My Fashion Memory

There is no denying the fact that fashion and all the elements that encompass it are a constant influence on our everyday lives. It’s in a constant state of flux alongside the worlds of art, music and film, creating many different cultures and sub cultures along the way. It is not just in the creative world however that fashion is significant, as the industry is the second biggest business within the UK, playing a key part in the economic structure of our country. I think the interesting thing about fashion is that affects everyone differently and whether you love it or loathe it there will always be certain sartorial moments that stick out in your mind. In this feature I have grouped together a few fashion related memories from a range of bloggers and models (together with my own), highlighting the differing perceptions and experiences that this fast paced, almost other worldly industry creates.

Louisa Shanks
I can’t really pinpoint an outfit in the past few years that has stood out, I’m sure there have been plenty that made me feel amazing for those fleeting night time hours but I get bored very easily and an item that I can’t live without one week will in a fortnight be hidden in the chaos that is my bedroom and be forgotten about. However, there will always be one outfit that sticks in my mind and that is the one I wore to my 7th birthday party. It was matching blue velvet trousers and a-line long sleeved top with roses embroided around the collar and blue velvet headband. I know, sounds hideously twee and Sound of Music but let’s not forget I was only 7 years old. I thought it was amazing at the time and if I found it again I’d probably walk down the street wearing it in a bid to bring back the memories. So if you see a 19 year old girl walking the streets in a blue velvet ensemble that’s clearly too small – I’m not insane, I’m just suffering from nostalgia.

Jazzi Craddock – Model at Premier Model Management
“I will never forget my first catwalk show. Everything was so confusing at first – so much going on around me. I was trying to find the people I was to model for but there were over 100 shows happening that day and I didn’t know anyone at all. My outfit was amazing. It was an all in one knitted creation with a house – yes, a house on one shoulder and a life size cat on my bum. The shoes they gave me were far too big so I had to stuff them with something so I could walk. All I could find was cardboard so that had to do. Then I remember sitting around for about 6 hours waiting for my turn. I had no-one to talk to as everyone that day seemed to come from Russia and spoke hardly any English. I also didn’t get a chance to rehearse which was scary as I was on first and hadn’t ever walked on a catwalk before. I also remember feeling so lonely and lost, thinking that everyone else must know what they are doing where as I now realise that they probably felt the same as it may have been their first show too.”

Susanna Lau – blogger (www.stylebubble.com) and digital editor of Dazed and Confused magazine
“I have quite a few fashion memories but this one sticks out a bit... when I was 14/15, I used to hang out at arcades a lot (I was one of those sad people who loved playing the Konami Dance Dance Revolution machine...) and started hanging out with other 'gamers'... at the same time my personal style was sort of evolving and I got into a phase of wearing huge flares with floaty dresses underneath and one day, one of the gamers asked "Why are you always wearing trousers underneath the dress? It doesn't make sense!" which made everyone laugh and I said quite indignantly "It makes sense to me!" and from that point onwards, I started thinking of people in terms of those that will wear trousers under skirts/dresses and those that don't... it's quite a weird style distinction now of course since trousers underneath skirts/dresses are nothing new... but for some reason, this has really stuck with me.”

Freya Holmes – Model for Babycakes
“I once had to stand on a Perspex turn table for twenty minutes while a group of camera men filming me spinning from different angles, and if I laughed once we had to start all over again. the turntable was spinning way too fast and I was so dizzy, and after we finally finished filming it I went to step off the turntable and fell straight off and hit my head on a Kurt Geiger shoe, which indented my forehead and scarred me to this day. Another memory includes the first time I was given something to take home from a shoot. I left the shoot armed with some gorgeous AP underwear that I had been allowed to keep, and it was such a good feeling. Although the worst thing about it all, has been wearing really nice clothes, making the clothes look good, spending hours in the clothes only to watch them be sent back and id never be able to afford to buy them myself.”

Sandy Espenkrona – Blogger and T-Shirt Designer (www.cottonstyle.co.uk)
“People working in fashion, whether it's designers, models or pattern cutters (and trust me I’ve met them all), seem to think that they're saving the world. They’re not. It’s just clothes goddamnit. This is why I love to take the piss during every single fashion event I’m going to. I’m just going for the free booze, obviously, which is why I love fashion week - not because of the models posing their asses off - but for the free drinks and showing them that people working in fashion really should be less pretentious. Like when my friends and I recently went to a fashion event, had our free drinks and sat down at the floor only to blow up a condom. One of the best fashion events I’ve ever been to - because of the condom. Made my entire night to piss everyone off - "you simply don't dooo that at a fashion party!" oh piss off. People should laugh more and pose less.”

