Kevin Germanier

Kevin Germanier (also styled Kévin Germanier; born 1992) is a Swiss fashion designer based in Paris. He is the founder of the fashion house Germanier, launched in 2018, whose collections are built almost entirely from upcycled materials such as discarded beads and sequins, unsold fabric, and salvaged plastics.

Germanier won the EcoChic Design Award in 2015 while a student at Central Saint Martins in London, and was later a finalist for the ANDAM Creative Label Prize in 2018 and a semi-finalist for the LVMH Prize in 2019. He became widely known in 2024 after designing costumes for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, among them the gilded "Golden Voyager" worn by the acrobat Arthur Cadre.

Early life and education

Germanier was born in 1992 in Granges, a village in the Swiss canton of Valais.

In 2015, while representing the United Kingdom as a student at Central Saint Martins, he won the EcoChic Design Award, a Hong Kong competition organized by the environmental non-governmental organization Redress and since renamed the Redress Design Award. He has traced his use of salvaged beadwork to a placement in Hong Kong, where he obtained bags of pearls that had faded in a shop window, and to glass beads being discarded because their individual tinting made them impossible to melt down and reuse.

A six-month internship at Louis Vuitton in 2015 helped finance his studies, and he graduated in 2017.

In 2023 he received the Prix Rünzi, an award of 20,000 Swiss francs presented since 1972 by the "Divisionnaire F. K. Rünzi" foundation to figures who have brought distinction to the canton of Valais. His team produced more than 120 additional looks for the ceremony's dancers.

Work with LVMH

Germanier was creative director of Prélude, an initiative launched by LVMH to rework mainly unsold products from its fashion houses, first shown in 2024. For his spring 2026 couture collection he used leftover stock from seven LVMH-owned houses, including French team uniforms designed by Berluti for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies.

Other work

Germanier was head of costume for the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel. He dressed the presenters Michelle Hunziker, Sandra Studer and Hazel Brugger and supplied roughly 200 costumes for the semi-finals and the final, but not for the competing acts. In 2026 he became the first fashion designer to create an official poster for the Montreux Jazz Festival, producing an embroidered artwork for the festival's 60th edition from materials recovered from his earlier collections; earlier posters have been made by artists including Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and David Bowie.

Design approach

Germanier works with upcycled and deadstock materials, including beads, crystals, feathers and reclaimed textiles, and developed a silicone-based method of fixing beadwork that distinguishes his construction from conventional hand embroidery. He sources from second-hand shops and from suppliers of damaged or surplus components, drawing on contacts in countries including France, South Korea, Italy, China and Thailand, and has also built collections from unsold stock held by LVMH-owned houses. Knitwear for the label is hand-made by his grandmother and a circle of knitters in Valais; a piece from that line was worn by Lily Collins in Emily in Paris. He also works with artisans in Brazil, India and the Philippines.

He has rejected the assumption that recycled clothing must look austere, arguing that sustainable fashion can be glamorous and desirable. He has also played down the activist framing sometimes applied to his work, telling Agence France-Presse that the studio makes embellished dresses rather than solving medical problems, and noting that fashion remains a commercial business. Reporting on the commercial side of upcycling has noted that the practice carries high costs and limits the quantities designers can produce.

Personal life

Germanier lives and works in Paris and dresses in black, reserving color for his designs.