Who

The wunderkind designer Ben Cho makes high-concept party clothes for attention seekers.

Backstory

Raised in San Jose, California by a NASA-scientist father and opera-singer mother, Cho was his high school's first gay homecoming king before moving to New York to attend Parsons. He dropped out in 1998 to work on his designs, and made a splash when his first collection debuted during Fashion Week in 2001. Anointed the next big thing by Vogue and W, Cho found his early success overwhelming, and he ended up skipping Fashion Week for a couple of years. He returned to the runway in 2005 and continues to design outfits that are part fashion/part performance art.

Of note

An iconoclast in the increasingly commercial fashion biz, Cho has resisted the typical path of many young design talents—he's yet to create placemats for Target or launch a line of $250 sunglasses. And while his surreal, idiosyncratic style hasn't earned him space on the shelves of Bloomingdale's, it has garnered him plenty of indie admirers. Cho has earned a rep for rubbing shoulders with the blindingly hip: Milla Jovovich was his first New York roommate, and he's good friends with Chloë Sevigny, Ryan McGinley, Dash Snow, and the MisShapes crew of Leigh Lezark, Greg Krelenstein, and Geordon Nicol. A fixture on the nightlife scene, the fashion maven occasionally finds time to DJ and used to have a regular gig at Sway.

Personal

Cho lives with his pet fish on East 4th Street.

No joke

Cho says he's been obsessed with ice skater Michelle Kwan for years: "Michelle is not only a goddess on ice, but she is also my kindred spirit."