A week later, on the day we meet, Reed is sitting by the open fire at the Standard Hotel in London’s Kings Cross, a picture of serenity in a white blouse, honey-brown suede flares, and platforms by the London shoemaker Roker. On his wrist is a Cartier Tank watch. “So classy,” he says. The combination of youthful looks and sophistication is captivating. One could imagine Reed as a Shakespearean player in As You Like It, or wafting through a David Lynch film.
Reed is one of the few fashion designers – alongside Olivier Rousteing, Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs – who enjoy performing for the camera. He knows a whole litany of supermodel poses, from vogueing stances to the angelic and innocent. He has walked in a Gucci show, been the face of its 2019 fragrance Mémoire d’une Odeur, and collaborated on a line of make-up for Mac. These commercial gigs provide an injection of cash that helps fund his nascent clothing brand: one almighty boost for an emerging designer still finding his feet. It helps that hobnobbing with random – even famous – strangers doesn’t faze him. At the Met Gala he found himself seated with Iman, along with the media tycoons Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg. “It was the most surreal thing – definitely a no-elbows-on-the-table moment,” Reed says, laughing.
His career is elastic – part model, part designer. “I grew up in LA, where every waiter is also an actor, and every start-up tech entrepreneur is also a personal trainer,” he explains. His parents are the Oscar-winning British documentary producer Nick Reed and a Mexican-Swedish former model, Lynette Reed. After his parents divorced, the young Harris and his sister, Isabelle, who is currently studying at Arizona State University, were continually on the move – from Arizona and Seattle to Oregon – propelled by their mother’s wanderlust. Reed always had an eye for style and a craving for beauty, he says, and dived into both fashion media and thrift-store shopping. His mother, who is now an artist and the owner of a candle company, has been married five times and currently lives with her fiancé in Italy. “I think she becomes ever more beautiful as she grows older,” Reed says. “She’s successful, happy – and her studio is bigger than mine.”
Harris says he knew he was gay aged around nine – “I came out before I can remember” – and, having flirted with changing his pronouns to they/them, is back as a he. For the time being, he has rejected the modishness of playing with how he describes his gender: “I am very visible on Instagram, and as they/them I had so many job offers that were to do with marketing and the need to tick a box. I looked at my super-skinny self in my $10,000 hair extensions in the Mac campaign and asked myself if I was not creating another impossible stereotype, as unreal as the Abercrombie & Fitch archetype or a Victoria’s Secret model? I realised my career is about breaking boundaries.”