Charlie Bale – Student and Co-founder of Suzi & Charlie’s Clothes (Found via facebook)
“My favourite fashion memory is a recent one. On the way home from college I found my cream lace up boots sitting in a window of a little charity shop and I knew right there it was love.I adore the way they point up at the top, the rusted brass eyelets and the lining inside which is oh-so cosy on even the coldest winter day. I have to wear flat shoes, I have to feel my feet on the ground when I walk, so these boots are perfect for every occasion. And when I put them on, I just feel so kick ass!”

Interview: The Chapman Family

Photo by Andy Wilsher

If ever there was a light in the darkness of the otherwise over-bearing UK indie scene then it would go by the name of The Chapman Family. Not only have they managed to establish themselves as one of the most talked about acts in the UK at the moment (sans record label, might I add), but have also had string of successful festival dates. And don’t worry, their singer, Kingsley, is not one to pull his punches on telling it how it is. I mean, he named the band after the most famous stalker of all time. Here’s what he had to say on the life of The Chapman Family. Remember: They’re not a cult.

ES: You've just finished a tour in support of the new single, Virgins. How was the turnout?

TCF: The tour was a lot of fun overall. Pretty much everywhere we went there were people there purely to see us - which in all honesty was a bit of a shock. We played at Koko in London and had crowd surfers and people on other people's shoulders - in a kind of wanky way it felt like we were in Oasis as we've never really seen it on such a scale before. It gave the ego a bit of a boost before inevitably crashing back to earth playing in sparsely filled venues on the southern coast. It was the strange towns we've never been to before which were the most fun and surprising: the venue in Guildford has a Chinese takeaway in it for instance, that was pretty useful - something which other venues should really take note of. Freezing cold venues run by lazy promoters in the south of Wales a couple of days after Halloween are in the future definitely a no-go zone. Whereas gigs in weird little cages in industrial estates in the middle of nowhere in Reading run by really enthusiastic promoters are EXACTLY where it's at.

ES: What has the reaction to Virgins been?

TCF: I think we had the most positive reaction we could possibly have expected to get despite following up something called "Kids" with "Virgins". The next single will no doubt be called "Dogging."

ES: You put your previous releases out on 7” are sticking to this?

TCF: I really don't know. I'd like to personally but from a financial point of view it's suicidal. From a visual point of view I like going to see bands, looking at their merch and discovering that they have loads of different singles and coloured vinyl on sale. I think they're nice and tactile as a product, but as I said, they're pretty much bankrupting us at the moment! Saying that though, for me there's nothing more irritating than a band purely releasing their songs online with no physical product to back it up. I realise that supposedly no one buys CDs or records in record shops any more but I'm just stuck in my ways I guess. If I had my way we'd have CD singles dotted about HMVs up and down the country, but unfortunately the fuckers don't sell them anymore (using the excuse that no one actually buys them). I just think it's going to be incredibly sad in about 10 or 15 years time when the record buying public of today (whatever age group that may be) grow up and have kids and their children can't spend an afternoon rifling through their old record collection. It used to be the easiest and most common way to discover "new" old music. I'd have never got into half of the stuff I listen to now without first searching through cupboardfulls of old vinyl. All that's going to happen will be young people shuffling through their parents IPods laughing at how old fashioned and shit they are. And wondering why they bought shitty charity singles by Peter Kay.

ES: What was the idea behind new video?

TCF: Band playing song in rehearsal space; pretty girly all doey eyed thinking about her boyfriend or puppies or something; band still playing; pretty girly stops being all doe eyed and puts on overalls and a gas mask; band still playing their bloody song; pretty girly comes in and gases them all and smashes up their equipment. I haven't got a clue really. I think we got excited this time as we increased our video budget to allow us to have more than one person in the shot at any one time - unlike in the Kids video where we could only afford one light so any one shot could only feature one person usually from the waste up. Bloody recession.

ES: How has the reaction been since the NME Radar tour with La Roux?

