All-In is the Paris-based label making full-force fashion for main character dressing

Rising talent, names to know: ‘Uprising’ is a monthly feature highlighting an energetic new vanguard of fashion talent, selected by the Wallpaper* style team.

Crib notes

Name: Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø

Brand: All-In

City: Paris, France

Signature style: Cleverly twisted deadstock for your main character moment.

Design philosophy

‘I think everyone knows what going “all-in” means,’ says Benjamin Barron, turning to smile at Bror August Vestbø. The pair are sitting side by side in their new Paris studio, just two weeks after it was announced they’ve made the final cohort for this year’s LVMH Prize (set to be awarded in September). ‘It's really about a person who's unafraid to throw themselves in something – full force.’

While the duo might live by this emboldened philosophy now, it took them a little while to go ‘all-in’ on their shared project – at least in the way it exists today. They met in New York back in 2015. American native Barron was running All-In as an experimental fashion mag, and then 18-year-old Vestbø was starting his own brand. Initially teaming up on an editorial shoot, they decided to handmake pieces themselves rather than borrow looks from brands, patchworking treasures gathered from Italian vintage stores into a wardrobe of offbeat, noughties-coded glamour. After seeing the shoot, stylist Lotta Volkova – their first and most loyal customer – encouraged them to carry on, leading to a DIY show at the Maryam Nassir Zadeh store in 2019. Slowly, All-In started to morph from a magazine into something much more.

Now, the project operates as a ‘multidisciplinary studio’ with bespoke one-offs, full-throttle ready-to-wear, and eye-catching visuals all comfortably part of its wheelhouse. With magazine beginnings, a good story has always been at the heart of everything the pair do. As such, each of All-In’s collections is built around a fabulously conflicted character, such as a fictitious jaded pop star or an existentially troubled businesswoman. Their original muse is a real person called Miss France, an ‘insomniac shopkeeper’ who Barron visited on Saturday nights as a teenager growing up in Rome.

‘She was a beauty pageant girl in the 1970s,’ he says. ‘Eventually she opened up her own vintage shop. It only opens at 10pm and when you go, you can't really shop for yourself – she tells you what works for you.’ Vestbø has visited her several times over the last decade too. ‘Her idea of what's valuable and what's cheap is completely her own,’ he adds. ‘A beautiful beaded gown can be like two euros, and then a little tote bag can be like 50 euros because she just loves it so much.’

Inspiring their first designs, traces of Miss France’s eccentric charm still reverberate through All-In’s clothes. Barron and Vestbø will always work from a foundation of existing garments, plucking from a wall of boxes in their Paris studio where their extensive archive of vintage is carefully housed. Creating pieces as complex as the characters they imagine, humble T-shirts are slashed and stitched with antique lace; shirting is layered up in triple stacks, so that garments appear to be wearing garments; and accessories straddle high and low taste, so that chic leather handbags are frozen mid-removal from canvas gym holdalls. From inventive one-offs to their signature eyelet-adorned stiletto boots – loved by Arca and Charli XCX – what unites Vestbø and Barron’s designs is a sense of play. They dare you to try on a new character, or several, and see what it might unleash.

Unveiled with grainy visuals shot in a humdrum office space – courtesy of Sharna Osborne and their favourite stylist, Lotta Volkova – All-In’s A/W 2025 collection presents a moodier second chapter to S/S 2025, which was inspired by the 1988 rom-com Working Girl. ‘The idea was that the character has worked her way to the top and got the corner office,’ Barron explains. ‘There’s a sense of freezing over, staying still, nothing happening. We were inspired by this kind of colder, end-of-the-party energy.’

As a result, A/W 2025’s Downtown Girl emerges in a melancholic palette, with a touch of chaos woven into the codes of power dressing – as if their woman has thrown herself together in a hurried rush on a cold winter’s morning. Wonky wool skirts are slung over sweats and white pump heels, candy-hued V-neck knitwear layered up with whimsically back-to-front shirting, and the designers make a case for 1980s ra-ra mini skirts going with almost anything – pairing explosions of ruffly tulle under deconstructed parkas, over tailored trousers and with kinky thigh-high leather boots.

‘Our idea was that instead of changing, she's actually just layering things – layering her identity,’ says Barron. ‘When she's trying to impersonate her boss from the Upper East Side, she still has these elements of her coming from Staten Island underneath it.’ Vestbø adds: ‘Layering is also a way of freezing style and the many beautiful things that happen in dressing. It's also the first time we've actually done Autumn/Winter, so all these things that were more covered up were really fun for us. We show a lot of skin usually.’

With just a few months to go before the LVMH Prize in Paris, Barron and Vestbø are pouring all their energy into their S/S 2026 collection. But despite the significance of the moment – which will likely see the pair create their most inventive ‘display’ pieces yet – they say what excites them most isn’t the prospect of a runway show, but bringing All-In down from the clouds a little, closer to everyday life.

‘Beyond specific pieces that feel special, we’re really enjoying designing things that fit into our lives and our friends' lives,’ says Barron. ‘When we were sending out orders from the last collection, it was surreal to realise these clothes were actually going to be worn by people – complete strangers,’ Vestbø adds. ‘It’s kind of amazing.’

In their words

‘All the characters that we create are a little bit contradictory. We define who they are, but also there's a lot of room because I think that they are usually in conflict with themselves. I guess the goal is to create a character that you don't really know. Something that feels like somehow is new. Our pieces are meant to be fun but there’s always an element of something being off. We don't like when things feel very specific. If something can be easily placed, then it doesn't really feel All-In.’

Where to buy

all-in-studio.com