Katiuscia Williams fell in love with fashion at church. Her mother commissioned bright ensembles from local seamstresses in their home town of Miami, and Williams was enchanted by the bold styles.

She also credits her love of what she calls “high-effect palettes, patterns and materials” to the fact that she grew up in a Caribbean household.

She knew from a very young age that fashion was a world in which she wanted to live and work, and so she enrolled in Miami’s Design and Architecture Senior High School, studying fine arts and fashion design. She went on to Parsons where she concentrated on knitwear, learning how to operate both domestic and industrial knitting machines.

She titled her thesis collection “Hood Dandy” and it is now a fully-fledged knitwear label inspired by the identity politics of the Black male in the US. She runs it in New York and sells her collections by special order. The social justice and political messaging that underpins Hood Dandy has always been important to her and, in current times, her work feels more vital than ever.

Click here to follow the really interesting July 2020 interview with Vogue.