8 names to remember this spring

Taken from the spring ​’25 print issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

We’re PKs!” declare models Gloria and Mimi (AKA Miriam) with proud flourishes. To the uninitiated, that’s Pastor’s Kids. As the twins explain, the offspring of professionally religious parents (in the twins’ case, their father) have a reputation for being particularly wild. We can’t speak to their personal lives, but certainly the Pescaru sisters have packed a lot into their 20 years. Born in Cluj, Romania, the family moved to London when they were three, then won the US visa lottery a decade later and moved to North Carolina. At 18, the twins returned to London, this time alone. In the two years since, the girls have walked the SS24 Masha Popova show, featured in a Mowalola campaign shot by Aidan Zamiri and pouted for the camera in Yardsale. On the whole, their personalities seem similar, at times pensive – but more often fizzing with excitement, a fact that Gloria attributes to their star signs: Cancers with a Sagittarius moon and rising placments. ​“We’re like a Jacuzzi!” she laughs. ​“Water with fire!”. TL

Naqqash Khalid didn’t plan to be a filmmaker. In fact, when the Mancunian wrote and directed 2023’s In Camera, he was pursuing a PhD in English and had no connections to the film industry that his debut feature skewers. His position as an outsider, however, gave him a singular perspective that lends the film a sharp and occasionally surreal feel, as it explores the depressing audition cycle of Aden, a young South Asian actor played by Nabhaan Rizwan. ​“I met Nabhaan first and after that I just cancelled all the other meetings,” he says. ​“When you’re making a film, the clarifying force is trusting your gut.” Naqqash’s tactic paid off and, after showing at the London Film Festival, the film was picked up by Mubi. Next up: a newly completed short film and a second feature in the works with BBC Film. When he’s not writing or directing like any good filmmaker, the 31-year-old is always at the cinema, though he says he has a rule about snacks. ​“I only eat popcorn if the film is American. If it’s something like a reprint of [Claire Denis’s 1999 masterpiece] Beau Travail, it ain’t going to be with popcorn.” The best snack for European arthouse cinema? Answers on a postcard… TL

DJ duo FAFF met in London as fresh-faced teens in 2015, when Elliot arrived from Edinburgh and Orny pitched up from Marseille. ​“We just immediately got along, even though we were quite different, and started fannying about with music and stupid synths that we didn’t even know how to use,” says Elliot. Their meet-cute came via that ground zero for many of the city’s up-and-coming DJs: East London queer institution Dalston Superstore. Now a fully-fledged duo playing clubs and festivals across Europe, the 28-year-olds are making a name for themselves by breathing fresh, fun air into the capital’s nightlife scene through their bouncy, acidic productions and unpretentious parties that have them, and their enthusiastic crowds, smiling and two-stepping hard. Right now, they’re working on completing an upcoming EP and gearing up to a live show that they hope will premiere in a ​“small and reassuring” London venue. But their next biggest aspiration, according to Elliot? ​“We’d love to work with [legendary producer] William Orbit. We love him.” TL

No bones about it: ​“Sundance changed my life,” says Ruaridh Mollica. A little over a year ago, Sebastian– in which the Scottish-Italian plays the title character, a journalist who undertakes sex work to better research his debut novel– premiered at the American film festival. The soulful, London-set indie – in UK cinemas this April – was a critics’ hit in Utah and landed the actor US management immediately afterwards. The acclaim rolled all the way through to the London Film Festival, leading to Ruaridh being nominated for Breakthrough Performance at the British Independent Film Awards. For a no-holds-barred performance from the 25-year-old, who’s been acting since childhood, it was only fitting. ​“The physical part I didn’t even expect,” Ruaridh says of a powerful, moving film in which he’s in almost every single shot – and frequently filmed sex scenes. ​“Part of me was like, ​‘Oh, you know, I’ve had sex before, it shouldn’t be that difficult…’ But then you realise you’re doing it 16 times, one after the other after the other. My God, you’re exhausted!” CML

When Northumberland-born designer Genevieve Devine was just six years old, she made her first piece of clothing. ​“I watched One Million Years B.C., with Raquel Welch as a cavewoman,” she says of the 1966 fantasy adventure flick that saw the American actor in a wardrobe of revealing fur undies. ​“So I cut all my underwear into what I called ​‘early girl knickers’. From then on, nothing was safe!” Now 32 and running her self-titled label, Genevieve retains that same half-on, half‑o! ethos – albeit with a more glamorous twist. She crafts leather cut-out bodices from reconstructed satchels (“I love when the garments show their working”) and delicate necklaces adorned with pearls on silver spoons, gaining the attention of cool girls such as artist/​photographer Nadia Lee Cohen and Caroline Polachek, designing stage costumes for the latter’s tours. The designer herself is equally stylish, though she remains modest about her day-to- day uniform: ​“Whatever doesn’t smell too bad from the floor,” she says with a laugh, ​“and it depends on the deadline!” TL

The work of Birmingham designer Waj Hussain has something of the night about it. Forever seeking nocturnal inspo for his pieces, the 28-year-old is ​“interested in the club space as a place of fantasy” and crafts bags emblazoned with cheeky prints of vintage gay porn mags and T‑shirts bearing slogans such as ​“dealer inquiries invited”. You can find his garms online at art-school-student favourite Fantastic Toiles, displayed on crumpled bedsheets as if they’ve only just been stripped o! after a sweaty night out. Fittingly, Waj began his apprenticeship after dark: he got his creative start in 2016, working under club kid designer Charles Jeffrey as a videographer. That experience dovetailed nicely with his leisure-time enthusiasm for a proper London party – a habit he maintains to this day. In fact, so dedicated to the sesh is Waj that, even when money’s tight, you’ll always see him out – eventually. ​“I just skip the club and go straight to the afters,” he says, grinning. Well, it’s research, no? TL