More than half a millennium after his death, Leonardo da Vinci is still one of the most well-known artists in the world. The rare artist who, when you name some of his most iconic paintings, most people will immediately picture the artwork in their minds: the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, his Vitruvian Man notebook sketches.

We have a lot of labels for da Vinci — artist, scientist, polymath — but a new documentary seeks to understand da Vinci as a person.

Documentary filmmakers Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband, David McMahon, are the co-directors of a new two-part miniseries called Leonardo da Vinci.

Ken and Sarah Burns sat down with All Things Considered host Scott Detrow to talk about what they learned about the human experience from studying da Vinci.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Scott Detrow: Ken, I want to start with you. You have made a career out of telling American stories. What was it about Leonardo da Vinci that made you want to step outside that lane that you have carved so well?

Ken Burns: Sarah and Dave. I was an old dog that needed to be reminded that I could still learn a new trick. I’d had this sort of sense that I only did American topics. I think the rest sort of plows from that. They moved to Italy for a year to work on this, and sort of realize that this person is one of the most extraordinary gifts to humanity that we’ve ever had, arguably the person of the last millennium. And lots of people could make a run for that statement, but Leonardo is a hugely inspirational figure.

(From left) David McMahon, Sarah Burns and Ken Burns arrive at the New York Film Critics Circle awards dinner in January 2013 after co-directing the documentary “The Central Park Five.”

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Scott Detrow: There are so many different elements of da Vinci that I think fascinate us 500-plus years later. What to you is his most remarkable aspect? What to you is the draw that makes you go, like, “I can’t I can’t believe he did that”?

Sarah Burns: I think it’s really his curiosity, and that’s what leads him to want to explore everything. He’s obsessed with nature and knowing everything there is to know about it, and that’s what leads him down all of these different paths that, to him, are entirely connected. He does not see boundaries between these disciplines that today we would say, “Art is over here and science is over here.” It’s all part of this grand experiment to try to understand the world. And so for him, it’s all process. And that’s the amazing thing about him is that he is looking at all of these things, and in each case, pushing it further, wanting to know more, asking more questions, rejecting authority in many cases on a subject, in order to figure out what the reality, the truth of this thing. And it’s extraordinary to see that.

Ken Burns: I think Sarah is right that this focus on nature and relentlessly questioning everything, it makes him see that it was necessary to know everything about the human body, the circulatory system, the skeletal system — the everything — in order to paint the Mona Lisa, and vice versa for these other things. So what happens is that what Leonardo leads you to is the essential essence of the human project. What is the nature of this universe? Why are we here? Why am I here? What is my purpose? Where am I going? These are essential questions that our daily life distracts us from. I mean, left us no kind of diaries of what he felt, but he left us thousands of pages of what he thought.

The Virgin of the Rocks at the National Gallery in London in 2019.

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Scott Detrow: One of the most interesting things about da Vinci is the fact the guy was kind of a procrastinator. So many of these great paintings weren’t finished. So many of these commissions took a very long time. What do you make of that aspect of it?

Ken Burns: I think procrastination isn’t quite the right word. I think it’s really this relentless questioning of the universe, as Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker, says in our film. So you see in a great painting like the Adoration of the Magi — that is an abandoned work — that perhaps the questions that he is asking have not been answered or won’t be answered by this particular project, and he’s moved away. So he’s not in the business of art. He has to survive, he has to get commissions, he has to live — but he’s about these higher pursuits. So he’ll walk away because he’s either satisfied or he’s not satisfied and needs to turn his attention to something else; to study water dynamics or to study the flight of birds, or to understand things about gravity or anatomy, or all of these things that he’s constantly pursuing. And he didn’t invent the helicopter or the submarine or these things, but he, in his drawings, prefigured our own pursuits later on. And that makes him incredibly modern.

Documentarian Ken Burns conducts a question and answer session in June in College Park.

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Scott Detrow: I want to pause from the Renaissance for a moment and talk about current events. Because, Ken, we talked about the fact that this is a non-American subject that you tackle, but you have been telling the story of America throughout your career. And I have to ask, a week after this presidential election, what do you think the story of America over the past decade is? What is the story that’s happening right now, in the middle of the moment, at least? How are you thinking about the currents that we’re seeing and the choices the American people are making?

Ken Burns: The first thing is that you want to make sure that you don’t superimpose a story. You don’t want to tell people what it is. You have to let the story emerge. The other thing is that human nature never changes. So these are not unfamiliar events. Historians are, for the most part, happy because we know that there is existing precedent, and we know that people get through things and that there are challenging times and there’s unexpected parts. This is why documentary, to me, is so much more fruitful than making stuff up. And so I have to wait and give some distance. And so I think that what you have to do is exhale a little bit, and we cannot look away. We have to dedicate ourselves to telling complicated stories. And when you do that, then you’ve got the tools. I mean, there’s no greater teacher than the history you don’t know, and that allows you to meet a moment with a little bit more courage and a little bit more purpose and determination.