TCF: To be fair, as lovely as it was doing the NME Radar Tour it was really not a thing that had very much to do with us or the other two bands on the tour apart from La Roux. She was the one that sold out every venue and she was the one that got lauded every single night, and rightly so, she was number two in the proper pop charts. We played some great shows and won quite a few people over though - I'm pretty sure no one going to see La Roux would expect to be won over by four sweaty noiseniks from the north of England but we got people on side every now and then. The attention and publicity that the tour provided us powered us through the summer - I don't think I've done an interview where La Roux hasn't been mentioned for about 6 months - and despite being the opening band on the bill we got some awesome reviews. It's all been fairly humbling really.

ES: Has there been a change in fan base after touring with a highly established act?

TCF: The biggest changes haven't really happened because of the NME Tour, they've happened because of the festivals we played at over summer. It's been amazing playing to people under 18 who might have heard of us in some daft article in NME or something but haven't had the chance to come and see us. We managed to pull some good gigs out of the bag at specific points too - asking the crowd to bottle us at Evolution after insulting their precious football team was great fun, as was destroying everything I possibly could in a sweltering tent at Hop Farm Festival - and I think it's these sort of performances I would remember if I was going to a festival for the first time. We just need to get on the X Factor Results show now and we'll be sorted.

ES: What are the plans next year for hitting the road?

TCF: As far as I'm concerned I'm concentrating on writing the best songs I possibly can for our album. I'm not concerned about what we do after that at the moment. I'm male, I can't multi-task. In saying that though I'd quite like to play at the Isle of Wight Festival to see The Strokes and Jay-Z, that'd be pretty awesome. Also, if we could go back to Glastonbury that'd be nice - not only to insult pretty much everyone who watched us like last time ("this is for you, you fucking hippy scum") but also to catapult huge mounds of dogshit at Bono's stupid do-gooding talentless fucking face.

ES: You’ve remained an unsigned band, have you been approached by labels?

TCF: We've been approached on occasion but again, it's not really something that concerns me whatsoever. I'll strive to like whatever music I like whether it's signed or unsigned or whatever, I genuinely don't give a fuck. I think the Holy Grailesque quest of "getting signed" doesn't really exist anymore in a lot of bands' eyes and if it does I'm not sure you're in it for the right reasons - you might as well just join the queue for X Factor with the rest of the fame hungry whores. If we do ever get to a level where I'd be comfortable to say "we've made it" then I'd feel a hell of a lot more proud that we've grafted and done everything the hard way. I don't think we'd be the same band if we seemingly didn't have things this hard at every fucking corner. If it was easy, we'd be a nice band that people would like.

ES: Are you writing an album at the moment?

TCF: Yes. Hopefully be recording the first part of it in January. I'm trying to write as much as I can before then so we have a big pool of songs to choose from.

ES: Tracklist? Producer?

TCF: Not telling.


Photo by Paul Bridgewater

ES: You have a fairly controversial band name in the music scene, which caused a little bit of hate towards you. Have you experienced anymore?

TCF: We always do and we always will it seems. Fuck them. I'll stick by what I said a while ago after we got reviewed as "the worst band I have ever seen" by some stoner arse in Manchester: I'd much prefer (as a gig goer) to go and see something billed as 'the worst band I've ever seen' than something billed as 'quite good' or 'pleasant'. I think music should be exciting and feral, not safe and expertly played - mistakes happen, get over it. I've seen some local messages recently saying how shit we were and undeserving of whatever success we've got and how we only got to this oh-so-lofty position we're in by arse licking apparently. I'd love to know whose arse I've licked as in return I'd like them to get me out of financial ruin; buy me a proper tour bus; proper workable equipment; and guarantee a million magazine covers and sold out tours. We've rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way over the last couple of years (that's usually going to happen if you make a habit of telling people 99% of their music taste is bullshit) but for fucks sake we've worked fucking hard and are genuinely trying to cling to our beliefs about wanted to create music and shows that audiences (and ourselves) will get excited about, or at the very least have an extreme reaction to one way or the other. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea - I've had people coming up to me in nightclubs and telling me how shit they think I am to my face - and I'm comfortable with that, each to their own etc. Besides, fuck em, I know I'm right and they're wrong.

ES: You have a guitar donations section on your myspace for people to send you theirs to smash on stage. What’s the body count?

TCF: I've took the guitar donation thing off the MySpace and Facebook sites recently, it was fun while it lasted but time to move on from that now. I did have quite a bit of success with it really - there isn't anything more fun than smashing a piece of relatively cheap wood to pieces live on stage in front of people. I don't do it all the time now, I think I'm going to wait until it's all forgotten about and then smash a telecaster over some poor fuckers head in the front row. That'll teach them.

