THIS news may come as a shock to, some readers; fashion designers do not always design the clothes which carry their names. No, the reality is that most houses employ a large number of people who work together on each season's collection. Fashion today is a team, effort, even if only one person eventually receives credit for what, is produced.
That's why it is so refreshing to meet Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway, originators of successful British label Red or Dead, who cheerily admit that neither of them possess any great designing skills. While he has a science degree, she left school at the age of 15 and they first started working together when both were in their late teens. What they have always shared is an abundance of enthusiasm and a keen awareness of their market qualities which are just as important in fashion as any amount of design talent.
Red or Dead, which opens it own Irish outlet in Dublin's Temple Bar on June 10th, began life as a market stall in Camden in the early 1980s. "I'd been making my own clothes for a while," explains Gerardine Hemingway, "so I just started making more of them and selling the extra ones." In addition, the Hemingways became the first retailers to sell Dr Martens shoes as a fashion item, starting their own association with footwear which is now an integral part of Red Or Dead's business.
Given her limited knowledge and training in the field of design, early garment shapes were, Gerardine Hemingway admits, somewhat limited - "the Russian peasant look" is one description she employs for the work. But it had an instant appeal; soon buyers from Macy's of New York placed an order for 200 pieces and on the strength of this, the Hemingways opened a factory in their native Blackburn.
Although now secure, the company had the usual share of narrowly averted disasters in its early years. "We lost loads of money," admits Wayne. What kept both the Hemingways and their business afloat for a long time was dealing in secondhand clothes at a variety of London markets. Although they're no longer involved in that aspect of the ragtrade, he has never lost his interest and still rarely wears anything that hasn't had at least one previous owner. On each visit to Dublin, for example, Wayne Hemingway immediately makes a tour of the city's second hand clothes shops - "at weekends Wayne prides himself on looking like a tramp," remarks his wife affectionately.
The casual nature of their own style inevitably affects the way the pair look at fashion. They don't expect customers to dress exclusively in Red or Dead and are perfectly content to see their label mixed with pieces picked up elsewhere, if needs be at other second hand markets. Maybe this is why the company has experienced such phenomenal growth of late, with new shops opening this year not just in Dublin but also Newcastle, Leeds and Birmingham. The Hemingways say they are frequently surprised at the broadness of their market appeal; "it's like there's this alternative underground nation and it just keeps getting bigger. I think what we're most proud of," proposes Wayne, "is that we've shown there can be a designer label for the masses. You don't have to be totally wealthy to understand good design." Just as importantly, therefore, "we try not to be expensive." Red or Dead's company policy, constantly reiterated, is "to produce innovative, challenging fashion at affordable prices and on a non elitist level."
Innovative and challenging are certainly terms which can be applied to the label's shows during London Fashion Week in recent years. The current collection was unveiled last autumn with a show which featured models wielding kitchen knives and re enacting scenes from horror films. The Hemingways insist this was a protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean and the potential outcome from an environmental disaster. However, most of their own country's press preferred to decry the whole extravaganza as "The Sick Face of British Fashion." As a result of this debacle, the latest show in February was a more low key event using non professional models in a setting far removed from Fashion Week's tents. While the collection and its presentation lacked the lavish nature of its immediate predecessors, the Hemingways say that shop buyers around the world have responded particularly well with record orders for next season.
MEANWHILE, they're concentrating on the collection for spring/summer 1997. Even though they don't take responsibility for designing individual items, Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway produce the ideas and concepts which the six members of their design studio then translate into garments and footwear. "Every season we come up with about a dozen themes, which is too many," she explains. "It gets narrowed down to about four in the end. We're both in control of product design, I look after fabric and shapes and he's more involved in prints. Wayne does a lot of the marketing while I do the individual shop fits."
This isn't fashion design as it, is popularly imagined to be, but for Red or Dead's founders, there really can't be another approach. Clever sourcing of good manufacturers in the Far East ("it's incredibly difficult to find good factories in England") helps to keep down the prices of their well finished clothes. They obviously have a fondness for bold prints and bright colours and their long involvement in the second hand business explains why the label isn't afraid of putting together colours and patterns that other houses would find incongruous.
Above all, the Hemingways haven't forgotten their origins as producers of garments that were made for immediate sale. So they're keenly interested in what's happening on the street and the direction being taken by popular taste. That's not to say their company is indistinguishable from the main high street chainstores. They have little interest in transitory trends and prefer not to respond to fads. Red or Dead demonstrates that not all fashionable clothing depends on fashion. It also proves just how far you can succeed in the clothes business without any design skills other than a well honed eye.