Walking into the sunny Brooklyn studio of Claire Sullivan is like entering a shrine to fashion’s most memorable recent moments in pop culture.
There’s a mannequin in a dress made from bootleg New York Knicks T-shirts that went mega-viral after Rama Duwaji, New York’s first lady, wore it to the victory parade in June.
Racks are stuffed with voluminous tutus and tulle confections worn on stages and red carpets by some of music’s biggest names, including Addison Rae, Clairo, Rosalía and Lady Gaga.
But before any of these larger-than-life looks were in the spotlight, they were on Instagram, worn in a selfie by Sullivan herself.
“It was mostly me making things for myself in the early days,” she says of the inception of Miss Claire Sullivan, the brand.
Stylists who follow Sullivan on social media would reach out asking to pull the pieces she posted for photo shoots or clients.
What evolved is a custom clothing business, one that’s nominated for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award this year and that has become a go-to for celebrities looking to make an unabashedly feminine public statement.
In just a few years, Sullivan has emerged as a prominent pop culture couturier, almost single-handedly shaping the look of the modern pop star.
Artistes pushing their respective genres forward are clamouring to collaborate and be a part of her world.
“People come to me because of the vision that I have,” she said.
Sullivan, 32, grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and fell in love with making things after her mother taught her how to sew at seven years old.
“I would just sit and draw clothes all day,” she said.
“I feel like it came from this inner place because I wasn’t exposed to it. There was no one in my family that was super fashion forward.”
A scholarship took her to the School Of The Art Institute of Chicago.
“I studied fibre materials; I did some performance classes, sculpture,” she said. “For the first year I was trying everything. My second year I took my intro to fashion class, and I was like, ‘I’m home.’”
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She looked outside Chicago for internships, landing in Los Angeles at Eckhaus Latta after a cold email to designer Zoe Latta.
“That was my first time really seeing what the inside of a small brand looks like.”
But it wouldn’t be her last. Shortly after graduation in 2016, she moved to New York. When indie label Vaquera posted on social media that it was looking for interns, Sullivan reached out.
“My experience was really hands-on,” she said.
At the time, Vaquera was still in its infancy and based in a basement in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
“I got to make a lot of the clothes; I did a lot of the pattern-making, a lot of the sewing. Being an intern, you’re wearing so many different hats, which is funny because it’s the same thing when you’re actually running the business.”
In 2017, she became co-creative director of the label.
She worked there until 2021, taking some time away to figure out what was next.
“I was bartending, waitressing – that was how I made money – but I actually spent a lot of time chilling, hanging out with my friends, going dancing, taking time for myself,” she recalled fondly.
Sullivan started making one-off pieces for her friends and, more frequently, for herself, wearing them to parties around town – sometimes making several stops in one night.
The excitement she felt when people responded to her looks was the encouragement she needed to start a proper business.
“After that, it was really me making the decision that I was allowed to do this,” she said.
“I had to give myself permission to be like: ‘It’s okay. You have something to say, and you have a vision. Just do it.’”
Stylist Dara Allen met Sullivan through the nightlife when they first moved to New York.
She appreciated how whenever she’d see Sullivan, she’d be in a full look of her own creation.
“It’s such a tradition in fashion, in New York especially, that you go out in the world, you wear it on your back, you’re your own best billboard,” Allen said, pointing to the days of the Factory in the 1960s and Studio 54 in the 1970s, before the modern version of this self-promotion played out on Instagram.
Allen has worked closely with Sullivan for one client in particular: Addison Rae.
Sullivan’s first of many viral moments came from the two-piece look she designed for Rae’s appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2024, a feathered lingerie set with a padded bra, paired with a tutu.
Reactions were mixed on account of its campiness.
“Her clothes are exuberant and fun and playful, but they don’t sacrifice being challenging and interesting,” Allen said.
Since then, they’ve collaborated on other milestone looks for Rae, including her stage costumes for this year’s Coachella festival and a finale gown for her concert tour, all of which required complex technical skill to accommodate choreography, quick changes, audio equipment and touring logistics.
“I’m often thinking about what’s fun to dance in, what’s going to look good, what feels good on my hips moving,” Sullivan said.
“It’s a lot of intuition. Someone sees that and they’re like, ‘I want to feel like that, too.’”
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After her big Video Music Awards moment, a lot more eyes were on her work, especially among pop girls who wanted to work with her.
When met for this interview, she had just finished a series of looks for Rosalía for the Latin American leg of her Lux tour.
Since bespoke and private clients are the bedrock of Sullivan’s business, capitalising on a viral moment is a challenge, with no products available for shoppers to buy in stores or on her website.
Still, custom is a model that’s rising in popularity, especially as VIP customers increasingly want to wear pieces that no one else will have.
“That’s in many ways how many brands started a long time ago,” Julie Gilhart, a fashion retail consultant, said.
“They made clothes for their friends, and then someone heard about it, and then all of a sudden they have a store order, and that’s how they started.”
To celebrate her fifth year in business, Sullivan will introduce the first collection of Miss Claire Sullivan ready-to-wear products, including jewellery and T-shirts, during New York Fashion Week.
The pieces will be available at Dover Street Market in New York and in her online shop, giving shoppers a chance to experience the brand and its world for themselves.
In her own words, the Miss Claire Sullivan universe is about having fun in its simplest form and doing that through clothing.
“I want the people on the street who see the clothes to also smile and think that it’s fun,” she said.
Though there’s potential for new products and bigger projects in the future – she dreams of costuming a ballet – for now she’s building her business intentionally and at a pace that she can handle, with custom at the core.
“It feels important to be a person in the fashion industry that’s doing it differently,” she said.
“And to get recognition for that and for people to say, ‘What you’re doing is valid, and it’s an important part of American fashion.’” – ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
