Casablanca

Casablanca was founded in 2018 by Charaf Tajer in Paris, after he had co-founded Pigalle (the Paris streetwear label) with Stéphane Ashpool and worked as creative director for Le Pari concept store. The brand's name and aesthetic both reference Tajer's Moroccan heritage and a fantasy of Côte d'Azur leisure travel — a particular kind of Mediterranean glamour that was largely absent from the mid-2010s streetwear conversation. The Casablanca vocabulary settled around several immediate signatures: silk shirts with hand-illustrated trompe-l'œil prints (Casablanca's signature production technique), Afro-Mediterranean colour palettes, terry-cloth sets, tennis-club references, and a constant invocation of leisure rather than work. The 'Tennis Club' poster series, the bumper sticker logo, and Tajer's editorial direction at Casablanca's quarterly magazine all reinforce a coherent universe rather than season-by-season fashion. The brand opened its first standalone store on Rue Saint-Honoré in 2022. Casablanca remains independent, with Tajer as CEO and creative director. The brand has shown at Paris Men's Fashion Week since 2020 and won the LVMH Prize Karl Lagerfeld Special Prize in 2020. Revenue is reportedly approaching €100M. Few designers have so cleanly carved out an aesthetic territory — Mediterranean leisure glamour — that didn't visibly exist in the market until they invented it.