Magazine Project

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THE BEST OFBRITISH

From the tender age of 20 fashion designer Alex Christopher has been building his brand and

taking the North by storm with his contemporary and individ-ual collections. Now at 27 he is the founder and owner of three ‘Each To Their Own’ boutiques and has firmly fixed his posi-tion as a leading designer of the North.

Alex Christopher began his journey in his hometown of Sheffield where he launched the first of his boutiques in a small workshop in 2005. He quickly expanded into a mezzanine bou-tique inside Sheffield’s premier hair salon, Wigs and Warpaint and watched as his brand began to gain momentum. Alex had his sights firmly set of taking ‘Each To Their Own’ to Leeds but it wasn’t until 2009 that he could fulfill this ambition. The success of the Leeds store al-lowed Alex to move his Sheffield boutique into its own premises in 2010. He then after much demand opened an online bou-tique in early 2011 with a large showroom open to the public.

Most recently he opened a flag-ship store in Manchester, taking his domination of the North to a new level. Alex’s collections for both Men and Women spiral around the nightlife culture. His designs have become popular not only on the Leeds clubbing scene but around the country and travel-ling abroad to places such as Ibiza. He has adopted an army of followers desperate to get their hands on his distinctive, one-off designs, none less than the cast of Geordie Shore tak-ing the obsession over the Tyne, a place Alex would soon like to expand to.

His collections are painstakingly designed to perfection, taking on heritage fabrics and dar-ing tailoring, to create exclu-sive typically British garments. Classic ideas put forward in a contemporary way. His recent projects have included creating shoes for both men and women and a jewellery collection.

Alex seems to be something of a one man band, from creating the designs, sourcing the fabrics,

bringing the fabrics back to the studio, making the samples, taking them to the manufac-turers, overseeing the produc-tion, bringing all the products back and hand delivering them to each store. It is this sense of absolute determination that has seen Alex advance to where he is today. It is for this reason too that his decision to create hand-made pieces proved so valuable. With the expansion of his brand however it has become increas-ingly difficult to continue work-ing as a solo act and has recently been looking at ways to manage his demand, growth and suc-cess.

Recently Alex has been work-ing on a brand new collection designed especially for the red carpet; a new venture which fulfills his main passion of cre-ating exceptionally well made and designed garments. He has hopes for new stores to open in Birmingham, Newcastle and London next year, and with dreams of taking ‘Each To Their Own’ to Australia and America global success is surely not far on the horizon.

from humble beginnings, to his stores appearing around the country and his designs becoming iconic on the club scene, alex christopher is taking britain by storm

Words by Lucy W

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JOSH PARKIN THE STORY OF A DESIGN GRADUATE

GROWING STUDENT DEBT and A LACK OF GRADUATE JOBS. these are the stories you usually hear about students, but here is josh’s story; he is not handed eve-rything on a plate, or has even got lucky, he believes in just simple hard work

tally then getting it transferred to clothes, also he produces illustra-tions for websites, posters, mar-keting campaigns and any other opportunities he gets his talented hands on. Studying Graphic Arts allowed him to combine a num-ber of his passions, ‘I couldn’t have done just a graphics degree I’d of gone out of my mind, draw-ing is what I want to be doing. I found the transition between graphics and illustration, now I’m finding the transition between illustration and fashion design, it’s still all about learning’. Like so many students coming out of university and entering the world of work it was a daunting experi-ence, ‘You’re on a cross roads, you either sink or swim, get a full time job you hate and have a monthly wage, or be skint for a while and have a god awful part time job whilst trying to turn something you love into a full time career’. This was the route Josh took, whilst working part time at Debenhams he spends as much time as he can drawing, designing, creating and making contacts.

At university Josh was repeatedly told about the two words that strike fear into the hearts of so many university students: Work experience. The need for real life work experience in order to be successful in securing a job after teaching is over is a fact continu-ously drilled into you. ‘Basically you have to listen. It didn’t hit me until January of my final year, then I realised I needed to listen to my tutors and that if I didn’t I’d have little chance of making anything of my degree’. Josh con-tacted clothing brands in Liver-pool to see if anyone needed any illustrations doing. He then got in touch with store ‘80’s Casuals’

Sitting in an army style khaki parka, suede Adidas origi-nals, with his pen in hand

quietly beavering away in the corner of Starbucks, Josh Parkin looks every inch the young de-sign graduate.

