GEOFFREY B SMALL

Since 1979, Geoffrey B. Small has continuously worked to raise the art and science of making clothes by hand. He founded the Area Paris show to serve the needs of independent designers in 2003, helping to introduce more than 57 independent designers from around the world with over 170 individual collection presentations in Paris at the highest level. He has pioneered many global design trends including recycle fashion, designer streetwear, the napoleonic and medieval style movements, and his radical new designs for climate change.

He believes that great clothes and the people and techniques behind them should be valued far more highly, and that short-term global corporate interests have become far too dominant in fashion. On the contrary, he insists that "fashion is an art, and must be used to raise design quality--not lower it, speak the truth about the world--not lie about it, and do its best to make life better for everyone--not just an elite few."

He is the winner of the 2005 MTV Germany's Designerama award for menswear, the 1979 and 1980 ILGWU Americas "Next Great Designer Awards" (the largest design competitions in North America), the 1980 City of New York Zipp-in International Grand Prize, the 1982 Cassina Milan/Lammhulske Sweden Arango International prize for furniture design and others.

In 1993, he was hailed by Pierre Berge as one of the only American designers "with true talent," and became the first American-based designer to show an avant-garde collection in Paris and the 3rd American in history officially recognized by France's Chambre Syndicale. In 1995, he introduced the world's first men's recycle fashion collection in Paris, where he has now presented a record of over 70 avant-garde collections, covered in over 800 fashion media publications around the world, including the prestigious daab "Young European Designers" Book in 2007. Customers have included legendary supermodel Veruschka, Winona Ryder, Halle Berry and David Beckham. In 2006, Geoffrey B. Small received special commissions from Louis Vuitton Japan to design and make unique recycle vintage leather bag and sportswear mini-collections under his name for their Celux penthouse store in Tokyo-- and his collections were photographed by Karl Lagerfeld in Paris for Numero Homme.

Small maintains one of the tightest distributions in the industry, with no more than 10 dealers in the world authorized to sell his works, and production limited to a maximum of only 400 hand made pieces for the world per season.