Why Is Music Merch Looking Better Than Ever? Meet Designers Behind the Stylish Shift

After dropping out of a foundational design course, artist and designer Muntasir Mohamed—now one of the most in-demand names in music merch design—was at a personal and professional crossroads. He loved art, music, and clothing, but had no sense of how to turn that into a career. Eventually, he got an internship at a streetwear company in his native Kuala Lumpur; after a six-month course at London’s Middlesex University, he secured design gigs with the U.K. sportswear brand Cole Buxton and Amsterdam street-and-footwear staple Filling Pieces. As a considerably less stylish side hustle, he also began creating logos for German gas companies to get even more experience. 

Perhaps most crucially, he began reimagining his favorite album covers on Instagram. By the late 2010s, he’d landed work with Camila Cabello and a pre-breakthrough Sabrina Carpenter. But one night in 2019, a cryptic 3 a.m. call from an unknown contact changed everything. “I picked up the phone, and the guy was like, I represent Drake, and we’re big fans of yours,” Mohamed recalls.

He was asked to submit merch designs for Drake’s upcoming show at Rock in Rio—one of the world’s biggest music festivals, held biennially in Rio de Janeiro—and was ultimately given the brief, with an eight-hour turnaround deadline. The neon-and-noir designs that he churned out were a hit, and are still coveted by fans today. Ultimately, they helped Mohamed turn his dreams of clothing design into a reality. (He has since created highly popular merch for Olivia Rodrigo).

Mohamed points to the pandemic as an inflection point in merch design. With artists unable to earn vital touring money, there was a heightened emphasis on exciting and original clothing to support one-off performances, festivals, or just unique capsules. As fandoms became more rabid—plenty has been written about the early 2020s explosion of stan culture—people seemed to care more than ever about wearing clothing that represented their favorite musicians, and, in turn, were willing to spend more to show their commitment to the fandom.

The trend hasn’t slowed down. Many of the artists dominating 2025’s major festival and show circuit—Carpenter, Clairo, Doechii, Rodrigo, SZA, and Travis Scott—are releasing ambitious merch collections that sell out almost immediately. It’s a departure from the aggressively unimaginative “Microsoft PowerPoint” design that Mohamed refers to as having once ruled the industry. It also means that many of the most creative and ambitious young designers—folks who hope to someday run their own lines, and show in Paris—are using music merch as their entrance into the competitive fashion world.

Now a full-time apparel designer for the LA brand Ladysmyth, Jeremy Lamberti was once a PR professional who kept his love of fashion and music on the back burner until he survived a grisly car accident that shifted his perspective and his career focus. Artists began contacting Lamberti for cover art in the late 2010s, but he wasn’t inspired by that work in an era in which, as he puts it, “You can just grab a picture off your phone and make that your cover art.”

He was, however, motivated to upend the status quo of the merch world, after seeing what his favorite performers were putting out. “Everything was just super boring,” he says. “And that didn’t make me want to buy it.”

He did adore the work of fellow Tampa native and, at the time, rising rapper Doechii. She was just starting to build out a singular, ambitious world that would lead her to a deal with Top Dawg Entertainment, a top-10 single, and a Best Rap Album Grammy win earlier this year. While working in retail, Lamberti found the time to design and share a merch concept that caught her eye; suddenly, he was crafting the merch package for Doechii’s opening slot on Doja Cat’s stadium Scarlet Tour, and eventually for the critically acclaimed Texas rapper That Mexican OT.

“Music doesn’t make artists that much money anymore. It’s really merch, tours, and brand deals,” Lamberti explains. “It would make sense for them to want to get ahead of that and make something that’s really cool.” 

A truly singular artist and designer, England’s Claire Barrow intimately understands this process. When Barrow was studying at the University of Westminster in the early 2010s, her painted vintage leather jackets caught the eye of stylist Mel Ottenberg, who sourced them for Rihanna, making the artist and designer a major name in fashion by age 20.

She returned from a gap year having had her work worn by one of the century’s biggest pop stars, and suddenly found herself fast-tracked to industry stardom. Barrow ran her eponymous brand for years, showing at London Fashion Week repeatedly in her early 20s. But she always yearned to explore more visual artistry, and she eventually realized what she actually wanted to do.

“It’s not this churning out clothes just to stay on schedule,” Barrow says. “I want to make good shit. I want to go into different realms and have the time to work with musicians or other artists. I felt quite stifled, just because of the time and financial constraints.”

In recent years, Barrow has worked with cult-favorite Bladee to craft both his333album cover and a small, highly coveted merchandise collection. She’s in a freeing, creative period now, in which she can explore both music and high fashion, releasing pieces through her Xtreme Sports line, assembling immersive multimedia exhibitions, and having her pieces worn by Hunter Schafer on Euphoria, a true marker of Gen Z cool.

Another hot name is Dewey Bryan Saunders, who made one of 2016’s iconic covers: Anderson Paak’s Malibu. With a vibrant psychedelic style, he’s worked with everyone from Future to the Warped Tour to the Grateful Dead, all while amassing the influence to start his own brand, High Comfort. The through-line between his work with the Dead and High Comfort’s “trippy, SoCal hippie vibe” are undeniable. (Saunders is also a musician himself, and promises that his album Beach Burners, out in August, will be accompanied by “tons of merch” in his signature “sand and streetwear” style.)

“When I’m buying merch, I want it to be something that I would wear all the time [and that is also on par with high fashion],” says Mohamed. “[Typically] if I buy a T-shirt from a musician, it’s just a [wholesale] Gildan tee that’s too long, too tight in the chest, and loses its shape after one or two washes.”

But the season is changing, with music-obsessed designers bringing the precision and craft of the haute back to pieces that were once an afterthought. Mohamed has certainly come a long way from creating German gas-brand logos, and designing garments for fledgling fashion outlets. And while he could easily cross into full-time fashion, his love of music design remains. Even after his success with chart-toppers, his white whale remained Burna Boy, a personal favorite who had rejected his first four pitches before finally connecting. That’s the kind of effort that goes into fashion design at the highest level.

“Like anything else," Mohamed says, "quality is what keeps people coming.”

A version of this story appears in L'OFFICIEL USA's June 2025 issue, featuring Orlando Bloom as its cover star.