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A Feel For Fashion: Thakoon Panichgul

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Thakoon Panichgul is widely known as a fashion designer who launched his eponymous brand in September 2004 and was among the three recipients of the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund in 2006. Yet what people may not know is that he has parallel expertise in fashion media. Born in Thailand and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Panichgul moved to New York after earning a business degree from Boston University. He began his career in fashion — first in production, then merchandising. He continued his exploration of the industry at Harper’s Bazaar before pursuing design studies at Parsons School of Design. In 2019, he finally returned to the magazine world, founding and directing HommeGirls, a decidedly cool multimedia style platform that started off as a zine and quickly evolved into a printed bi-annual.

This season marks 50 years of fashion weeks in Paris. What, for you, makes Paris Fashion Week® unlike any other?

Paris Fashion Week® is important to the industry because it's THE most creative — not only in terms of ideas, but also the art of making clothes, which in some ways, is much more important to keep alive now. 

 

What excites you in fashion right now? 

I think in terms of style, there's a lot more self-expression on the streets. I see it in New York, and I see it in Europe. I think that's really exciting, that people are doing their own thing, expressing their own look. 

 

What impact might you hope to have on fashion through your work?  

HommeGirls is championing a certain kind of bold attitude, of expression — whether through the magazine or the clothing. And it's become a place for discovery, even for us who work on it. So I think that sense of discovery, of always being inquisitive, of seeing things a different way. That's something meaningful. 

 

This interview has been lightly edited.

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