Justifiably called the One Jean, they’re only available from five retailers worldwide, two of them being Dover Street Market and oki-ni.com. The end product of a prototype that took Westmoreland four years to refine and produce in conjunction with the Shiotoni brothers of Japan, the jeans are a combination of vintage features that pools the collective knowledge of jean makers worldwide.

 

Speaking to Westmoreland about the processes involved in its creation, it becomes all too apparent how these details contribute to the individuality of each pair. “Crikey, it's all about the craftsmanship. I made the first jean one night in a factory, showed it to my friends in Japan, worked on the fit and construction and it was so important to me that the jean was to be made as if it was the first ever jean, so I just used a single stitch machine, no twin needle, no run & fell machine, hence the French seam. But I had to keep to the industry standard with the chain-stitch hem and the bartacks also have the correct number of stitches, because once you've worked in a Japanese factory, you can't do it any other way.”

 

Using US cotton to produce the One Jean, this is then dyed and woven near Hiroshima at a family run mill but this was by no means where the pain staking aspects ended; “The jeans were then delivered to me where I hand painted the red bartack on the spade pocket with pure indigo, hand brand the leather patches and hand embroider the inside label,” explains Westmoreland of the final touches. Once purchased, customers can request their unique number stamped onto a leather patch ensuring their solitary rareness and guaranteeing entry into this unrivalled 100-club!

 

 

 

For SS10, Juvenile Hall Rollcall’s founder Tai Irie theorises that, since popular music simply recycles good ideas continuously, the perfect pop song could be written by putting the best of those ideas into one track. Such conceptual musings befit a designer whose training was at Comme des Garçons and Undercover; through shooting with left of centre make up, layers and layered iconographic references she re-references postmodern pop culture’s self-referential and cross-fertilised cannibalistic binge.

 

In its extreme theoretical form, this binge could see the diminishing of historical symbols and references in our wardrobes; a world where design influence gets tighter, more subjective and more introspective.

In the same poststructuralist vein, Juvenile Hall Rollcall’s website assures us that they are tolerant about ambiguity. They can, should and will be interpreted in many ways. "In fact, it is perfect opposite, as my creation is how to take in something vague," writes Tai. A manifestation of brand values like ambiguity and uncertainty is a collection where SS10’s building blocks – like ethnic prints or a baseball jacket – are punkily subverted.

 

So what happens now Tai?! Well, Baudrillard himself foresaw a point where fashion for fashion’s sake, not for the sake of communication, ruled… a celebratory era where fashion can have its own cake and eat it(self).

 

Throup was born in Argentina and lived in Spain before moving to Burnley, Lancashire. For someone who grew up with a love of football, and whose MA graduate collection ‘When Football Hooligans became Hindu Gods’ was a clash of ideas – spiritual and sporting. He has worked with some of the biggest casual brands around – Stone Island and CP Company –– the opportunity to design the England football kits for Umbro must have been irresistible.

 

He is a ritualistic designer, like his recent ‘Legs’ retrospective of trouser designs shown at Paris Men’s and London Fashion Weeks. The trousers displayed in Legs – taken from designs by Throup from 2004 and 2010 - marks the declaration of a unique vision within contemporary fashion design. The result of six years of “new object research”, Legs celebrates trousers, elevating them from their position as mere commodities to original objets d’art.

 

 

FLUX: So you are from Burnley, but you were born in Buenos Aires?

 

AT: Yeah, I was born there, lived in Argentina for the first 7 years of my life then basically all my Mum’s side of the family emigrated to Spain. We were in Spain for 5 years then my Mum got married to a chap from Burnley. So when I was 11 nearly 12 we moved to Burnley.

 

FLUX: So do you see yourself as British then or Argentinean?

 

AT: Oh British. I mean I can hardly remember Argentina to be honest. I’m not patriotic, I’m obviously more British than I am Argentinean so I couldn’t go through life saying “I’m Argentinean” but actually in reality, reality being life experience rather than provenance, I’m British. It’s interesting with Argentina because it’s such a new country, like my ancestry in terms of like coming from Argentina goes back only about three generations before that it’s like French, English, Spanish and Italian so it’s a bit pointless to be honest with you.

 

FLUX: I know what you mean, it’s kind of new world isn’t it over there in that kind of way. I was going to ask you whether you found it a culture shock at all when you came over here but maybe the answer to that is No from what you’ve just said.

 

AT:  I think maybe even when I was a kid I loved the idea of a challenge and whatever. In some respects it was very different from what I was used to but in some respects it was to do with the same and also we just like constantly moved all the time because of my Mum’s job and whatever and then obviously moving countries. I guess I can adapt quite easily and yeah it was just fun. I think at that age as well you’re not leaving anything too concrete or solid behind you so it was pretty easy.

