Once upon a time, one young Welshman had a crazy dream: to
exclusively sell young British menswear brands, and make enough
money to eat in the process. Five years later, his dream has come
true. Maybe Daniel Jenkins can teach a few people how to celebrate
British menswear by actually selling it…
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Nine or so years ago, Daniel Jenkins was at Liverpool University,
not far from his parents' home in the Swansea-Neath Valley,
studying history. The course was going well, but he wanted to get a
job. "Because a lot of work was self-study, you had a lot of time
to yourself, but even just for hanging out, buying records, you
need a bit of coin. I knew I wanted to work in something to do with
clothes, so I decided I would go round all the clothes stores in
Liverpool with a CV."
The first store he arrived at was Cricket, the boutique which was
famed in the tabloids as a haunt for footballers' wives et al, but
had actually begun life as a men's store (the women's offering
began after female staff kept getting asked about their outfits).
It turned out to be the only one he visited. "I've no idea what I
said but I must have talked for about 20 minutes, and the person I
was talking to talked to someone else there. And that was
it."
After university, he got a job at the Flannels' Liverpool store.
He was good at selling clothes. "It's just about being able to talk
to people, being able to talk to a lad who's out of prison, a
judge… and then it's about candid advice. People might come in and
pick up a T-shirt, but knowing how to advise on size and better
styles, will make them want it to enjoy it and come back. People
underestimate how important this is - Cricket were fantastic at it.
The people there are nice, they give good service, they know what
you like. They'd get invited to people's weddings, christenings.
That doesn't happen unless they think of you as friends."
Jenkins missed that kind of intimacy at the bigger Flannels group
and, at the end of 2006, told himself "I could do better than them
and become a millionaire by the middle of next week." The following
September, he set up a boutique in Monmouth, 40 miles from his
childhood home, called Daniel Jenkins Ltd. "And I suddenly realised
it was going to be a lot of work."
In the first season he sold debut collections from the likes of
Acne, YMC and much-missed British brand And I. Then he got into
"smaller, interesting British brands" such as Carolyn Massey. "We
did a web store a few months after we had a website. None of our
local customers in Monmouth knew who any of the labels were, but
then the web store launched and did well. So a couple of months on,
we said: "Let's only do British things."
"People talk about these brands to me, I thought, but nobody sells
them. And I thought about how, if someone at Cricket hadn't taken a
chance on me a couple of years earlier, I wouldn't have my own
business now. That's what it's about: taking a risk on
things."
It was an informed risk, because these seemingly obscure young
Brit brands were selling better than the established ones. Jenkins
had stumbled upon the first rule of the internet age: if someone
else is already selling the same stuff you plan to, you're stuffed.
"If you're looking for a Folk jumper and 10 stores are selling it,"
he says, "you'll just go for customer service and fastest delivery
and stay loyal to whoever has done that before. So there was no
point us competing with that. If you open a small independent
record shop and you've got Amazon next door, who you going to go
to? Most people know and trust Amazon so they'll go there. A few
people will always go to the small independent shop, just because
that's how they are. But if you offer something that Amazon doesn't
sell, then you might be onto something bigger."
Before Jenkins started selling these new British brands, it was
often hard to locate anybody else at all who was. He bumped into
people, met friends of friends, made trips to Paris and forged a
network of connections with these designers and their staff. Where
department stores and chains often demanded minimum orders, payment
terms and set schedules that were way beyond the resources of
fashion start-ups, Jenkins' young, small retail company could offer
small young, menswear labels deals more suited to their means -
especially once he decided to go internet-only, thus freeing
himself from the much greater overheads involved in running a
physical shop.
People started to pick up on what he was doing. Jenkins got a call
from someone at Paul Smith, the label from which Jenkins had bought
his first ever designer T-shirt, "and I can't remember exactly how
it came about, but basically it ended up with me getting to sit
down in Paul Smith's office and having a conversation with him for
a couple of hours. Him giving me a bit of advice really: know your
customers, be prepared to put the hours in, be prepared to be
willing to help people and be enthusiastic, really. He also said it
was important to have something pure at the heart of what you were
doing, something that you could nurture and believe in. It was
funny: when I left, I rang my dad and told him about it and he
said: "Haven't I been saying that to you all along?" And it was
true.
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Jenkins followed the advice of those father figures and now,
four-and-a-half years on, danieljenkinsltd.co.uk sells around 30
"up-and-coming British designers" to aficionados everywhere.