Recently graduating from Liv-erpool John Moores University Josh, 21 has joined the thousands of young people feverishly try-ing to carve their way into the world of fashion design. Josh has a unique style of drawing with an urban edge, focusing on cur-rent culture. He hand draws his work, scans, then colours it digi-

BRIT UP & COMING

after realising the t-shirts they produced were churning out the same ‘sh*t photo shopped pictures’ and of-fered them new illustrations to be printed on the t-shirts. ‘For them it was cheap labour, I charged them £50 a design and they made £35 a t-shirt , they were selling hundreds of t-shirts with my designs on, but it was all about the experience and learning not only the design side but the busi-ness side too’. Throughout the last months of his third year Josh went on to illustrate for inde-pendent clothing store ‘Weavers Door’ and ‘Buttery Store’ gaining ‘invaluable experience’.

Cutting out the middle man was next on Josh’s list; in the fashion industry it becomes hard to break away from selling you’re designs or illustrations to someone else, without gaining investment to go it alone it can prove too costly. ‘You can be seen as an easy tar-get being just out of university, needing work but not having the recognition to ask for much money, they don’t realise how time consuming it can be. Find-ing people who value you and who you can trust is crucial’. Josh hopes his next move will be to cut his part time hours down and make the transition to drawing full time, ‘I want an audience and my own brand, but obviously this calls for investment which I need to look seriously at. The good thing about getting rid of the middle man is that I don’t have to adapt my drawing style to anyone else, people will start to recognise my work and then hopefully my brand will start to grow’.

Networking is a major part of how Josh gets word out about his work. In the time between final exams and graduation he started

‘A Drawing A Day’ from his Twitter. He would draw a person or outfit and tag the brands of cloth-ing that he’d chosen to draw that day in his unique style. ‘It gained momentum really fast; I was get-ting retweets, followers and sug-gestions on what to draw next. It taught me not to get comfortable, keep myself busy, productive and my style of drawing progres-sive’. From Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook these social network-ing sites can be used as tools that prove instrumental in the fashion world, ‘It is all about being seen and heard, there is nothing better than knowing people are talking about your work’.

The first batch of 60 t-shirts Josh designed and produced himself after he found a cheap printers, sold out within two days, ‘the demand was there and I had got the word out, it was an amazing feeling to know all the hard work was beginning to show’.

It can seem such a formidable task, finishing university and entering a world so saturated with diverse and individual tal-ent that it could be easy to shy away. ‘Sticking with it was the best thing I ever did, I didn’t want to be one of those people that sit there in 20 years in a call cen-tre saying ‘I could of done this’, I am prepared to dig away at this however long it takes’. The most admirable part of Josh’s attitude is his response to “In 15 year’s time where would you like to be?” other than having a known brand with people actively checking out what he does, ‘I want people to want me to help them’. Now that is an outlook that could greatly benefit the fashion industry and those wishing to break it, just like Josh.

‘ITS ALL ABOUT BEING SEEN AND HEARD, THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN KNOWING PEOPLE ARE TALK-ING ABOUT YOUR WORK’

Top, middle and bottom: The design process, hand drawing, digitally colouring and the final product.

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ords by Lucy Winterbottom

VINTAGE FASHION: JUST HOW IS IT CHANGING IN BRITAIN?THE VINTAGE FASHION WORLD IN BRITAIN SEEMS TO BE UNDER THREAT BUT WHAT BY AND WHY IS THIS? LUCY WINTERBOTTOM INVESTIGATES

British Fashion; you think Stella McCartney, Vivienne West-wood and Christopher Kane, but forget high end fashion

designers for a second and think vintage.

Since the early 1990’s appreciation for vintage clothing and charity shops has been increasing. Yes, Brits have an eye for a bargain but mostly it seems to be about having a rare, one-off design reflects the politics, art and culture of a time gone by and owning a piece individual and time-less that is the appeal of vintage clothing. Although the vintage fashion market in the United Kingdom is an increasingly muddled one, is it still on the rise, or start-ing to decline and where do the problems lay?

