emotional response, there’s a transformative quality to them.”
Barron, talking about feedback from the All-In customers (both old and new), explained that people “said they were constantly either getting looks and comments, both good and bad, on the street. They felt like it was interesting either way that people were reacting to them in a strong way.” Indeed, All-In’s wonky styling and deconstructionist approach is a minimalist’s nightmare–an antidote for bold, rebellious dressers who despise stealth wealth. It’s not for the sartorial faint of heart, which is a big part of its intrinsic magic.
According to Vestbø, the same goes for the reactions to watching All-In’s Spring 2025 collection come down the runway: “I remember someone told us after the show that they were watching and it made them think that they were just so happy to be a girl.” Their designs are, in their own words, typically hyper-feminine, and meant to evoke a kind of empowered spirit in anyone, of any gender, who wears it. Again, singluar and yet available to anyone. “It’s always a measure that we’re like, ‘we don’t want it to look like anything else,’” Vestbø emphasized. “It should be something that you look at and you can’t say 100% what it is. It’s inspiring to try and make something that we feel may be there.”
Maryam Nassir Zadeh, who was the first retailer to stock and support All-In, has always believed in the power of Barron and Vestbø’s vision. “All-In is an important brand in the larger space of fashion right now,” she says. “It’s a beautiful vision of accessibility and fantasy, of street and couture. It tells a story that is original.”
After the show ended in Paris, the electricity remained. Guests jumped up from their seats, clapped and danced and took turns on the catwalk, many wearing the Level boots. Backstage, models were in various states of undress, getting refreshed and ready for the afterparty with fresh looks and some puffs of vapes. The designers were in a scrum of friends and colleagues, sweaty buthappy. Looking back on all of that, Barron and Vestbø were matter-of-fact: “People liked the show, people want the clothes, so that’s good,” Barron said with a smirk. Currently, they’re onto the next, working on a new collection and taking on various projects like speaking on a panel at Art Basel Paris. The duo keeps on keeping on, holding tight to the dream of taking All-In to the new heights, new places, and new people–a dream that’s well on its way to becoming a reality.
As Barren added, “this idea of who you want to represent is constantly evolving, so you’re always running towards this image of yourself that you’re never quite achieving because it’s always in motion.” “We’re always in transition mode.
Brooke Bobb is the fashion news director at Harper’s Bazaar, working across print and digital platforms. Previously, she was a senior content editor at Amazon Fashion, and worked at Vogue Runway as senior fashion news writer.