From the start, Harris Reed has upended fashion’s established way of doing things: getting a look in Vogue, on Harry Styles no less, before his first fashion show, and on the day of that runway debut landing the kind of profile in The New Yorker that designers twice his age are still holding out hope for.

Last September, days after his third London fashion show, he was appointed the creative director of Nina Ricci, extending his disruptive streak. Reed is a Central Saint Martins grad, which used to be the kind of credential you needed to land a job in a design studio, and then work your way up. Online community building is the metric that increasingly matters today. With his social media fluency and his significant following, Reed skipped the years of on-the-job training and landed a front man position.

In the lead-up to this Paris show, Styles wore a black Nina Ricci tuxedo by Reed accessorized by an enormous silk flower at the throat to the BRIT Awards, suggesting that his Nina Ricci would be as gender fluid as his own label, a new direction for the French brand. Before and after that, Adele wore a custom Reed creation for Ricci to perform in Las Vegas, and Florence Pugh chose another for the BAFTAs.