The recession turned everyone into bar-gain hunters, people were encouraged to save where they could, copious amounts of reports and programmes were aimed at ways to curve spending to save where they could. This was to the benefit of vintage clothing and charity shops; they bucked the trend as the high street began to feel the bite. Now with prices of vintage cloth-ing rising and the country coming out of the recession it still remains to be seen how the vintage fashion market will fair.

The rising popularity of vintage has proved problematic for itself. The more popular it becomes, respectively the more expensive and it is much harder to source a bargain. Evidently it is becoming a vic-tim of its own success. Amy Spedding, a British Red Cross Store Manager in New-castle is all too aware of this: “Over the last

few years retail has become dominated by a desire for ‘Vintage’ or second hand clothes, this rise in popularity has driven up the price of a previously cheap way of shopping. Over the last 10 years there has been a significant rise in both the number of our shops selling vintage clothes as well as the price of the garments we sell here”. The question is does this put people off? Amy believes if prices continue to rise it will: “It’s all about competition, not only competing with high street retailers but also vintage stores and with increasing prices this is becoming much more dif-ficult, I do not want to have to raise prices too high. I myself love vintage, but it was great to feel you found a gem for a small price, once I found a vintage Burberry coat for £40, without this feeling I am not convinced everyone will stay on the bandwagon”. Alex White, manager of ‘Best

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Vintage’ store in Leeds disagrees: “We see more and more people coming into the store every week, if the clothes are of a good quality people are willing to pay, vintage clothing is not just a craze, people have bought into the idea and I think they will stick around”.

It is apparent that the vintage market is becoming increasingly saturated. Vintage is defined as representing the high-quality products of the past, which are represen-tational of that era and between 20 – 100 years old. The difference between vintage and second hand clothing is a fact that is becoming diluted in the popular market. Finding genuine vintage pieces is becom-ing a rarity, clothes from the 90’s are being labelled this and the ability to buy genuine vintage is becoming difficult. ASOS’ marketplace online store does just this, regurgitates 90’s fashion and marks them as ‘vintage’ to raise their popularity.

There are many reasons why people love to buy vintage clothing, they are col-lectable, high quality, an investment, indulgent and individual, but are all these reasons still viable in this highly saturated market. Genuine vintage clothing are all these things, however being misguided and misunderstood by what actually con-stitutes as this, makes it difficult to know if you invest in a piece if it is sincerely a col-lectable, individual and of high quality. As a manager running a business Alex finds this a problem: “With the line between vintage and second hand becoming more and more blurred as a store we struggle in different areas, such as marking the prices of the clothes. For instance a genuine silk vintage dress would be priced a lot higher than a similar second hand item of a few years old. Some of our customers do not understand the distinction and the reason for the higher price tag. This can be frus-trating when you know they are actually getting a good deal. I want my customers to know what they are getting and why a special piece is priced as it is”.

The Local Data Company identified charity shops as bucking the trend and showing growth last year, while in other areas of retail 14 stores were closing on av-erage every day. Charity Oxfam launched its vintage section online and saw sales through its website shoot up by 400%. The service, which allows Oxfam’s 700 shops to post vintage items for sale online, was set up three years ago after the char-ity noticed more people were typing the word ‘vintage’ into the website’s search box. Amy said she took note of this and applied it to her British Red Cross store: “I started a dedicated vintage section in the store; away from all the other clothes

it was purely vintage. They were about a 10% mark up on the rest of the store, but we were still undercutting the vintage shops. We held nights called ‘The Vintage Tea Party’, we opened 6pm-8pm and they went down a treat. The section ended up taking over a third of the weekly taking of the shop”. Notably charity shops are where real vintage is thriving.

It seems the original vintage has changed; it has evolved into something a little more diluted, but ever popular, appeal-ing to a wider, new audience and finding ways to evolve and grow. Only time will tell whether positivity will prevail or the vintage market will indeed be the death of itself. How the market will pan out and whether vintage fashion will remain as popular is a question that at this moment can only be speculated.

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ords by Lucy Winterbottom