People often ask me where my obsession with the ‘perfect fit’ comes from. While 35 years in the industry teaches you a lot, one particular afternoon in 1991 stands out as a defining moment.
At the time, I was the Head Designer for a specialist denim manufacturer. We received a call that changed everything: Vivienne Westwood’s office. They were looking for a technical partner to help realise the vision for her very first menswear collection, the now iconic ‘Cut and Slash’.
The meeting in Camden
My boss and I didn’t go to a shiny showroom, we went to the source – her working studio in Camden. This wasn’t a place of velvet curtains, it was a place of grit, creativity and intense craftsmanship. I remember cups of half-drunk tea, which had obviously been there a while and an ashtray full of cigarette butts (how times change!).
I remember meeting her PA, Mini, and then Vivienne herself appeared. She didn’t stand ‘on ceremony’, she simply shook my hand and said, ‘Hello, I’m Vivienne’, as if I wouldn’t know the most iconic woman in British fashion, the creator of ‘punk’, wow!
She had been researching 16th-century ‘slashing’ techniques, where royalty would cut their outer clothes to show luxurious fabrics underneath, and she wanted to recreate that look using modern, indigo denim.
The challenge
Our job was to take the denim she had developed with an Italian mill, which had small inch long (2.5cm) chevrons cut all over it and work out how to make jeans and jackets on a commercial scale, for her ‘ready-to-wear’ collection.
The puzzle was – how do you take an experimental ‘deconstructed’ fabric and engineer it into a functional garment? Its intention was to look ‘destroyed’ but it had to be wearable!
The problem: how to deal with the ‘fray’
To get that perfect, historical look, the denim had to be washed so the edges of those thousands of slashes would fray out. We started with a small laundry in Shenstone, Staffordshire. However, we quickly realised that the sheer volume of indigo ‘fluff’ shedding from the slashes was so immense it was blocking the laundry’s industrial drains!
We had terrifying visions of blocking the entire drainage system of the small rural town, with Vivienne Westwood’s indigo threads. It wasn’t exactly the ‘eco-friendly’ approach Vivienne would later become famous for! We eventually had to move the operation to a much larger facility in Birmingham that could handle the ‘Westwood fluff’.
What this taught me
Looking back, it’s in part a funny story, but it taught me a vital lesson that I bring to my couture studio today: true style is a balance of art and engineering. If you want a garment that looks radical, you need a maker who understands the practical reality of how fabric behaves, even if that means figuring out how to wash it without flooding a small town!
Whether I’m working on a structured steel-boned corset or a bias-cut gown, I use that same problem-solving spirit I learned in the 90s. I don’t just want your outfit to look incredible on the day, I want to ensure it’s built to perfection.
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