From the minute she was born Mikki McCann was thrust into the design world, growing up working
and learning from her architect father. As McCann developed as an artist in her own right, she created graphic and marketing packages for companies all over the world. At the age of seventeen she had a rug line with a company working with Oscar winning set designers, artwork hanging in the Hilton in Melbourne and her art and graphics in a luxury store in Turkey. As Mikki matured and gained more experience she knew her future lay in the seductive fashion industry. This led to studying at Parsons School of Design in New York in 2016.
In 2019 she took a gap year to gain real world experience. This included styling at AllSaints, interning for Anna Sui and KITH where she worked full time until the pandemic hit.
Being so inspired from living in New York, McCann launched her own brand, Fourteenth St. With its unisex clothing, Fourteenth St disrupts the norm, allowing everyone to feel comfortable in their own skin. In her senior year, Mikki decided to use Fourteenth St to break open her own sexuality and gender journeys in an ode to her younger self and all the other people struggling. Highlighting the way individuals use clothing to express their identity, McCann uses a new screen printing technology that is invisible regular light, but under UV light the inks hidden colour emerges.
The collection entitled, “It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn” represents the physical and visual embodiment of the coming out experience. When one is in the closet their life is drained of their identity, drained of their uniqueness, drained of their truth and drained of colour. But after the long and lengthy struggle to come to terms with one's sexuality and coming out, The colour starts to return to their life. Through the use of symbolism and traditionally queer silhouettes, Mikki represents this process of coming out, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
She will demonstrate how artistic minds can create change, design new ways of sustainability and create art that matters.
Her name is Mikki McCann and this is just the beginning.
