Tell us about the gestation of the vintage festival…
We started off selling second hand clothes in 1980, myself and my wife Gerardine on Camden Market. I played in a band and all our lives, from when we met in a disco on a Northern Soul dancefloor, all our lives it’s what we’ve done: music, fashion, art and design. Then a few years ago we were at a music festival as a family and we just felt that we’d had enough of them; that there could be something better, and there could be something more, and maybe festivals are a great idea in that they get everyone together but that you dress down when you go to listen to music and it’s not a celebration of dressing up. Everybody’s there in wellies and scruffy. It didn’t appeal to us because we lived our lives putting glamour with music and putting art and design with music; it’s not about dressing down in your scruffs. So the idea was to create some kind of festival that was more glamorous; that allowed you to dress up, that was about dressing up. And then we also thought that there needs to be an event that celebrated the history of British creativity looked at the history of it, but also put it into a modern context and looked at where it’s taken us now. Why at Southbank and not in a rural area?
We were invited to bring it to the Southbank as part of the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, which is the greatest festival that Britain’s ever put on. The Southbank is our favourite bit of London, it’s London’s creative quarter and we also like the idea of never doing things the same all the time. We’ve always been like that as designers and we did it with Red or Dead, where it was always changing and we’ve done it with Hemingway Design; and there’s no reason to change that philosophy. Change is good. What do you think is the difference between retro and vintage?
Well, there’s no comparison. Retro is about fancy dress, about people dressing up fancy dress hire clothes - a Michael Jackson afro wig with a pair of flares, or a girl getting a psychedelic dress and wearing some white boots and a white plastic hat. That’s retro and it’s crap, basically. Vintage is about timeless, classic design; something that stands the test of time and is not a joke. Retro is a film like Austin Powers, vintage is a Hitchcock film, or maybe a film like ‘Brief Encounter’. What is your favourite period fashion-wise?
I think there are things to be taken from all of them, but my personal favourite is the decade that I grew up in: the ‘70s. Starting off with Glam Rock, I went to see David Bowie in ’73 when I was 12 years old and was influenced heavily by that. Then Northern Soul and Punk and Post-Punk and New Romantic... all of that happened. The decade started with being able to go and see David Bowie, then you can go through it and see The Clash, the Buzzcocks, dance to Disco, dance to Northern Soul and end it with Joy Division and New Romantic. What a hell of a decade. What do you think of the evolution of fashion and design in the last years? Any new movement you support?
I think at the moment things are pretty exciting because you’ve got, number one: the largest number of young people ever studying design and therefore the colleges are very strong at the moment. You’ve got a lot of young people coming out, having to be creative because the jobs aren’t there, so a lot of people are starting up businesses of their own. I think it’s quite an exciting time and I think if you look at what’s happening in club culture at the moment there’s a real DIY ethic going on. The superclubs are dying and the cooler kids are becoming club kids again. You’ve got the likes of Low Life and Electric Minds hosting club nights in galleries and spaces and there’s a new movement going on fuelled by places like East London and the Northern Quarter in Manchester. The DIY thing is great. I don’t think we’re in a dull period, let’s put it that way. Do you consider yourself to be nostalgic for the past?
No, not at all. Like a lot of designers you look at the past to inform the things that are happening at the moment and I think you’re a fool if you ignore what’s already happened and just brush it under the carpet, because good design is good design. There was great clothing in the 1940s – Dior’s New Look still looks as fresh today as it did back then and people’s bodies haven’t changed that much: a pair of narrow trousers is a pair of narrow trousers. They were around in 1961 with Mods and skinny jeans are back in now, it doesn’t mean that they should never be worn again. Why shouldn’t they? What’s your other choice? Well you can wear one short leg and one long leg, or one flared leg and one tight leg, but you’d look a bit daft. It’s not about nostalgia, it’s about what works. What inspires you the most?
Well, just doing something that people will like and enjoy. It depends what you’re designing; if you’re designing housing (as Hemingway Design have done in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear) you’re going to impact massively on people’s quality of life, if you’re designing a pair of trousers you want them to fit well and for somebody to feel good in them. There’s a big difference in different elements of design. If you’re designing a festival it’s about people having a good time. The inspiration behind Vintage was to provide another kind of festival. There are no other festivals around like Vintage and that was the whole point of doing something that was different and would appeal to a variety of people. What is your favourite outfit for a woman?
