HOUSTON MODERN LUXURY : STEPPING OUT

Houstonian Amir Taghi wows the fashion world with the debut of his namesake label at New York Fashion Week.

You may recognize Amir Taghi from the Tootsies racks, where he sold his eponymous collection while still in high school at Episcopal. But now at 22 years old, with degrees from Central Saint Martins and Parsons in hand, and internships at top fashion houses under his belt, Taghi is prepared to take his label light-years beyond the Loop.

In September, set to the sparkling backdrop of Manhattan’s Baccarat Hotel, Taghi debuted his namesake collection for the first time at New York Fashion Week—and buyers from Bergdorf Goodman, Moda Operandi and The Webster were in the audience taking note. “I started designing after my freshman year in high school,” says Taghi. “But in Houston, it was more of a hobby.” A modest description, considering that in 2014 mega-influencer Emily Ratajkowski wore one of his custom creations in Vogue.

“This is my first collection back, and it’s really different for me,” says Taghi, who took a break from working on his own label to focus on fashion school. “My early work was very Texas. When I was conceptualizing this, I was interning at Monse with the creative directors of Oscar de la Renta. You can see the influence of their reconstruction-meetsdeconstruction look.”

For his spring/summer 2019 collection, Taghi still referenced his glitzy Space City roots but took it more personally and a couple of generations deeper. “The inspiration was the mixture between my Persian background and my American upbringing,” he says of the concept he describes as opulencemeets- ease. “American fashion is known for ease and wearability. I wanted to mix that with this idea of Persian opulence, taking it back to the 1960s and 1970s in Iran. The over-the-top-elegant Empress Farah Pahlavi was my muse.” At the same time, his striped coat dresses, polka-dot pleated dusters and embroidered A-line gowns dotted with beaded sea urchin-esque embellishments would easily befit any modern-day, self-made social media maven— arguably the style empresses of our time.

Sarah Bray for Modern Luxury Magazine