Scott Detrow: Let’s end on Renaissance Italy. And I want to end this interview by asking what your favorite work of art by Leonardo is, and why? Now this project is done and about to be shown to everybody, what are you still thinking about?

Sarah Burns: The one that moved me the most, I think just standing in front of it, was his Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. It’s larger than I had realized, and it’s been restored within the last decade or so, and so the colors are vibrant in a way that we unfortunately don’t always get with these paintings. I was stunned standing there. And we were lucky to get to go there and film overnight at the Louvre when it was empty, and sort of just experience it on our own, which was a really moving thing to be sort of up close and personal with that one.

A visitor takes a picture of The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne in the Louvre in 2012.

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Ken Burns: For me, I have an experience where I was scouting in advance of Sarah’s filming in 2019 and in an empty Louvre with the paintings going up, and I passed by this thing called the Virgin of the Rocks. And, you know, I read the thing, I went, “Huh.” You know, “Another great background and whatever.” And then, in our film, through an interview that Sarah and Dave did with Monsignor Timothy Verdon, a Catholic priest but also an art historian, he narrates a version of this painting that is new to me. And it woke me up from the person who saw it, that basically this woman who knows through all time that she is to bear the son of God who must die. Her maternal instincts in this painting, she’s trying to restrain John the Baptist. She’s trying to reach her son, but an angel isn’t there. And so you have, as he says, this larger purpose of drawing. You’re seeing a mother with the natural maternal instincts. And not just the people in three dimensions, but the intentions of their mind — what they’re feeling, what they’re thinking. And that, to me, is just what we’re all here about, all of us.

When Swedish brand Hodakova won the LVMH prize this year, it felt extra significant. The finalists for the most sought-after prize in fashion — awarded annually — are meant to foreshadow the future of the industry, and not since Paris-based label Marine Serre won in 2017 has a brand centering reuse and upcycling taken the title. Shortly after the LVMH awards, lauded Japanese designer Junya Watanabe presented looks that repurposed techwear, tires and foam blocks in his Summer/Spring ’25 womenswear show at Paris Fashion Week. It all feels different this time, like we’re finally entering the upcycling era.

While the establishment is just starting to adapt, there’s a whole wave of young designers for whom this ethos has been baked into the business from the very beginning, rather than clumsily implemented later on due to (in many cases) increasing pressure for transparency and responsible production. The truth is, reuse has been the foundation for emerging designers for decades (see: cult ’90s and early-2000s New York labels like Susan Cianciolo and Imitation of Christ), offering a chance to participate in an otherwise exclusive industry. Last year a Vogue India article’s headline read, pointedly: “Owning a one-of-a-kind upcycled garment is the new wardrobe flex.” But maybe it’s always been?

Jester wears Compost vest and bottoms, Eytys shoes.

Sky wears Sami Miro dress, Hugo Kreit earrings, Blumarine shoes, VidaKush anklet, model’s own necklaces.

“It’s a fascinating challenge to see how designers incorporate their own codes into the technique of upcycling,” says Faith Robinson, head of content at Global Fashion Agenda, a Copenhagen-based nonprofit dedicated to creating a net-positive fashion industry through research publications, events and policy engagement. “When it comes to garment production, the storytelling side of upcycling is unmatched. Take the spoon dress from Hodakova. Where did those spoons come from? How were they collected? Why? Or Buzigahill, the Uganda-based upcycling label that makes amazing pieces but also tells the story of textile waste.”

When it comes to reuse, scaling up and sourcing are issues yet to be solved, but emerging designers are willing and excited to get creative to reimagine the current system — they just need more support. “We don’t see the process of our clothes being made, so a lot of people don’t realize that the design choices completely define the sustainability credentials of our clothes,” Robinson tells me.

Young retailers like APOC store, Japan’s Season, NYC’s Tangerine and L.A.’s Maimoun focus on independent and emerging designers, with a growing selection of exciting brands from around the world that prove the appeal and potential of upcycling and reuse. In New York, there are brands like Giovanna Flores, Everyone’s Mother, SC103, Collina Strada and La Réunion Studio. In Europe, there’s Conner Ives, Rave Review, Ponte, (Di)vision and Marine Serre. New Delhi has Rkive City and L.A. has Suay Shop, Bobby Cabbagestalk and Rio Sport. Rather than remaining segmented from fashion at large, relegated to novelty or niche, the following brands (and many more) show why upcycling and reuse can, and should, be the new normal.

