From dressing Addison Rae to soundtracks by Smerz, August Barron is where style meets sound
Brothers Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø reveal how they blend fashion, pop culture, and music to craft surreal, show-stopping collections.
“Addison, obviously,” brothers Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø tell me over email when asked who they want to see wearing their Spring/Summer 2026 collection. Pushed further, their dream list reads like a pop fantasy: “Madonna! Britney! Dolly! Cher! All the icons.”
The duo’s pop ambitions aren’t far off. Just days before their show at Paris Fashion Week, they dressed Addison in a custom August Barron look: a 1950s housewife dress that was torn away to reveal latex lingerie. The collaboration came at the request of stylist-to-the-stars Dara Allen, cementing their growing influence in the pop-fashion arena.
“[We] decided to work with the idea of the ‘display’ for this custom: the idea of representing something in the front in contrast with the back,” they explain. “It was cool to see how involved Addison was in every decision of the design … It was amazing being involved in her world.”
The Paris-based brand (formerly known as All-In) began as a fashion magazine launched in 2015 before they debuted their first collection four years later. From there, the duo have ascended the Paris Fashion Week pantheon with the velocity of a viral clip. Young, sharp, and impossibly self-aware, they were anointed this year as LVMH Prize finalists – their mythology already in motion.
“Music is one of the first things that comes to mind when we think of the runway,”
Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø
Their latest collection turns the mirror inward, extending the Addison vernacular into new suburban surrealism. Titled Real Housewife, the show is a dream sequence of silk and satire – a Lynchian domestic fantasy where the dishwasher hums in designer heels and the martini never empties.
The result is a pop-cultural opera of gloss, artifice, and chaos: the midcentury housewife uniform reimagined through strategic styling. The undone glamour of unbuttoned brasserie-revealing cardigans paired with sickly sweet taffeta skirts was crowned with hair rollers. Models transformed into surreal, domestic icons in a masterclass of subversive nostalgia.
The show’s energy was amplified by a heart-thumping soundtrack that introduced its topsy-turvy cast of characters. “Music is one of the first things that comes to mind when we think of the runway,” they note. “Our two most played artists this year have been Addison and Smerz.”
The latter, Norwegian electronic duo made up of Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt, mixed the show’s score – a distorted pop collage that sampled Madonna’s “Bedtime Story”, Britney’s breathy “Piece of Me”, and even a snippet from Snow White instructing how to clean the home. “We always aim for the soundtrack to feel narrative,” they add. “It should tell a story and make the audience have fun.”
Their collaboration with Smerz runs deep – beginning before the release of the band’s debut album and continuing through multiple projects, from runway soundtracks to art-directing music videos such as “A Thousand Lies” and “You Got Time and I Got Money”.
Most recently, they reunited for the visuals accompanying Smerz’s latest album, released in May 2025. The synergy between the two acts even birthed Allina, a fictional pop star and the eponymous EP released via Smerz’s label, Shopping Records – a meta-pop experiment further blurring the boundaries between music and fashion.
Much like August Barron, the duo thrive on the tension between artifice and authenticity. Their sound, equal parts ethereal and abrasive, moves between glossy synths, distorted vocals, and left-field production, crafting a universe where intimacy meets chaos.
“Their process of making music and visuals is very experimental and collaborative,” the brothers explain. “We start a back-and-forth with them where they’ll share sketches of the show music, which eventually leads to the final mix.”
This intuitive exchange informed August Barron’s own creative rhythm. “It’s a very natural process that reflects how we approach fashion,” they add. “Instinctive, evolving, and always a little unpredictable.”
In many ways, Real Housewife encapsulates everything August Barron has come to represent. A brand in constant conversation with pop culture, unafraid to blur the seams between irony and sincerity, performance and reality. Their ongoing collaboration with Smerz reinforces that ethos: fashion as rhythm. “We danced backstage throughout the entire show this season”.