My name is Nikolay Stoyanov. I’m a third-year fashion student at New Bulgarian University, and I don’t really go to my lectures.
I’m not proud of that, but I’m also not ashamed.
I’m an upcycle designer, and I think fashion right now is suffocating under its own perfection. Other than all the waste we are making by mass producing, everything is too clean and boring. So finished. So optimized. So Characterless. Clothes don’t look lived in - they look approved. Like they were designed by a committee and then filtered through Instagram.
The sewing machine isn’t even romantic anymore. It’s just a machine that connects two things together so they can be sold faster. Stitch. Ship. Repeat.
I’m not interested in perfect, and I dont make clothes to behave. Niko Cascada isn’t clothing in the polite sense. It’s closer to painting - except you can walk inside it. It breathes. It sweats. It wrinkles. It lives on you instead of a wall.
I want people to feel something when they see my work. Confused. Attracted. Slightly uncomfortable. Curious. Anything but neutral.
If you want safe, there are a thousand brands for that.

I’ve changed my name more times than I can count.
I honestly don’t know how people choose a username once and keep it forever. This might be a bit of a yap session but.. growing up, I would spend half of my playtime in games just customizing my character’s clothes, changing my account name, my mounts, my cape - whatever I could edit.
In like 3-5^th grade I played a ton of Minecraft , it was my literally my whole world at one point. Id play it in the morning, think about it in school, go home and play it, and then dream about it. Rinse repeat. Anyways, I’d change my name almost every month, going from something over-the-top and performative like iTz_Infected_PvP, to something inappropriate like PUTKA, to a rare three-letter name I had - qxf. Those were hard to get at the time. You had to wait for the exact moment a name became available, which was 30 days after someone changed it, and then race other people to enter your credentials first hahah.
I was constantly trying on new identities. I’d use random YouTubers’ skins I found, copying whoever inspired me after watching some MCSG video. It was honestly sad. Looking back, I think I was just searching for something that would express me the most - but it was the wrong way of going about it, because I was searching for that in other people instead of myself.
You might think “oh its just minecraft”, no bro it was so real (ne sum filmiran), it was that insecure dawg in me
Although it took until recently - even after I had already started making clothes - I’d say I’m on a good healthy ending the problem path now. I’ve had other issues with similar roots, much more serious than Minecraft, but we’ll stick to Minecraft and names for now. A background like that, with all its challenges, made me more curious, detail-driven, and open to growth.
Niko Cascada is the first name I’ve chosen and genuinely stood behind. It feels like me. It just randomly came to my mind, I liked the sound of it. It reminds me of a romantic Luchador wrestler. And even though I’ll probably go crazy and change my name again at some point, because im just human and a name is just a fucking name - this one represents where I am right now.

To be honest, I’ve always felt like it’s in me. Not in some goofy cliché way, I swear.
I remember when my favorite thing to do was to transmogrify my parents Diablo 3 characters and dye their clothes. The game was brand new then, and gold was way harder to come by and stack. Such customizations would cost in-game gold, but my parents would never limit me, although they would always be short on affording crafts when playing. Something fun and way earlier than this was at my Pogacha, which is a Bulgarian tradition where on the 40th day of the child’s birth they place him in front of all kinds of different objects that have something to do with a profession. It’s like predicting what the kid is going to do. My mom told me my dad was pushing the stethoscope closer toward me so I’d favor it, which is pretty funny. I chose scissors, and as fuck it makes sense. Although I don’t think I chose scissors to cut patterns super carefully and behave. I think I chose them to cut things apart. See what they are hiding from me ;p
A big spike in my interest in fashion was when I started skating back in 2020, and I had found this skate collective called 10C41. They had liberty spikes, colored buzzcuts with spiderwebs drawn on them, camo, leopard whatever patterns, and heavyweight G-STAR denim with 1500 pockets. This is crazy and all, but the holy shit moment for me was when I saw either Kidbronze, Killagomez or Vincent Nava, which are members of 10C41 but I forgot who it was out of the three, wearing two mismatched shoes.
One of the shoes was a Nike Air Jordan 1 Bred, and the other was a Vans Sk8-Hi Black sneaker. I can’t put into words how blown away I was by this, and on top of everything, in the clip he was skating the hood of a police car. In my eyes, being 15 and all, these guys were the shit. The Air Jordan 1 was the same exact height as the Sk8-Hi. He thought of that himself. I wanted to recreate this since I already had these Vans Sk8-Hi Nightmare Before Christmas edition skate shoes, and I bought these Russell Westbrook Air Jordan 1s from OLX for like 50 lv. From then on, my fashion leveled up rapidly, wearing Lacoste cashmere vests as a tee or spray-painting my clothes and drawing the OFWGKTA cat (if you know, you know) hahah.
Afterwards, it’s just learning to sew and evolving more, meeting people with interests alike and finding yourself. The thing I love most about fashion is that it’s the most direct way of expressing yourself. I don’t have to say a single word to anyone to get a message across; you can just look at me and imagine what’s going on inside.