"There's certainly more of an appreciation of young British labels
now, definitely. When we were a year or two old people would say
'Why are you doing it? You're nuts, you're absolutely nuts'. Now
some of them say to me: 'Do you know what? You were right?'"
Jenkins says that the "made in Britain" boom of the past two or
three years has helped people understand his ethos better.
Moreover, the all-conquering "heritage" phase of British menswear
- tied up as it is with our recovered sense of the value of craft
and our increased understanding of the environmental and ethical
carnage caused by cheap imported clothes -
finally helped wash away the bad old small-minded, xenophobic
associations of "buying British".
Then again, "heritage", with its painstaking replicas and
relentless solemnity, isn't really what Jenkins is about. Now, as
when he set out, his interest is in the idea of new designers doing
things that are, in some sense, trying to be new and different from
what has gone before. In that sense, like an increasing number of
people on the frontline
of British menswear retail, Jenkins feels that, talent-wise, this
is a golden age for design. Led by the likes of Carolyn Massey and
J.W. Anderson, a generation is making historically aware but
fashion-forward gear that has enough British eccentricity and
creativity to keep things novel and playful, but is also eminently
wearable and covetable by "normal" blokes. There is a widespread
feeling that at every level - from design and production to
sourcing and pricing - these great young British designers are
doing everything that could be asked of them, and well. Now, it's
about what our country can do for them.
In January, the British Fashion Council announced it was to
address that very question when it announced that this month's
men's day, on the last day of Fashion Week, will be the last.
Instead of having one day tagged on the end of London Fashion Weeks
in February and September, menswear will now have its own mini
three-day "weeks" in June and January, just before all the
big-brand men's shows in Milan and Paris. The fashion calendar has
long complicated life for British designers, because buyers have
often spent all their money on the continent before they see
menswear at London Fashion Week - if they see it at all.
There are other issues still, though. As Jenkins points out, small
brands have an especially hard time making clothes in Britain when
there's a small market for it, "so that's a catch-22 for a lot of
people". The theatricality of a catwalk show still seems as likely
to alienate the potential "ordinary bloke" purchaser as appeal to
him. "If they looked at the clothes," Jenkins says, "most men would
be like, 'That's a nice jacket, those are nice clothes', but
because of the styling and the music on the catwalk, they think,
'That wasn't for me'. And sometimes British menswear misses out
through that. They don't have the budgets to advertise, so it's
hard to get their stuff seen
in magazines."
British men's fashion that punches its weight in every department?
According to Daniel Jenkins, they have built it. We just need to
get them to come.
"I've got this black Lou Dalton jacket," he says. "It's nice, the
fabric's nice, and when I walk down the street in it, people will
say, 'Ooh your jacket's nice. Where's it from?' and I'll say, 'Oh,
Lou Dalton', and they'll say, 'Who?' It's getting them to make that
leap. If you put it in front of somebody, if they feel it, and
weigh it in their hands - even smell it - then they will
understand."
Smell? I'm intrigued, and when I ask about it, Jenkins finally
gets round to defining what British menswear means to him, in a
rhapsody that's part-Ted Hughes, part-primally sexy master
perfumier Serge Lutens.
"A lot of lambswool smells a certain way, smells of earth,
Neanderthal times. I've got this hat that is made from a very thick
wool with lanolin, and when it rains it smells like sheep, which is
what I think lanolin should smell like. The number of times I've
gone to people, 'Smell my hat' and they've gone, 'Why would I want
to?' But if they do it, they get it: 'Oh, it smells like growing up
in the countryside', and that sort of thing. That's what menswear
does well and womenswear doesn't do particularly, and that's
something that you get in this country - whereas the big branded
successful stuff can feel sterile and about the packaging. Here you
feel that there is somebody who really gives a shit about it, beat
themselves up over what they're making, probably very sensitive
about how it's received and they're putting themselves out there
with what they make."
RISING STARS OF BRITISH MENSWEAR
Daniel Jenkins selects six young UK men's brands bound for
glory
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MARTINE ROSE
"Martine is a new name for many people, but at the same time she's
a wise head: she's worked for other people, she's got a following
in Japan, she knows how it all works already. In terms of her style
and sensibility, what's great is that her stuff is just so her,
it's such an unmistakable north London look that she plays on. It's
what I like to imagine the Arsenal fans, the ones who aren't from
Islington, wearing: partly sporty in the fabrics and cuts, but
actually rooted in music and youth culture too. I have a spotty
silk shirt by Martine Rose that I wear with tracksuit bottoms. It
all feels nicely made and a bit subversive, and getting even better
- what she's done for the coming autumn/winter season is really,
really cool. Meanwhile the "sticka print" jacket from this season
is about the only thing with any form of branding I'd wear -
imagine Moschino kids skating around Hackney in the 1990s."
