Fashion Designers: N

The fashion designer directory in this section is set up in alphabetical order, and the designers are listed by their first name. On this page you will find designers whose first name starts with the letter N — a short letter with a long reach: a New York minimalist, a London tailor of the club years, and an Italian mill owner's son who founded a Paris house. Use the directory list directly below to reach each designer's guide pages.

This section does not contain every fashion designer in the world. The designers here are some of the more famous ones, selected because they are believed to be the developers of famous brands; other clothing designers may be better, but these are the names this letter of the directory follows. Additional designers can be found in the Designer Directory, linked in the references.

Illustrative image created for this guide — an artistic impression, not this designer's own garments.

The N Designers at a Glance

Three designers carry this letter, and each has a series in this guide. Narciso Rodriguez (born 1961), the Newark-born son of Cuban parents, studied at Parsons, worked for Anne Klein and Calvin Klein, and launched his own label in 1997; his architectural minimalism won CFDA Womenswear Designer of the Year awards in 2002 and 2006 and a worldwide audience when Michelle Obama wore his dress on election night in 2008. Nico Didonna, a graduate of the London College of Fashion, opened his first atelier in Berwick Street in 1999 and made his name with bespoke tailoring collections that became iconic with London's new-millennium club scene. Nino Cerruti (1930–2022), born in Biella into the family behind the 1881 Lanificio Fratelli Cerruti wool mill, founded the Cerruti house in Paris in 1967 and softened the tailored suit for the modern era — with the young Giorgio Armani among his 1960s employees. Each is linked from the directory list at the top of this page to their guide pages.

How This Directory Works

Listing designers by first name is this directory's standing convention, and the N letter shows its variety: two of its three names are Italian by heritage, yet they belong to three different fashion cities — Rodriguez to New York, Didonna to London, Cerruti to Paris by way of Biella. A reader following a name rather than a movement finds all three filed here, each leading to a full series of guide pages regardless of the route in.

Every letter of the alphabet has a list page like this one, linked in the directory list and in the references below, so the full directory can be browsed letter by letter. For the complete designer directory — including designers filed under other conventions — the Designer Directory and the designers-by-name index are linked in the references as well.