I wouldn’t say there was one particular outfit, but I think women are very lucky because they can get away with more change than men ever can and they’ve got more of a choice. I’ve no one favourite outfit, although I think the ‘20s were probably one of the most glamorous decades and I think it’s great that fashion always returns to that ‘20s ethic and does it in a new way. It did it in the ‘70s in the kind of Studio 54 type of period and we’re going to be doing a lot of that at Vintage this year. But there’s also again now quite a strong ‘20s influence coming through, but the great thing about fashion is that it very rarely apes something that happened before, it just puts it in a modern context, and I think that’s quite an important thing. For a man?
I’ve always liked clean lines on a man and the three buttoned early ‘60s suit worn with a nice pair of Oxford’s or brogues is a really nice look; and for summer wearing a nice pair of late-60’s cut trousers, like Levi’s sta-prest is a look that is so relevant today and obviously is being done today by all the big designers. But yeah, just clean lines. Why is fashion important?
When I look back, I met my wife through fashion: she was on the dancefloor in a club called Angels in Burnley and she was dressed really well. They were all clothes that she’d made herself, although I didn’t know that at the time, and she was made up lovely and dancing in a fashionable way, dancing to the fashionable music of the time. So in that respect, it’s often the first route into seeing “what somebody’s about”. If there wasn’t fashion and everybody just dressed dowdily there’d be a lot less interaction, so fashion can be used in so many different ways: it can break down barriers, it can get you noticed, it can find you a partner. It can get you laid if that’s what you want to do! It works in so many different ways; it’s a very important human tool. It can be the first unlocking of a door. What would you say is particular to Britain and fashion/design?
Well it pisses it down with rain during summers like this and therefore we’re not lying on beaches doing nothing or lying in a park looking at blue sky we’re doing creative things, sitting inside a lot of the time and I think the weather has a massive impact on us. We’ve got a history of creativity to follow now, with all the youth culture movements that have happened and have spread from this country, so we’ve got a fantastic design education here and creativity just seems to pour out of Britain more than it does other countries. I can understand why places like Australia aren’t as creative because you might want to be outside playing sport or lying on a beach there but we have an environment that works for creativity I think.
We started off selling second hand clothes in 1980, myself and my wife Gerardine on Camden Market. I played in a band and all our lives, from when we met in a disco on a Northern Soul dancefloor, all our lives it’s what we’ve done: music, fashion, art and design. Then a few years ago we were at a music festival as a family and we just felt that we’d had enough of them; that there could be something better, and there could be something more, and maybe festivals are a great idea in that they get everyone together but that you dress down when you go to listen to music and it’s not a celebration of dressing up. Everybody’s there in wellies and scruffy. It didn’t appeal to us because we lived our lives putting glamour with music and putting art and design with music; it’s not about dressing down in your scruffs. So the idea was to create some kind of festival that was more glamorous; that allowed you to dress up, that was about dressing up. And then we also thought that there needs to be an event that celebrated the history of British creativity looked at the history of it, but also put it into a modern context and looked at where it’s taken us now. Why at Southbank and not in a rural area?
We were invited to bring it to the Southbank as part of the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain, which is the greatest festival that Britain’s ever put on. The Southbank is our favourite bit of London, it’s London’s creative quarter and we also like the idea of never doing things the same all the time. We’ve always been like that as designers and we did it with Red or Dead, where it was always changing and we’ve done it with Hemingway Design; and there’s no reason to change that philosophy. Change is good. What do you think is the difference between retro and vintage?
Well, there’s no comparison. Retro is about fancy dress, about people dressing up fancy dress hire clothes - a Michael Jackson afro wig with a pair of flares, or a girl getting a psychedelic dress and wearing some white boots and a white plastic hat. That’s retro and it’s crap, basically. Vintage is about timeless, classic design; something that stands the test of time and is not a joke. Retro is a film like Austin Powers, vintage is a Hitchcock film, or maybe a film like ‘Brief Encounter’. What is your favourite period fashion-wise?
I think there are things to be taken from all of them, but my personal favourite is the decade that I grew up in: the ‘70s. Starting off with Glam Rock, I went to see David Bowie in ’73 when I was 12 years old and was influenced heavily by that. Then Northern Soul and Punk and Post-Punk and New Romantic... all of that happened. The decade started with being able to go and see David Bowie, then you can go through it and see The Clash, the Buzzcocks, dance to Disco, dance to Northern Soul and end it with Joy Division and New Romantic. What a hell of a decade. What do you think of the evolution of fashion and design in the last years? Any new movement you support?
