The Black-Owned Menswear Brands to Support on Black Pound Day

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"Not for you, for everyone" a mantra that launched Telfar – the brainchild of Liberian-American designer Telfar Clemens – into fashion's canon.

The logo, a recognisable 'T' encased in a 'C', now possesses as much cachet as much older labels, and better yet, gives actual meaning to the term 'affordable luxury'.

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Heron Preston is a busy man. Co-founding the now defunct DJ collective/menswear label Been Trill with Off-White's Virgil Abloh, and Kanye crewmates Justin Saunders and Matthew Williams, the designer, creative director and artist launched his eponymous brand in 2017 to much fanfare.

That's because his clothes – a hi-vis blend of tailoring and utilitarianism – feel legitimately new. In a saturated menswear market, that's no mean feat.

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Armando Cabral has seen the world. Born in Guinea Bissau, brought up in Portugal, schooled in England and now living in New York, the footwear and accessories designer pulls all four (and a little bit more) into a cohesive luxury line that offers bespoke pieces.

That means clean, classic loafers, and derbies, and sneakers, and every other mode of footwear you can think of. But rather than play it safe, Cabral manages to elevate his brand with small touches here and there that don't dilute a general easy-to-wearness.

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Rumour has it that, upon turning 8, Ozwald Boateng received his first proper suit: a purple mohair two-piece. And thus began a fascination with clothes, the sorted that twisted British convention into something more colourful, but still classic.

This fascination led to a small, successful studio on Portobello Road in 1986. So successful it was that, 45 years later, Boateng became a name with much cachet in the menswear world with well-made, polished tailoring – and one with an OBE. If you're into suits with just the right amount of statement, choose Ozwald Boateng. Or a purple mohair two-piece.

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Workers, unite: A-Cold-Wall* is the utilitarian factorywear brand of a very well-dressed (if not slightly dystopian) future, and headed up by LVMH prize finalist Samuel Ross.

Founded in 2015, the protégé of Virgil Abloh has taken his homegrown venture to Milan Fashion Week by way of several standout shows in London, and a recent collab with sub-culture icon Dr Martens. The future is bright. And probably dressed in a navy boiler suit.

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Despite a 9:30am slot on a fashion week schedule (deemed hellish, by jaded editors' standards), Bianca Saunders' Autumn/Winter '20 presentation played to a packed house – and the group of boys dancing in baggy, buttery shirts and trousers were emblematic of her signature approach to men's style.

This Catford-hailing designer pulls directly from her time growing up as third generation British Caribbean: a culture she's described as "quite conservative, but [with] a massive contrast with mainstream dancehall culture, which is a lot more raw and sexual," in an interview with Between Borders magazine.

That contrast makes for some very unique, but pleasantly wearable clothes.

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Grace Wales-Bonner's namesake brand is, unarguably, one of fashion's success stories of the last decade. As one of the biggest names on the British menswear scene, the Central Saint Martin's grad has found (and claimed) her stake by pouring Afro-Atlantic sentiments into the mould of classic European silhouettes, thus making something new entirely.

It's relaxed tailoring for the ambassador's ball in a retro-futurist vision of New London; it's tracksuits with all the structure and construction of a two-piece suit; it's really great fashion, tl;dr, and one that appeals to both sides of the aisle in previous collaborations with Dior and Adidas.

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You can tell Nicholas Daley enjoys what he does. As in really enjoys it. Take one look at his live musical performances during show season – and the signature carousel of technicolour print clashes – and there's an immediate sense of pure, proper joy, underscored by a lack of self-consciousness that so often permeates other shows.

No po-faced models. No robotic poses. Instead, the designer mines his Jamaican-Scottish roots for inspiration, and the resulting tartans, cricket jumpers, baggy trousers and kaftan-like shirting combine under a sunny banner that celebrates mixed heritage.

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Though founder and creative director Joe Casely-Hayford sadly passed away last year, his signature relaxed, quietly eccentric tailoring lives on in the namesake label that is now steered by his son, Charlie.

Suits are polished, but punchy; informed by Savile Row, but not beholden to its rulebook. And, in the 37 years since Casely-Hayford started out as independent label Kit, it's become an internationally renowned venture that's still London to its core, and still unapologetically Casely-Hayford.

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Priya Ahluwalia is the essence of what London Fashion Week means on the show circuit. Her clothes are colourful, and obdurate; refusing to buff edges and relishing any opportunity for asymmetry.

Which, unsurprisingly, was the plan all along. "Even if I sell 30 grey patchwork sweatshirts, none of them are exactly the same," the London-based designer told The Face in an interview last year. "I am speaking to that need for individuality and having something that is unique so you are more likely to treasure it."

A near-custom piece, then, and one made all the more individual by the designer's frequent nods to her Indian and Nigerian heritage. Everyone's story is different, after all, and Ahluawalia's is there in each and every stitch.

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Launching her eponymous label in 2007, Martine Rose puts the many disparate iterations of London's history within touching distance, and under one roof.

There's the Glamden Lock of 2004's heady indie rock days. There's the razor-sharp shoulders of a New Romantic (a few ruffles, too naturally). But there's also rave culture, and terrace culture, innate self-deprecation on T-shirts: "Martine Rose is probably the best designer in the world". It's kaleidoscopic menswear at its finest, peppered with references to her South London home in a large Jamaican family. They too find a happy home in her work.

Perhaps those T-shirts have a bit of truth to them.