The new star of US fashion Christopher John Rogers' bold designs are worn by the likes of Zendaya and Gigi Hadid. Backstage at his New York Fashion Week show, he talks style, hierarchies – and clothes as a "tool for hope".

Connecting the dots between New York fashion's past and future might start with some actual dots. They are the size of a bottle bottom and the colour of Skittles sweets – orange, lime, cherry, grape – and hug the edges of jackets, dresses and corsets. Anne Hathaway has worn the dots. Zendaya has worn the dots. Gigi Hadid has worn the dots. At the 2024 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the dots were beamed into the homes of 23.6 million Americans, sported by the theatre star Cole Escola as they rode a giant flamingo float through Times Square.

The can't-miss-it motif was designed by 32-year-old Christopher John Rogers, a US fashion designer who counts style icon Diane von Furstenberg as a mentor, and Louisiana as his home state. A graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design, Rogers is fast becoming a new figurehead of US style, thanks to his unique embrace of colour combined with a strong command of tailored, built-to-last elegance.

By making Italian wool trousers in a shimmering rose gold, and cocktail frocks in a bold cartoon red, Rogers and his longtime business partner Christina Ripley are staging a silk-and-merino assault on "quiet luxury", the de-facto fashion uniform of muted beige cashmere coats and boxy anonymous black handbags made popular by the fictional titans on TV's Succession and by edgy, understated New York labels like The Row and Khaite.

"I'm trying to flatten some hierarchies with my designs," says Rogers backstage at his New York Fashion Week show. Vogue's longtimeleader Anna Wintour and the actress Keke Palmer sit front row – a sign of their commitment to the designer, considering the show was held in a former fish factory in Brooklyn's industrial, and remote, Navy Yard. "How can we help more people feel like they belong, but also like it's okay to stand out? American fashion right now is in a state of flux," the designer tells the BBC. "We want newness; we want transformation. But we have to be willing to try some fresh approaches. We have to make people excited to get dressed again, to use clothes as a tool for hope… Even if you're just wearing them to go down the street for coffee."

Rogers's bold but precise jackets and dresses have made the designer a standout seller at agenda-setting boutiques and platforms like Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Net-a-Porter. They have also made the rising fashion star something of an anomaly: along with contemporaries like Sergio Hudson and Brother Vellies' Aurora James,........

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