Steven Stokey-Daley

Steven Stokey-Daley is a British fashion designer. He founded the London-based label S.S. Daley in 2020, after graduating from the University of Westminster. The label's menswear recasts the dress codes of the British upper classes through a queer, working-class lens, and his fashion shows often take the form of theatrical performances. He became widely known when the singer Harry Styles wore pieces from his graduate collection in the 2020 music video for "Golden"; in 2024 Styles took a minority stake in the label. Stokey-Daley won the LVMH Prize and the British Fashion Council's Foundation Award in 2022, and received the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design in 2024.

Early life and education Stokey-Daley grew up in the suburbs of Liverpool, on what he has called a former council estate; his father and grandfather were builders. His grandmother Denise had worked in a local sewing factory from the age of 14 and, as a young woman, turned down an apprenticeship with a tailor in London, a family story Stokey-Daley has cited as a source of his own drive. As a teenager he spent a summer with the National Youth Theatre in London and for a time wanted to act or write plays, and he worked at a McDonald's in Aintree between the ages of 16 and 19.

Stokey-Daley was the first member of his family to attend university. The collection's title was a twist on a Michael Nyman piece from the score of The Draughtsman's Contract. For Spring/Summer 2023, staged at the St Pancras Hotel, actors read from the love letters of Vita Sackville-West and Violet Keppel. The Fall/Winter 2023 collection, "The Ninth Wave", took its name from the Kate Bush song and looked to a great-grandfather who had served in the merchant navy; the show, staged at the Outernet London venue off Tottenham Court Road, opened with Ian McKellen reading Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Coming of Arthur", after McKellen had asked to take part.

LVMH Prize In 2022 Stokey-Daley was one of eight finalists for the LVMH Prize, chosen from some 1,900 applicants. Jury member Nigo said he was struck that "in only two years he has built a complete vision of his brand", with a staff of two. He presented his Fall/Winter 2024 collection there on January 11, 2024, in the Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio, a show that drew on a 1935 Oxford student's diary, the photographs of 1980s Oxford high society by Dafydd Jones, and an E. M. Forster short story about British tourists in Italy.

As the show ended, the label announced that Harry Styles had acquired a minority stake in the company; the terms were not disclosed.

Design approach Stokey-Daley's work pairs the uniforms of the British upper classes, the blazers, boaters, and rugby and rowing kit of the public schools, with the sportswear of his own Liverpool upbringing, an approach he has described as "micro-subversions". Recurring signatures include wide-legged Oxford bags, argyle-knit vests, and embroidered shirts, and a mallard duck motif taken from a canal near his childhood home. In September 2024 he received the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, presented by Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, at the Royal Academy of Arts; he was the award's seventh recipient.

Personal life Stokey-Daley's partner, Leo Meredith, is a dancer and works with the label as production coordinator.