martineroselondon.blogspot.com
WILLIAM RICHARD GREEN
"For his 2012 autumn/winter collection, William Richard Green has
worked with the idea of men going to the football. It's not that
he's doing 'football hooligans', it's more about that terrace
style. That culture where lads like a nice coat, one not so weird
or extravagant that they get laughed at, but it's slightly more
fashion than people realise. His work always has this idea of being
in a gang, a very British idea of a youth culture code rather than
a trend. The idea came to him because he lived by the New Den,
Millwall's ground in south-east London, and he would watch what the
fans wore on a Saturday - it's about how blokes express an attitude
with how they dress. He made all these William Richard Green
football scarves that he handed out to buyers in Paris, as a sort
of joke on this 'British fashion' thing. I like that, because for
me a lot of menswear has become too serious now: 'Yeah, well, my
boots took eight hours to stitch, some sort of Japanese goddess
made them, and they were washed with virgins' tears…'. A bit of
humour and fun is a welcome balance."
williamrichardgreen.com
MATTHEW MILLER
"Matthew Miller has no interest in simply raiding the past to
create his collections - he is really dedicated to the idea of
trying to do something new, even when his references seem quite
classic at first glance. Last season, he had carabiners (the metal
loops climbers use to secure their ropes) on his coats. For this
spring/summer, it's all about the nautical stuff, but again not in
a literal way - although the full collection did include a coat
made from a sail. On a smaller scale, he works with
materials such as car seatbelt fabric for his bags. He's also
started using special, innovative-looking hardware on his items.
You could argue his clothes pose questions about the future of
men's clothing. He also takes the traditional idea of masculine
print and subverts it. He has patterns that look like tradition
camouflage from afar but, on close inspection, prove to be made up
of everyday industrial items, which have then been manipulated to
create something different."
mrmatthewmiller.tumblr.com
BAARTMANS & SIEGEL
"Amber Siegel and Wouter Baartmans are a couple, which is really
cute for a start, but mainly they do this very grown-up tailoring,
not remotely wacky or at all fussy, but still with an edge. Their
whole thing is about the quality of the materials they use: whether
it's the quality of the cotton, or the zips from the same factory
as the highest-end French labels, the fabrications are through the
roof. They're relatively simple designs executed really well, and
people get that - they sell in Harrods already, for example, and
the customers there get what they're doing. There are shirts
without collars, zips that run at angles, but it's never
'statement' for the sake of it; the real difference comes when you
get close up: when you actually put their stuff on, you feel
different, special. I just find their clothes sexy. I was thinking
about this last night: if I was in a band, I'd probably wear them
when I was when on stage. It gives one a certain swagger."
baartmansandsiegel.com
TENDER DENIM
"I really like what William Kroll is doing with Tender, the whole
idea of it. Sure, a pair of jeans is a pair of jeans, but I like
the fact that his are hand-dyed, they've got brass buttons… He's so
obsessed - in a good way. The hand-dyeing means that each pair is
slightly different from all the others even though they're raw
denim. I know denim is very American and then the Japanese have
done something incredible with it since, but to me he is a very
English obsessive. His T-shirts have screen prints that could only
really come from this country. He's using woad as his blue dye,
which is what Boudicca would have used, way before denim existed.
Plus, the guy makes soap. Only here would you get someone making
soap out of woad dye that he dyes the denim with. The oil comes out
of the woad as a side product and they turn that into soap scented
with pure vetiver in it. He's doing quite well in Japan because
they recognise it as something quite different and distinct from
what they do."
madebytender.com
BERTHOLD
Raimund Berthold has been around for a few years now - he
graduated from [Central] St Martins in 2005 - but he doesn't get
the attention he deserves. When I first came across him, it was
only because a friend of mine, who worked for b store, had some
piece or other on that I was struck by and asked him about.
Berthold always does interesting work and does interesting things
with materials - he's just done these great jumpers for
autumn/winter that have neoprene, which wetsuits are made from, on
half of the sleeves and on the collars. It's not a gimmick, because
it gives this really great look and also creates a sort of
structure for the garment. Raimund is originally from Austria but,
to me, his approach and his materials feel very British, not in a
heritage way, but in the punky, futuristic fashion sense. Fashion's
meant to be a bit different, isn't it?
berthold-uk.com