ES: Favourite equipment smashing moment?

TCF: There's a couple really. The last La Roux date at Koko was fun because I think by that stage I'd destroyed about 6 or 7 on the tour and it was always in the last song so people might have been beginning to expect it by then. However I had a big trashing spree second song in which hopefully got people's attention and then continued to play fairly normally for the rest of the set, (in an ideal world I'd like a new guitar to smash for each and every song but unfortunately until that Brit Award turns up in the post I'm fucking skint). Hop Farm and Reading were both fairly spectacular. They were both boiling hot days and we were stuck in a tent at about 3PM with the sun blaring down playing "dark-intense-moody-indie" which isn't the most appropriate thing to be doing really. Somehow though we probably played our best sets all summer and the guitars that I knacked were really difficult to smash - the telecaster in Reading took two songs to finally break in two.

ES: You played Offset and Reading this year: two pretty different festivals. Any favourites?

TCF: Reading, purely because it was nicer weather and we got a bigger rider. We had to beg steal and borrow for five shitty warm bottles of cheap lager at Offset. Offset is a nice little festival with consistently by far the most interesting line up of any festival in the UK but sometimes it just seems like it's full of cool bands watching other cool bands being cool and wearing cool stuff while drinking cool drinks. Me and Paul have a fun little game we play called "are you in a band?" when we go out and we try to guess if someone is in a band by the way they dress and walk. It's fairly obvious really. However it's pointless to play it at Offset as every fucker you ask says "yeah man, was just playing in the bongo wankstain tent over there innit, it was epic."

ES: Which bands did you see?

TCF: I've seen Future of the Left, Pulled Apart By Horses and Fight Like Apes up close and for free at a lot of festivals this summer which was great but I think my favourites to watch were Black Lips a couple of times in Europe. Before I saw Black Lips in Pukkelpop we wandered out to watch Placebo whilst drinking quite large measures of vodka - I went off to try and interview Crystal Antlers (under the premise that I liked Crystal Castles and reindeers for a Belgian webzine that I'd just met) and as soon as I turned my back I saw Pop and Paul being escorted off the festival site covered in blood after Paul apparently "had a moment" in our dressing room and threw a table at Pop. You've got to hand it to the Belgians though, even when they were faced with such stereotypical football hooliganesque behaviour they were still really, really friendly and smelt of lovely dark chocolate.

ES: Who are you currently listening to?

TCF: In the car at the moment I've got Jay-Z's Blueprint III as I FUCKING LOVE HIM, a compilation album called Worried Noodles which features songs written (in part) by my favourite artist David Shrigley, Poison's Greatest Hits (borrowed from Paul) and my constant companion - Adam Green's Gemstones album. Awwwww.

ES: last time we spoke you let me in on some tales of corruption, any new ones to lift the veil?

TCF: I don't know what to believe anymore to be honest. I sometimes feel like an "indie-Mulder" from the X Files and if I delve too deep into the murky world of the shambolic facade that is the music industry then bad things will start to happen (not that we haven't had our fair share of bad things anyway...). I think because I found out about a few dirty tricks a while ago I just presume that anything I hear on the radio or anything I see on TV or in the music press is just put there to manipulate me, just in the same way that the X Factor manipulates the upper levels of the charts. I just find it really bizarre that the whole thing is really all about who has the best PR machine over anything else. If Jo Whiley does the voiceover on an advert for an album would that convince me to buy it? How about if Zane Lowe did it? I'd imagine Zane would do something relatively edgy whereas Jo would advertise something "female." If Jo couldn't do it they'd probably get Sara Cox. The exception to the rule is that if the band is Scottish or Irish then you have to use Edith Bowman. Plus she likes jibbering on about films too so she can advertise DVDs and electrical items. It all just seems like it's built on lies and fooling the public, but it probably always has been, I've just not realised it until now. My main problem with downloading is that it's made it infinitely easier to alter the charts to your own advantage. In the relatively recent past I know of a band manager driving up and down the country buying his own band's vinyl and CDs trying to get it into the charts: I think they got to about number 61 and spent thousands and thousands of pounds, ah for the good ol' days. There are some things I don't think I will never understand though - like who the fuck is buying Susan Boyle's album? I genuinely hope that this particular era of "celebrity" and the famous for being famous brigade is dying. People must be starting to wise up surely. It's all lies remember. Trust no one.


Photo by Andy Wilsher