There are designers who dress the world, and then there are those who reimagine it. Boris Bidjan Saberi belongs to the latter. His garments were never just clothes, but propositions. Cut in leather, layered in shadow, speaking in a language that was as much spiritual as it was sartorial. And now, in a move that feels both inevitable and devastating, the designer has announced the closure of his namesake brand’s production company and operational structure, effective July 2025.
The message came not with fanfare but with the kind of brutal honesty that has always defined the label: “We have decided to close the Boris Bidjan Saberi production company and its whole operation structure… due to increasing manufacturing difficulties, which make it unviable to continue production under the current conditions and configuration.”
In a time when many fashion houses inflate their demise into a narrative of rebirth, Boris’s words cut differently. There is grief, yes. But there is also a refusal to betray the brand’s ethos. An unwillingness to dilute vision for the sake of viability.
From the outset, Boris Bidjan Saberi existed on the margins, in the liminal space between East and West, function and form, uniform and ritual. Born in Germany to a Persian father and German mother, Boris brought to his work a duality that transcended mere aesthetics. His collections, monastic, severe, at times almost liturgical, offered a meditation on protection and exposure, purity and decay. The body, in his hands, became an armor-clad vessel moving through a hostile world.
Much like the brutalist architecture that his designs often echoed, his clothes were made not to please but to endure. Artisanal and uncompromising, they carried the patina of process. Waxed leathers, hand-dyed cottons, materials hardened through sweat and salt. He was never interested in making fashion easy. And in that difficulty, many of us found clarity.
To wear Boris was to enter a philosophy. There was no room for irony, no flirtation with trends. There was only the raw pursuit of truth. Truth in materials, in function, in design. It is precisely this fidelity that perhaps makes the closure feel so crushing. Because we know, instinctively, that the world has lost something rare.
And yet, this isn’t death. It’s transformation.
“Boris Bidjan Saberi has not left,” the statement continues. “This closure is not the end of the road, but a transformation… under new structures that allow for greater exploration without compromising the essence of the brand.”
We should listen carefully to that last phrase. In an industry increasingly held hostage by the spectacle of growth, by metrics, capsules, influencer placements, this is not just a retreat but a form of resistance. Boris has chosen the integrity of disappearance over the dilution of presence. He has refused to let his legacy be eaten alive by the machinery of production.
What comes next may not be fashion as we know it. Perhaps it will be sculpture, or sound, or something else entirely. But what remains, what always will remain, is the mark Boris Bidjan Saberi has left on the psychic terrain of clothing. He didn’t just design garments. He built a universe of weight and silence and defiance. And in doing so, he offered a path, however narrow, however steep, for others to follow.
In the ruins of this closure, something else stirs. A murmur. A hum. The beginning of the next.
Photos: Vogue & BBS
www.borisbidjansaberi.com
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