Colm Dillane brings his maximalist vision to South Beach, trading Paris runways for a full automotive theater production.
KidSuper is taking its Mercedes-Benz partnership out of Europe for the first time, and naturally, Colm Dillane’s doing it in Miami. The Dublin-born designer, known for turning biker jackets into haute couture and leather scraps into patchwork armor, is staging what amounts to a mobile art installation on South Beach. There’s a concept car at the center of it all, custom-built and probably the most aggressively styled vehicle Mercedes has greenlit in years.
The collaboration between KidSuper and Mercedes has been quietly building momentum since they first linked up, but this Miami show marks something different: the first time Dillane’s maximalist aesthetic has broken out of the Paris bubble where the brand usually operates. South Beach is louder, messier, and less interested in restraint than the European circuit. That’s exactly Dillane’s environment. Expect oversized proportions, clashing textures, and the kind of theatrical energy that makes traditional luxury uncomfortable.
The detail that separates this from typical car brand collabs is that Dillane isn’t just designing a special edition or slapping logos on leather seats. He’s treating the entire project like a wearable sculpture. The concept car itself becomes a physical extension of his design language, with the kind of obsessive material layering and textural depth that defines his runway shows. It’s art-car culture for people who actually care about the clothes, not just the vehicle. That’s the whole point of getting a designer like Dillane involved: Mercedes isn’t selling horsepower here, it’s selling vision.