April wears Sentimiento top, Object From Nothing bottoms, Tecovas boots, Maria Tash earrings, jewelry by Spinelli Kilcollin, Emma Walton, Other People’s Property.

Hodakova

2024 is the year of Hodakova. Motivated by sustainability, Ellen Hodakova Larsson, 32, grew up on a farm an hour outside of Stockholm, and credits her parents’ ingenuity and resourcefulness as a major inspiration for her designs. This is clear in her use of unconventional materials like spoons, rosette prize ribbons, belts and silver plates — everyday items that she recontextualizes to stunning effect in dresses, skirts, and tops. Here’s hoping that under Larsson’s eye, her converted-goods philosophy will take hold of the industry at large.

Ellen Poppy Hill

“I’m kind of a scavenger,” U.K.-based designer Ellen Poppy Hill says of her approach to secondhand fabric sourcing. “I never know what I like but I really know what I don’t like. My fingertips squeal when they don’t like the fabric. It’s a bit of a magpie process.” Hill grew up in Southeast London in an eclectic and playful household with a set designer mother and an actor father. Her first collection, “Constant State of Repair,” debuted this year and was born from her patternless, freehand design method. An Ellen Poppy Hill garment tells a story, like the long black dress covered in lifelike mice figures; the cap with sewing ephemera, buttons and toggles attached by pins; the upcycled dress that appears to be taped together at the seams; or the recycled wool blankets turned into bomber jackets with exaggerated zipper-shaped cutouts. Collections come from time, Hill tells me, to research, draw, think and read. “A lot of the time it’s about listening to the fabrics first,” she says. “I’m focused on finding fabrics that tell a story about why I’m attached to them, why they make me feel a certain way.”

Jester wears Sentimiento top, FreddieFrances bottoms, Rock Town Hollywood belt, Eytys shoes, Zucca bracelet.

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Hood Baby

Hood Baby founder Anny Saray Martinez grew up at the swap meets of L.A. “My mom was a vendor at swap meets and I would go to work with her,” Martinez tells me. “When I got older I started to frequent the other fabric vendors and purchase their leftovers from them.” Motivated by sustainability, a love for ’90s and early-2000s fashion and Latina pop stars like Selena, it’s no surprise that Martinez has been embraced by prominent young pop stars like Tinashe and Tyla. Her body-conscious designs range from feminine upcycled miniskirts to sporty football jersey reworks. “I’ve loved fashion my whole life and have definitely done the homework,” says Martinez.

Sky wears Hood Baby top, Sami Miro bottoms, Ancuta Sarca shoes.

All-In

All-In is the life of the party. Founding duo Benjamin Barron and Bror August Vestbø initially bonded over their love of reuse, enamored with the idea that with the right technique, you could create something covetable from nothing. Since presenting their first collection in 2019, their fashion shows have become a must-see, where models like Colin Jones bring the downtown-meets-uptown attitude of the brand to life in redesigned dresses of denim and polka dot chiffon. Charli XCX and Rihanna are also All-In girls.

Nicklas Skovgaard

Copenhagen’s Nicklas Skovgaard found his way to fashion design through weaving. He taught himself on a small loom, creating intricate swatches of fabric, before expanding into ready-to-wear and formally launching his brand in 2020. Often credited as sparking an ’80s revival in fashion, his voluminous, one-of-a-kind party dresses come to life through a combination of contrasting thrifted fabrics like denim, taffeta, chiffon, leather and lace. Sequins and florals also feature heavily. The potential of upcycling absolutely shines with Skovgaard’s tough yet elegant touch.

Jester wears Hood Baby top, Object From Nothing bottoms, Vaquera hat, Kiko Kostadinov shoes, Zucca bracelet.

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April wears Sentimiento dress, Givenchy shoes, Maria Tash earrings, jewelry by Spinelli Kilcollin, Emma Walton, Other People’s Property.

Object From Nothing

Partners and founders of Object From Nothing, Meridith Shook and Jacob Schlater met at the University of Cincinnati while studying architectural engineering and product design, respectively. OFN came to life after their move to a studio space in L.A. last year.

“The No. 1 driver for us is dispelling the myth that reuse is just DIY or lower quality than ‘new’ fashion,” says Schlater from his studio. “When fashion content is shared on Instagram, there’s very little focus on the quality, construction and longevity of pieces. Instead, the focus is on the value of the image that you can get with a piece. It doesn’t matter how the garment actually feels to wear, it matters how it looks like it feels to wear.” Adding value to forgotten materials and reimagining them into exceptional everyday pieces, Shook and Schlater embrace extreme resourcefulness, incorporating everything from metal washers they find on the street to deer antler buttons sourced by Schlater’s mom at a garage sale in his hometown of Hillsborough, Ohio. Inspired by designers like John Alexander Skelton and Paul Harnden, OFN treats even the most unassuming blue striped button-up — made from an upcycled vintage cot cover, no less — with the utmost consideration, transformed by their hands into a wearable artifact.