 

FLUX: So what was going on in Burnley when you were growing up there? I guess it would be in the 1990s wouldn’t it? Because, coming from Rochdale, I’d say that there wasn’t a lot going on around that area basically; it was a bit of a cultural wasteland.

 

AT:  Well, when I got to Burnley in 1992 I was nearly 12, I mean culturally, I reckon within 6 months I was going on the football, like going on the moor but it was more towards my 14th or 15th year that the British Northern culture really absorbed me in in a way and yeah it was just like football and clothes and music, it was such a great era for music, like Oasis were just coming through and we were just massively into that whole scene.

 

FLUX: Were you aware of the kind of terrace fashion culture I guess then, obviously it had been going for quite a while before you would have been around but were you aware of that? Did that seep into your consciousness at all?

 

AT:  Oh totally, directly, I mean I think that in the mid 1990s it was quite a pivotal point for that terrace casual sub-culture in terms of the wardrobe which is what I was interested in, and with hindsight I can see now that in the mid 1990s it was great in some respects because a lot of focus was given to the key brands which were the best brands that were appropriated into that sub-culture being obviously CP Company and Stone Island and then anything else that came out so that was great because it made it really easy for some people like me to learn more about those brands which were actually quite incredible but at the same time it signified the demise of that sub-culture as well, stylistically speaking. It had been such a rapidly and continuously evolving sub-culture up until that time and I think the uniformity of those brands, people just buying into those brands, it started to really dilute that stylistic message but for me it just really inspired me to see, in what was actually such a repressed Northern town, overtly masculine, there was real expression of creativity through people’s clothes. Some of those clothes were really avant guarde so it was quite a contrast. It still fascinates me to this day to be honest with you.

 

FLUX: Do you think that that was what got you interested in getting involved in fashion in the first place or were there any other things

 

AT:  Yeah. That was the main thing behind it. That is the only thing, and it wasn’t that I was interested in fashion because when I started studying “fashion” I didn’t know what fashion was. It’s still a bit of a weird word to me. I don’t have any aspirations towards fashion so when I was studying I was completely the odd one out because I wasn’t looking up to the same people... I didn’t even know them to be honest with you … and I wasn’t bothered about it so I was this straight Northern bloke who was into Stone Island and CP Company who could draw much better than anyone else. It was those two things, my drawings and my interest in those kinds of garments that just fused together into finding my own path and it eventually just happened.

 

FLUX: There’s real religious aspect to football especially in those kind of Northern male communities and with the casual culture there’s the same sort of ritualistic aspect to it as well. I’m just wondering if you think that idea of ritual suits how you work and how you design.

 

AT:  That’s quite a good question.

 

FLUX: I can kind of see in some of your drawings show quite repetitive thing and with Legs too, it’s almost like, just looking at real clothes details.

 

AT:  Yeah, I am obsessive, I love the idea of repetition and continuity for as long as an idea seems valid in your head. I hate the idea of just leaving an idea behind before you’re ready mentally to move on and so I think that’s where I kind of differ from other designers as well is that I’m completely comfortable and confident in doing the same thing over and over until it’s right. That is quite ritualistic and in my working methodology which I’m also obsessed with, is finding that in itself, the methodology as well as the work or more importantly than the work really, you know the process behind the work rather than the work itself, that defines the idea of ritual. You know we work to these design philosophies if you like. One of them we call the ‘justified design philosophy’ where every single detail has to be justified and yeah so in a way my work is kind of ritualistic I guess.

 

FLUX: All your design seems to be really sculptural as well and I know that you take a lot of influence from human anatomy. Is that something that you go into in great detail when you’re doing all your drawings and your sketches and things like that?

 

AT:  Yeah, do you mean as a point of reference do I go into that?

 

FLUX: Yeah.

 

AT:  Not really. I think they’re two different processes. I go into it in detail when I’m exploring it. I have had a lot of anatomical reference books just because I’m interested in the imagery really rather than as a tool to draw from and I think I’ve always been surrounded with human biology books and anatomical reference books from being a child because my Mum was trained as a doctor so I grew up with all these books around me. I don’t know, I think it went hand in hand with my interest in drawing and somehow the two have collided and you know all my interest in those - particularly the early anatomists from the 16th century, people like Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius and people like that …

 

FLUX: Funnily enough I’ve got that written down here.