I think at the moment things are pretty exciting because you’ve got, number one: the largest number of young people ever studying design and therefore the colleges are very strong at the moment. You’ve got a lot of young people coming out, having to be creative because the jobs aren’t there, so a lot of people are starting up businesses of their own. I think it’s quite an exciting time and I think if you look at what’s happening in club culture at the moment there’s a real DIY ethic going on. The superclubs are dying and the cooler kids are becoming club kids again. You’ve got the likes of Low Life and Electric Minds hosting club nights in galleries and spaces and there’s a new movement going on fuelled by places like East London and the Northern Quarter in Manchester. The DIY thing is great. I don’t think we’re in a dull period, let’s put it that way. Do you consider yourself to be nostalgic for the past?
No, not at all. Like a lot of designers you look at the past to inform the things that are happening at the moment and I think you’re a fool if you ignore what’s already happened and just brush it under the carpet, because good design is good design. There was great clothing in the 1940s – Dior’s New Look still looks as fresh today as it did back then and people’s bodies haven’t changed that much: a pair of narrow trousers is a pair of narrow trousers. They were around in 1961 with Mods and skinny jeans are back in now, it doesn’t mean that they should never be worn again. Why shouldn’t they? What’s your other choice? Well you can wear one short leg and one long leg, or one flared leg and one tight leg, but you’d look a bit daft. It’s not about nostalgia, it’s about what works. What inspires you the most?
Well, just doing something that people will like and enjoy. It depends what you’re designing; if you’re designing housing (as Hemingway Design have done in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear) you’re going to impact massively on people’s quality of life, if you’re designing a pair of trousers you want them to fit well and for somebody to feel good in them. There’s a big difference in different elements of design. If you’re designing a festival it’s about people having a good time. The inspiration behind Vintage was to provide another kind of festival. There are no other festivals around like Vintage and that was the whole point of doing something that was different and would appeal to a variety of people. What is your favourite outfit for a woman?
I wouldn’t say there was one particular outfit, but I think women are very lucky because they can get away with more change than men ever can and they’ve got more of a choice. I’ve no one favourite outfit, although I think the ‘20s were probably one of the most glamorous decades and I think it’s great that fashion always returns to that ‘20s ethic and does it in a new way. It did it in the ‘70s in the kind of Studio 54 type of period and we’re going to be doing a lot of that at Vintage this year. But there’s also again now quite a strong ‘20s influence coming through, but the great thing about fashion is that it very rarely apes something that happened before, it just puts it in a modern context, and I think that’s quite an important thing. For a man?
I’ve always liked clean lines on a man and the three buttoned early ‘60s suit worn with a nice pair of Oxford’s or brogues is a really nice look; and for summer wearing a nice pair of late-60’s cut trousers, like Levi’s sta-prest is a look that is so relevant today and obviously is being done today by all the big designers. But yeah, just clean lines. Why is fashion important?
When I look back, I met my wife through fashion: she was on the dancefloor in a club called Angels in Burnley and she was dressed really well. They were all clothes that she’d made herself, although I didn’t know that at the time, and she was made up lovely and dancing in a fashionable way, dancing to the fashionable music of the time. So in that respect, it’s often the first route into seeing “what somebody’s about”. If there wasn’t fashion and everybody just dressed dowdily there’d be a lot less interaction, so fashion can be used in so many different ways: it can break down barriers, it can get you noticed, it can find you a partner. It can get you laid if that’s what you want to do! It works in so many different ways; it’s a very important human tool. It can be the first unlocking of a door. What would you say is particular to Britain and fashion/design?
Well it pisses it down with rain during summers like this and therefore we’re not lying on beaches doing nothing or lying in a park looking at blue sky we’re doing creative things, sitting inside a lot of the time and I think the weather has a massive impact on us. We’ve got a history of creativity to follow now, with all the youth culture movements that have happened and have spread from this country, so we’ve got a fantastic design education here and creativity just seems to pour out of Britain more than it does other countries. I can understand why places like Australia aren’t as creative because you might want to be outside playing sport or lying on a beach there but we have an environment that works for creativity I think.