Compost

Tomo Givhan started exploring fashion design in 2021 after a formative trip to Japan, where he discovered traditional Japanese hand-stitching methods like boro and sashiko. Inspired by Japanese brand Kapital as well as antiques and indigo dyeing and distressing techniques, he set out to put his own spin on these traditional methods, resulting in soulful and layered patchwork creations made from carefully sourced vintage materials. “It’s kind of like painting for me,” Givhan says. “I’ve always gravitated toward vintage. I think the quality is better, the silhouettes are timeless and it’s accessible. There’s so much waste [in fashion] and I don’t want to be a part of that.” Based in L.A., Givhan plans to continue to grow the brand as organically as possible, recontextualizing the history of old garments and funneling them through the Compost lens.

Sky wears Nicklas Skovgaard dress, Hugo Kreit earrings, Margiela Tabi shoes.

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Buzigahill

In 2018, designer Bobby Kolade, armed with a masters in fashion design from the Academy of Arts Berlin Weissensee and experience at both Margiela and Balenciaga, returned to his native Uganda with the goal to invest in the local fashion economy. After some trial and error, Kolade began sourcing and redesigning clothing from the secondhand market in Uganda, a system that is sustained (and burdened) by excess clothing outsourced from the Global North. Handwoven baskets are adorned with fringe made from strips cut from multicolor T-shirts, and patchwork hoodies feature the brand’s signature triangle motif. “We’re sending the clothes back to where they came from,” Kolade told Vogue Business in 2022, “but we’ve imbued a Ugandan identity onto these pieces.”

Duran Lantink

One of Business of Fashion’s top 10 shows of the Spring/Summer 2025 season, and the recipient of the 2024 Karl Lagerfeld prize issued by LVMH, Duran Lantink had a phenomenal year. The Amsterdam- and Paris-based label offers surreal and seductive fashion that merges three-dimensional sculpting techniques with traditional handiwork, all made from a mix of recycled textiles, deadstock and new sustainable materials. Lantink’s inflated silhouettes — think Pokémon-esque, puffy cropped bomber jackets and button-ups, and spherical skirts that look like an inner-tube pool float — are a favorite of stylists and celebrities, appearing on the covers of magazines like POP, Interview, HommeGirls and Re-Edition.

Sky wears Sami Miro dress, Hugo Kreit earrings, Blumarine shoes, VidaKush anklet, model’s own necklaces.

Les Fleurs Studio

Paris-based Les Fleurs Studio is a self-described upcycling project by creative director and stylist Maria Bernad. Steeped in Gothic and Renaissance-era references, Bernad’s romantic designs feature almost exclusively antique lace and crochet in shades of cream and ivory, and sometimes black or the softest pink. Her intricate designs are very bridal-ready, and both Beyoncé and Jared Leto are fans.

Prototypes

In June of this year, the show on everyone’s radar — including Kanye West, who reportedly went out of his way to attend — was Prototypes. An upcycling and repurposing project by designers Laura Beham and Callum Pidgeon, Prototypes has a dark, direct energy in its balaclavas and black and red color scheme, conjuring Balenciaga, but upcycled. “Out with the new, in with the old” is part of their motto, and according to their website, they want to pave the way toward individual expression and sustainability-focused design, with their customers by their side.

Sami Miro Vintage

When Image staff writer Julissa James spoke to Sami Miró back in 2021, Miró was clear about her commitment to sourcing eco-friendly fabrics. “There’s really no other way,” she told James. “I don’t care if I could find the exact same fabric that’s a fourth of the price; I would still choose this.” Since then, Miró has stayed true to her values while making it to the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finals, and showing her first upcycled runway collection at New York Fashion Week in 2023. Her self-taught and intuitive design method remains sought after beyond her home base of L.A., and we’ll be watching to see where her scissors take her next.

Production: Mere Studios
Models: Jester Bulnes, April Kosky, Sky Michelle
Makeup: Valerie Vonprisk
Hair: Jocelyn Vega
Photo assistant: Saul Barrera
Styling assistant: Ron Ben
Photo intern: Khalil Bowens
Location: Projkt LA

Romany Williams is a writer, editor and stylist based on Vancouver Island, Canada. Her collaborators include SSENSE, Atmos, L.A. Times Image and more.