 

AT:  It’s kind of like through my visual consumption of those works I indirectly take information from them and also just from the way that I visually consumed the world around me, when I’m looking at a person I’m analysing where the clavicle protrudes from above the chest or how the arm kind of swings down, just because I’m interested in that. Then I kind of store all the information up and when it comes to my drawings almost always I draw from memory, from my mind, that’s the only way that I can draw.

 

FLUX: Right, OK, you know in your drawings and being translated into some of your collections as well, there’s quite a brutality in a lot of your drawings and collections. Where do you think that comes from? Do you think that comes from the terraces or from Northern England or … ?

 

AT:  Maybe. Like I said, it’s quite interesting the idea of a repressed overtly masculine society and at times the narrowness of that mind and how that can create something so negative as violence when that’s conjoined to the idea of creative expression, like those blokes wearing creatively avant garde garments, that contrast always fascinated me. It’s almost like an oxymoron. It still fascinates me now and it’s almost like - particularly in my collection ‘When football hooligans become Hindu gods’ - a way to analyse it is that the collection is encouraging negation of violence as an energy release which is what it is right, it just replaces the idea of a creative expression or a positive energy release so instead of that - is it through religion, is it through creativity, how can you get rid of that energy that we all have to get rid of? But I think also there’s a quite profound beauty in the idea of a cosmic balance of energy that’s positive and negative. It’s like yin and yang, like something good can’t exist unless there’s an equal measure of bad. If everything was good and beautiful, we wouldn’t know what is bad and ugly. If you want good and beautiful, the bad and ugly has to be there so I find that quite interesting.

 

FLUX: Do you find you have to tone those sorts of emotions down when you are working on collaborations with people like Umbro or even like Stone Island and CP Company?

 

AT: I think to be honest with you what it is is that my own work is very narrative driven and those narratives often do work with points that I think are important to communicate – positive messages etc, that are close to my heart whether it’s because they’ve affected me in some way, be it the kind of violent surrounding or whatever on a Saturday afternoon or be it the devastation of New Orleans, how that affected me personally just because I thought it was a tragedy, the loss of the culture. But I think through those works, through my designer philosophy of having to justify every design detail, that has generated different design processes that are based on the idea of designing for function, purpose and reason and somehow that combined with my personal interest in a study of human anatomy has made it really relevant for me to work on functional and performance products. So the whole negativity narratives and violence and whatever, it’s not relevant, it’s just a symptom of my culture. I’ve generated this work methodology that is very relevant to a performance specific product.

 

FLUX: Yeah, I think it really works for it as well and you can almost feel all these elements coming together from your background, the anatomy and all the different elements, I think it’s there. I think it is a perfect match for Umbro with the England and Manchester City kits. Just one final one then is to ask what do you think – and you might have answered this before but I’m going to ask you again anyway. It’s what do fashion and football have in common do you think?

 

AT:  Everything. I think culturally obviously a lot, particularly the balance between the fan and the player. I think it’s really interesting how the idea of unity and uniformity have evolved, how can we support our team? How can we through our clothes, through fashion how can we communicate that we support a specific team? So I think that idea of uniformity is really important. I think that also and more importantly the idea of fashion and football is more relevant and more interesting for me in the context that we’re trying to explore it within Umbro which is to utilise style in itself as a performance enhancer, for performance to benefit from actual performance garments that are worn by the players. And that’s been for me a new route and a new learning curve – the idea of engaging with the players when talking to them about performance products but engaging with them in the context of style and fashion has been really interesting and really valuable because all of a sudden the players are interested in what you’re showing them or what you’re proposing to them. Iit’s relevant to them and ultimately for us if the players are putting on a kit that we’ve done and looking in the mirror – actually bothered enough to look in the mirror – and thinking that they look good, and then when they go onto the pitch and they line up next to the opposition and they look at their opposition and they know they look better than the opposition, it’s going to make them feel better and if you feel better, you look better, you play better, you’ve got a psychological edge. It’s really interesting to explore that.

 

FLUX: Yeah that is really interesting because people say that about fashion all the time but probably not in a sports context.

 

AT:  Yeah, Umbro have the right to do it, it’s not just that they invented it, we’ve got a fashion designer here and we’re like fusing style with performance. It’s not just that it’s there, through the deep research that we did and which I was personally involved in at the beginning of the rebranding process, we found out that Umbro in the 1920s were actually tailors, they used to tailor their stuff before there was a sportswear industry, they used to be tailors for football products and I think that that’s what we’re trying to reinstate, the idea of constructing designs rather than drawing them two dimensionally and the idea of doing things in a very considered and crafted way that ultimately result in something which is really stylish and smart, it’s really interesting I think. I think only Umbro could do that with football. If anyone else tried to do it, it’s not relevant is it?

 

See www.aitorthroup.com for more information.