Dean Quinn: Fairy Godfather

As a 4-year-old in Northern Ireland, Dean Quinn was an avid sketcher, spending hours drawing the outfits of characters like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. “I used to wonder why my mom didn’t dress like that,” recalls the designer, 25, who as a teen interned with Zandra Rhodes and studied at Central Saint Martins, then went on to design for Versace. Quinn recently moved to the States to start his eponymous line, which features silk gowns with sun-ray-pleated skirts (below) and a cotton cocoon-shaped dress trimmed with silver bugle beads. Barneys New York picked it up immediately. “I thought this would be slow,” he says. “And then it turned into a monster really quick.” ($875–$2,300, Barneys New York)

Quinn Illustration by Alexandra Compain-Tissier; Models: courtesy of Dean Quinn.