He’s the man responsible for some of the fashion world’s most memorable moments, but you’ve probably never heard of him.
Law Roach is the 46-year-old stylist who dressed Celine Dion in a pink frothy mille-feuille-style coat on the cover of French Vogue and dressed actor Hunter Schaefer with a feather-sized coat at the 2023 Oscars party. He was the person who persuaded the model to wear the costume. Bella Hadid wears only vintage clothing on the Cannes red carpet.
But it was his work with Zendaya, whom he first met at age 14, that turned the actor into a celebrity and helped Roach transcend the world of styling. Most recently, she masterminded her Challengers and Dune press tour looks, cemented tennis cores as summer’s biggest trends, and made metal armor suits front-page news.
Celebrity stylists usually stay behind the scenes, but Roach broke all conventions and suddenly gained attention as an “image architect.”
J’Nae Phillips, senior trend analyst and creator of the Fashion Tingz newsletter, says Roach is focusing on the role of stylists by “not just shaping the look of their celebrity clients, but creating moments and momentum through fashion.” He says that he has redefined it. “He brought styling from behind the scenes into the public sphere and changed the way fashion was consumed, admired and understood by the public,” she says.
When she was a Disney star, brands wouldn’t lend Zendaya clothes, so she instead dressed her in vintage pieces from Roach’s Chicago thrift store.
Since then, he’s embraced “method dressing,” dressing Zendaya in a webbed embroidered dress at the Spider-Man premiere and a wet sand-inspired dress at the Venice premiere of Dune. Zendaya describes him as her “fashion soulmate, historian, and constant inspiration.”
Roach, who now walks the red carpet, is invited to sit front row at fashion week shows, has amassed a legion of fans of his own with more than 1 million followers on Instagram, and is often invited to take selfies in the street. I’ll chase you.
Next month, he will publish a book titled How to Build a Fashion Icon. The book acts as a kind of DIY guide to self-confidence, interspersed with personal anecdotes and inspirational quotes from women, including Oprah Winfrey.
Reflecting on his success in this book, he writes: No one who looked like me had achieved what I wanted, but I kept staring at the prize with determination and believing in myself that I could do it. ”
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But you won’t find the term stylist inside. Instead, Roach called himself “the world’s only image architect” and trademarked the title. “I’ll never be just a ‘stylist,'” he writes. “I always do things my own way, with my own twist…For me, ‘Image Architect’ provides a moment–when the boldness and drama of a look makes a woman (or, let’s be honest… Values that will be complemented by a woman who knows everyone). “
He is also technically the “world’s only image architect” who is retired. Last March, he announced his retirement from the industry in a now-deleted Instagram post. “Politics, lies, and false narratives have finally gotten to me!” he wrote. “You win…I’m done.” Eighteen months later, Roach is busier than ever. “I’m the least retired retiree,” he told The New York Times in May.
Sometimes this kind of behavior earned him the reputation of being a diva. But Roach grew up in one of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods, as one of four children raised by a single mother, as a gay black man, and in an industry notoriously difficult for women to succeed. We have managed to enter the world where people are active. People pleasers are unlikely to win. Roach describes himself as “an example of an unlikely Cinderella story: someone who grew up having their cards stacked against them, but still made it through.”
“He knows his worth,” says British Vogue fashion writer Daniel Rogers. “He has fought hard to maintain that position, refusing to speak to journalists unless they use his name in the headlines and refusing to become a background figure in someone else’s success. It brought true fashion capital and entertainment to the often-obsessed celebrity world.”
