Business Of Fashion – 9 Juin 2016<\/p>\n
Can Craig Green Build a Real Business?<\/p>\n
On the eve of London Collections: Men, the designer talks exclusively to Tim Blanks about turning his undeniable creative vision into ‘product that people want to buy.’<\/p>\n
BY TIM BLANKS
\nLONDON, United Kingdom \u2014 Craig Green owns five t-shirts, two pairs of jeans and a jacket. It\u2019s one of his own, a quilted, lace-tied worker\u2019s jacket in indigo cotton that he based on the black jean jacket he\u2019d been wearing every day up till that point. It\u2019s all he needs, really, when his sturdy worker\u2019s frame wears it so well. It\u2019s always reassuring when a menswear designer looks good in his own clothes, even more so when those clothes pose a challenge to the sartorial status quo, as Green\u2019s often have. But since his first show for Spring\/Summer 2015, he\u2019s been able to successfully insinuate his design signatures into London\u2019s fashion lexicon, to the point where you can see Craig\u2019s Children being born in the next generation of talent coming through. That influence was recognised in May, when Green scooped \u00a3150,000 from the BFC\/GQ Designer Menswear Fund.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have a table this season, we won\u2019t have to sit on boxes.\u201d That\u2019s what his tiny team cried plaintively on news of his win. They\u2019ll find out whether that\u2019s the case when the money comes through in September. Before then, there\u2019s Green\u2019s show for Spring 2017, the highlight of the opening day of London Collections: Men. But first, the designer has to finish it.<\/p>\n
I thought last season\u2019s collection had echoes of North Africa in its desert tones and nomad stripes. They\u2019re more explicit for Spring 2017. Hand-blocked prints in bleached-out pastel tones are borrowed, says Green, from old Moroccan bed sheets. \u201cI wanted to go back to colour and print. We did it a lot at the beginning with all those hand-painted pieces, but not since then. Last season was faded, aged and washed. It was an older energy. So this time, we started with acidic, really saturated colour. But then we decided we didn\u2019t like that, so we bleached everything out, going for a more romantic feeling. Then it all shrank, so we had to make it all again. We\u2019re never really finished \u2018till the last minute.\u201d And that everything-changing-by-the-second chaos is, according to the designer, pretty par for the pre-show course in the Green atelier. \u201cWe\u2019re never really finished to the last minute, we tend to make a lot of samples,\u201d he adds drolly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something of a tradition for iconoclastic talents to announce themselves with their degree shows. Green\u2019s MA presentation set a fearless precedent with three-dimensional forms that turned men into mobile sculptures. Since then, his collections have consistently evoked pagan robes, priestly vestments, warriors, wicker men and workers from a medieval future. But he himself never tried to define his own aesthetic until he applied for the BFC\/GQ Fashion Fund. \u201cWe had to sit down and really work out what the brand was about. Why do we have shows like this? Why do we have products like this?\u201d The whole procedure was compounded by the fact that Green is working with a music producer for the first time on his new show. Frederic Sanchez being the industry\u2019s go-to guy for soundtracks that often provoke, occasionally bemuse, and always transcend mere music for models to walk to, this is quite a coup for Green, but he had no idea who Sanchez was when he started e-mailing three years ago. Now, working with him, Green finds once again that he has had to define himself, to help Sanchez create one of the complementary aural profiles for which he is famous.<\/p>\n
So, was there definition forthcoming?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if we ever managed to,\u201d he admits. And he\u2019s aware that at some point, he\u2019ll need to. \u201cWe\u2019re about to come to end of the Newgen sponsorship and the studio sponsorship from [the Alexander McQueen foundation] Sarabande, so in the next year or so, we\u2019re going to have put down roots to last a bit longer. There\u2019s only so many favours and freebies people are going to do now, especially when they know we have the GQ money.\u201d There\u2019s a little rue mixed into the pride when Green adds, \u201cWe have no investment, no credit cards, no overdraft and no backers.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he has, at least, been able to nail the physical nature of his business. \u201cOne side is creative, the other side is uniforms and workwear. And sometimes, they\u2019re fighting.\u201d The creative side is theatrical, clearly responsible for the shows, and the sculptural pieces that end up in exhibitions, and gigs like the recent costuming exercise for Ridley Scott\u2019s Prometheus sequel. (\u201cWe did all the sleeperwear and the clothes the mercenaries wear to fight the alien,\u201d says Green.) The other side, the uniforms, hang in shops like Selfridges, Dover Street Market, Barneys, L\u2019Eclaireur, 10 Corso Como, and Opening Ceremony, where women are drawn to them almost as often as men. That gender-neutrality might indicate something significant about the conceptual essence of Green\u2019s clothes: strong but romantic, functional but emotional, the warrior\u2019s edge tempered by an air of melancholy.<\/p>\n
