In February, Welsh-born designer Rhi Dancey made her debut at Berlin Fashion Week. She showcased a collection inspired by Berlin-based muses from eight different creative sectors, including a local tattoo artist, a DJ and club night founder, a jewellery designer, a painter, a photographer and the hairstylist of global it girl Gabbriette.
“It was all about celebrating print, pattern, colour and creativity in fashion,” Dancey says. “Fashion in Berlin can be so serious, all black and edgy. Too cool for school, you know? Don’t get me wrong, they are cool. No hate, no shade.”
Dancey’s printed garments are easily recognisable. There’s a cotton corset featuring tattoo-inspired spring motifs by illustrator Zoe Aguerreberry, or the playful ‘Sex Kitten Vest’ created with artist Van Lau. There’s the ‘Deathly Dress’ made in collaboration with designer Francesca Albergo – a riot of bright blues and reds adorned with sad stars, tearful love hearts and quirky little monsters. “I love bold prints, colours and textures, like a magpie I’m always drawn to shiny or fluffy things too,” Dancey tells me. “As a child, I often went shopping with my father, a former punk, who always encouraged me to be confident and bold in my dress, and never to define it by gender or normative standards.”
Dancey launched her eponymous brand in 2020, during the Covid lockdown. Before the pandemic, she’d worked as a stylist in Berlin. Losing that job was “a blessing in disguise”, she says, one that allowed her to return to the UK long enough to assess her career goals. “Being back, with time to reflect, let me organically start this brand … I had to start from scratch and build something on my own.”
Like a magpie I’m always drawn to shiny or fluffy things.
From her living room, Dancey began amassing followers on the clothing resale app Depop and building a community on Instagram that was hungry for her style, then quickly launched her own website to sell her clothes. “During this time, I was struggling financially and was desperately analysing my skill set to see how I could generate an income for myself,” she says. “Although starting the brand came from a period of desperation, there was something very healing and cathartic about the process.”
In 2023, VOGUE included Dancey in a article about young, sustainable fashion designers, noting her focus on small-batch garments using deadstock fabrics and “mind-bending art prints that look like they’re from another world”. She attributes her quick rise to tenacity – a “kind of underdog mentality, or where I’ve come from, being from a small town in Wales” – but says the success looks a lot different from the inside. “I think people have a misconception that I have a big team behind the brand. We are a small team of just two, with all garments being produced by two seamstresses by hand. It’s a very intimate process bringing these garments to life.”
Five years in, Dancey has returned to Berlin and evolved her brand into a dual-faceted business – both an online shop and an agency that’s worked with the likes of Converse, Adidas and Google. “One of our slogans is ‘more than just a brand’,” she explains. “It’s not just one thing. It’s a community. It’s an energy. It’s trying to do something differently.” Berlin lends itself to a departure from the norm, Dancey adds. “Compared to other cities in Europe, Berlin really lets you find your chosen family. You can find your community and be accepted for whoever or whatever you are – which I think is very beautiful.”
Her time as a stylist makes her no stranger to the industry’s cutthroat aspects. “I think very often within art and fashion, it’s a hierarchy-driven, exclusive and inaccessible space … there is this culture of gatekeeping and seeing people as your competitors,” she says. “I always felt the opposite of uplifted. I always felt very demotivated, or at the bottom of the food chain.” Rather than perpetuate this cycle, she’s determined to break it; in her Curated by Rhi series, she collaborated with nearly 100 artists around the world to create 68 garments, each embellished with a unique piece that introduced their work to a fresh audience.
As evidenced by her bold, kaleidoscopic designs, Dancey isn’t a fan of traditional formats in fashion. “The idea of a catwalk feels a bit dated to me,” she says. “I hate the idea of going to a show, watching people walk down for 10 minutes, everyone’s on their phones, and then leaving, going to the next show in a taxi. It just feels like a conveyor belt.”
She hopes to do one at next year’s Berlin Fashion Week – in her own way. “I would want it to be more of a hybrid installation performance. You know, going back to the golden days of fashion, when you have Alexander McQueen, doing these crazy runways like a performance.”
If anyone’s surprised by how much her style has resonated, it’s her. “I never in a million years thought that I would make it to this point, going back five years ago,” she says. “Every now and again, I have these moments where I’m just like, it’s my job to create these garments and to work with these artists, to be surrounded by these inspiring women and queer people, just to create fun things.”
Keep up with Rhi’s work at rhidancey.com or follow on IG @rhidancey
