Heron Preston Reemerges in New York Following NGG Restructuring

The reconfiguration of the street-luxury universe continues to leave significant movements on the international map. In the process of reorganizing the portfolio of the Italian conglomerate New Guards Group (NGG) and following its exit from the strategy defined by Coupang after the purchase of Farfetch, several of the brands that shaped the Italian hólding have embarked on independent paths. Among them, Heron Preston, which has just regained full ownership of its namesake brand.

Trained at Parsons School of Design and born in San Francisco, Heron Preston developed a multidisciplinary career between design, digital production and urban culture. Before creating his eponymous brand, he worked as a former Nike collaborator on digital projects and participated in creative initiatives in the environment of Virgil Abloh, in the years prior to the founding of Off-White.

His brand emerged with its own visual language that combined the color safety orange, the word СТТИЛЬ in Cyrillic and industrial references reinterpreted as luxury codes. Projects such as its capsule for the New York City Department of Sanitation (Dsny) in 2016 or the collaboration with Nasa in 2018 reinforced its international positioning.

The stage with under the umbrella of New Guards Group allowed to scale the project, expand its presence on digital platforms and connect with a global market that demanded hybrid proposals between fashion and culture. The dissociation of the group, last July, marked the closure of that corporate phase and opened the door to a new stage of creative control.

Heron Preston, after leaving NGG, will relaunch its street brand from New York

At the time, the designer announced that he had taken back the legal and commercial rights to the brand he launched in 2017 with the Italian group, much of whose activities were under the supervision of the commercial courts.

Just a few days ago, Preston confirmed through his networks that the relaunch will be articulated from New York, a city that marked the professional origin of the designer and that will play a central role in his new strategy. The creative claimed to have fought to recover his name and vision, contextualizing the return at a time of transition for independent design.

Although a precise timetable has not been communicated, the reorganization includes the reactivation of in-house channels and the start of a new creative phase from the United States. The relaunch is interpreted as part of a broader movement in which several designers are regaining autonomy after years of integration into complex corporate structures.

Heron Preston’ s departure was added to those of Ambush, Palm Angels, Off-White and County of Milan, which were once part of the holding company and subsequently transferred to new owners or taken back by their own founders. The progressive unbundling of the NGG portfolio deepens the debate on the model of street-luxury integration under large-scale corporate structures.

Preston was one of the key names of that wave, along with Virgil Abloh and Matthew Williams, who became Givenchy’s creative director, integrating industrial aesthetics, urban culture and a conceptual reading of workwear into contemporary luxury.

NGG’s new perimeter after the acquisition of Farfetch by Coupang

New Guards Group was acquired by Farfetch in 2019 in a deal that sought to unite digital platforms, emerging luxury brands and global supply chains. When Coupang took control of Farfetch in 2023, the Italian polder no longer fit the new owner’s strategy, prompting a complete reorganization of its perimeter. Several of NGG’s activities were then placed under judicial supervision while the future of the group and its subsidiaries was being defined.

The historical figures available put the Heron Preston brand at around $25 million of cumulative turnover in its first two years of life, before its consolidation within the holding company. In Farfetch’s financial reports, the intangible assets associated with the firm were listed at $17.4 million in 2022.

Heron Preston’s last collection under the NGG umbrella was the corresponding fall-winter 2023 collection, presented in New York, before the reorganization of the polder’s portfolio affected the brand’s immediate future.