During LC:M a year ago, Nick Knight and Green collaborated on a photo shoot for the windows of Dover Street Market. The clothes reminded Knight of the torn sails of a ship after being ravaged by a storm, an almost classically romantic vision. \u201cCraig didn\u2019t pick up on that, he thought it too whimsical. He saw it in a much more brutal way,\u201d says Knight. As brutal, in fact, as the images he brought Knight of rugby players crashing into each other. Green\u2019s presentations have been serenely, markedly anything but brutal, but Knight\u2019s images proved that his clothes look best in visceral movement, when all the ties and trailing laces and artful articulation come alive. So we could mark the tension between serenity and violence as another Green signature.<\/p>\n
Something else I find more striking is the essential innocence of his work. It\u2019s a measure of the man who arrived at Central St Martin\u2019s in 2007 having never picked up a fashion magazine, having never heard of Alexander McQueen (so Frederic Sanchez needn\u2019t feel so bad). \u201cIt just wasn\u2019t in my realm of knowledge. I\u2019d never even heard of St Martin\u2019s. I quite liked doing art at school and I had this dream of going to do a fine art course in Edinburgh to be a portrait painter. I had a friend at school whose dad was a propmaker for the BBC who told me I had to apply to St Martin\u2019s because it was the best art school in England, so I said I\u2019d come along to an open day with him. I applied, because I thought at least I could do a foundation year, then I met some people outside smoking who said I should come and do fashion communication. \u2018We just dress people up for two weeks and take photos.\u2019 I thought that sounded like fun. Then I tried print-making, because it was somewhere between painting and fashion. My idea of fashion was so narrow I was really rubbish at it, and I thought at least I could go into art afterwards. It was really na\u00efve the way it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the end of his second year, Green discovered the designers Walter van Beirendonck, Bernhard Willhelm and Henrik Vibskov, and his horizons suddenly expanded exponentially.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my placement year, I spent six months with Walter, six months with Henrik, and my whole idea of what fashion could be changed. I saw how everything was a possibility, how everything and anything could be related to fashion. I saw how you could do it as an independent.\u201d It\u2019s not hard to imagine Professor Louise Wilson recognising a budding kindred spirit and impelling him onto her legendary MA course, the farm team of contemporary British fashion.<\/p>\n
Commercial success or brand-building or even dressing men was never in Green\u2019s mind. \u201cI think my graduate show was just about creating objects. I was more interested in making something visual, what I would want to see walking around in a catwalk show. It was a really simple idea.\u201d And the media played merry hell with it, as they did for Green\u2019s subsequent efforts under the umbrella of the Lulu Kennedy-curated MAN presentation at LC:M, the \u201cbroken fence\u201d collection of Autumn\/Winter 2013 occasioning particular mirth. Now, he says, \u201cMy favourite shows are those old Galliano shows for Dior. They make me feel emotional. When I watch them, I wish I was there. That dreamy escapism is what we\u2019ve always tried to start with, but you have to have a realism too. Because as soon as you start doing it, the reality kicks in that if you don\u2019t sell, you don\u2019t have money to do the next show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, even as Green talks about the need to make \u201cproduct that people want to be buy,\u201d broken fences now a thing of the past, the idealism of his early years in fashion remains unpolluted. \u201cI love the community feeling of what I do. I love [that] I can work with my best friends, I don\u2019t dread going into work, and that\u2019s an amazing thing.\u201d His epiphany, personal and professional, may have been his Spring\/Summer 2015 collection, where he proved he could do what he wanted, still make a primal emotional connection with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other people\u2026and launch a business on the back of that connection. At the time, I wrote, \u201cZen was one of Green\u2019s own reference points, but the mind spiralled away effortlessly into visions of samurais and gurus and barefooted penitents and the Polyphonic Spree and even, for one bedazzled brainiac in the audience, the Children\u2019s Crusade.\u201d Me being the \u2018bedazzled brainiac,\u2019 you can take that googly-eyed observation with a snort of sal volatile, but I was scarcely the only person in the audience who was profoundly moved. More to the point, retailers backed up their emotional response with orders. \u201cThat collection, we had sales for the first time,\u201d says Green. \u201cSuddenly, we became a business, rather than \u2018Let\u2019s do a show and see what happens because maybe we won\u2019t be here in six months.\u2019\u201d Almost the most satisfying of all possible results, in other words.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s the rail that Craig Green rides now, anticipating anticipation. The designer whose entire wardrobe could fit in a carry-on metamorphs those pieces into clothes that tug at the heartstrings, tickle the soul. Because his particular brand of alchemical pragmatism has already carved him an undeniable niche, there will surely be a moment when someone or thing much bigger comes knocking at the door, wanting to capture his lightning in their bottle.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s ready.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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