7 For All Mankind’s Y2K Revival Continues with New Creative Director Nicola Brognano

During the pandemic, a Y2K revival came and went; however, 7 for All Mankind’s newly appointed creative director, Nicola Brognano, is not ready to give the renaissance up just yet. Though 7 for All Mankind is generally known as an accessible mall brand, Brognano wanted to use styling to widen the label’s possibilities. “It has become very easy to think about girls like Mary-Kate Olsen or Kate Moss or Sienna Miller around the 2005, 2006 era—they are super chic, but they have this kind of nonchalance inside, which is very much the attitude of the collection,” he said.

On his debut runway, this manifested in layers upon layers of club-girl clothing: ruffled miniskirts, knit skinny scarves, ultraskinny jeans, heaps of costume jewelry, and a wide assortment of slouchy jackets often falling off the models’ shoulders. Every model also wore a club wristband and dangerously high platform pumps. Denim has been the base of the brand for years, but Brognano injected new energy into an array of other categories, including knitwear, leather, and eventually accessories.

One of his first acts as creative director was to appoint ’90s-grunge and indie-sleaze legend Chloë Sevigny as a brand ambassador. To him—and many others—she represents the ultimate cross-generational It girl. Tonight she was front and center, and with the aesthetic that the clothing represented, she did not look out of place.