‘Beyoncé is obsessive about everything’: what it’s like to dress the world’s most famous women

Designer David Koma might have dressed Adele, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, but – as he now explains – he never set out to work with celebrities

Four days out from a London Fashion Week show, most designers would have given up on sleep long ago, working all hours and surviving on a diet of black coffee and Haribos.
So it was a calmer scene than I expected at David Koma’s Shoreditch HQ, home to an office, a design studio and an atelier. The team was busy, but nobody seemed stressed.
Neither is Koma himself: “It’s a new me,” he says. “I’m trying to enjoy the ride”. 
And what a ride it’s been. The Tbilisi, Georgia-born designer has dressed Adele, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga and Rihanna. Beyoncé wears Koma on the cover of her new single /Texas Hold ’Em/. At the Baftas afterparty last Sunday night, Florence Pugh, Poppy Delevingne and Mary Charteris all wore Koma. Not bad for someone who has never actively courted celebrity attention.
“Celebrities… It’s been something that I’ve been given very naturally as an artist, as a brand. It’s never been my focus,” he says. It’s been this way since the beginning. Koma came to London in 2003 to study at Central Saint Martin’s, where he was identified as a potential star and mentored by the legendary late Professor Louise Wilson. A sketch of looks from his 2009 MA show with her notes scrawled in pencil is framed and waiting to be hung on his office wall. Also scribbled out – by him, he clarifies – is the latter half of his surname, Komakhidze.
That graduate collection won a slew of awards, shining a spotlight on his talent – enough to cross the radar of some key celebrity stylists. Within a couple of months, Beyoncé had worn a David Koma dress for the MTV Europe Music Awards, Cheryl Cole had worn one on The X Factor, “and then after that it was Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Kylie Minogue, a bunch of other people,” he recalls. “[The collection] was only nine dresses [and] we got nine amazing people. And it never stopped.”
The relationship with Beyoncé is probably the one of which he’s most proud. He appreciates her attention to detail. “She is so obsessive about everything,” he says. Nothing is signed off without her OK: “She really, really cares. And actually what I love about her is that I’ve been working with her for so many years, and she works with multiple stylists, but they come back to me, so I believe that’s coming from her.”
He designed several looks for her Renaissance tour, including a headline-making iridescent leather outfit. “When it comes to working on a tour, the technical part is important,” he explains. “For certain looks, like the iridescent one, we knew that she would wear it for a part of the performance that is quite active… You have to use certain metallic zips that are strong, and even if you do super-high boots, you need to make sure they won’t move or slide down – there’s special boning you add in. 
“You do her and you do dancers as well. So it needs to be cohesive… Some looks she wears, she really needs to be in control, but I think in this particular look, she could just be herself and dance.” 
His favourite Beyoncé moment to date? Two years ago, when she opened the Oscars with a performance of ‘Be Alive’, from the soundtrack of King Richard, the biopic of Richard Williams, father of tennis champions Venus and Serena. 
Beyoncé performed in Compton, California, on the court where the sisters trained as kids, in a tennis ball-inspired neon gown made for her by Koma. He hadn’t been expecting it to be worn in this context. “We were already working on the [Renaissance] tour,” he explains. “We were doing quite a lot of things so I didn’t really know what would appear where.”
That Koma is a tennis nut, made it all the more significant. “It was funny because my dad really wanted me to be a tennis player. And I was like, that’s not gonna happen. So he allowed me to do art. When this happened, I called him, and was like, ‘Does that count, that I won the [fashion] Grand Slam?’”
Koma has a lot of respect for stylists, the architects of these celebrity looks. “There are so many publicists, so many opinions. It’s not an easy job to be a stylist,” he says. “They must earn the trust with the celebrity, and then convince the designers to be bold and part of your vision.”
Every look is the result of a wider team effort: “Obviously, the dress is one thing, then the stylist, then this synergy between the stylist, hair and makeup, and the relevance of the message and the momentum – everything needs to match for it to be a successful red carpet ‘moment’.” he says. “Maybe the same dress on the same girl would not be as ‘wow’ if it was a month before or after, but some manage to be super-relevant at that moment, and to have the best team around to accomplish it.”
Koma’s celebrity following means that his label has never really been out of the spotlight, but it’s really gathered steam over the past four years. Prior to that, he’d been juggling several projects, including a four-year stint as the creative director at Thierry Mugler, so his own label lacked his undivided attention. “I decided OK, basta, it’s time to really, really focus,” he said of this turning point. “We did a few things, like changing investors, prepare a new [business] plan, strengthen the team – and then Covid happened.”
For another occasionwear brand, this might have been the kiss of death, but Koma achieved the seemingly impossible and grew his business four times during the pandemic, largely driven by sales of dresses. “People were saying it’s not possible. For me, luxury is like chocolate; no matter what, people still want to have it.”
The appeal lies in the empowering nature of his designs which celebrate the contours of the female body, a kind of armour for ass-kicking, agenda-setting women. “I always had this idea of this superwoman,” he says. “Different collections are inspired by different incredible women. Somehow… they feel it and then they come back [because] there is this chemistry.”
Contact sheets of past collections are pinned to his office walls. Last season was inspired by Marlene Dietrich, he tells me. The next, pre-fall, was inspired by Truman Capote’s Swans – perfect timing, given the upcoming release of Feud: Capote vs. The Swans. 
Ultimately, he keeps returning to the same guiding principle. “I always want to bring the best out of the body and give the wearer confidence and strength,” he explains. “Because, yeah, humans are pretty beautiful.”