Martine Rose

Martine Rose was founded in 2007 in London by British-Jamaican designer Martine Rose, who graduated from Middlesex University and worked as a freelance designer for ten years before launching her own label. The brand's foundational thesis was to engage with London subcultures — rave, jungle, garage, football casuals — through a serious tailoring practice that translated those references into proper menswear silhouettes. The Martine Rose vocabulary settled around several distinguishing signatures: deliberately distorted tailoring (the shoulders sit wrong on purpose), bootcut and flared trouser silhouettes that referenced 1990s rave culture, deconstructed denim, and a sustained engagement with British football culture (the brand has produced Manchester City and Arsenal-inflected pieces). The 2020 Nike collaboration — the Nike Air Monarch and Shox MR4 — pulled the brand into the broader streetwear conversation. Rose was named men's creative director of Balenciaga in 2024 under Pierpaolo Piccioli's direction. The brand operates from a London studio. Martine Rose remains independent and held by Rose. Production is split between the UK and Portugal. The brand has shown at London Fashion Week men's since 2018 and operates without a flagship store, instead selling through Dover Street Market, MR PORTER, SSENSE, and other curated retailers. Few young British designers have so effectively connected the formal seriousness of London tailoring with the subcultural memory of 1990s British dance music.