His autumn/winter 2019 collection, which launches today, was inspired by a train ride Anderson took from London to St Ives, in Cornwall. It made him ponder the nostalgia-laden concept of “the Great Outdoors”. “I was thinking about going from the city to the farthest corner [of England] – what is that? The clothing is more about me, it’s very personal… it’s what I like, what I wear. I wanted something which was quite honest.”
It’s arguably his strongest collection for the Japanese retailer, full of cosy Aran knits, cuddly fleece jackets and tartan blanket skirts as well as hipster cargo pants and puffer jackets in juicy citrus tones – a sort of Hype Beast spin on Ali MacGraw in Love Story. “I spent most of my childhood outdoors in Ireland,” Anderson recalls. “I grew up on a farm, so not much choice. My parents used my grandparents’ as a kind of crèche and shipped me and my brothers off there every summer. We were permanently in fleeces and cycling shorts – quite funny when I look back at pictures. I used to let cows out of fields and hundreds of cows were milling around the roads stopping traffic.”
Today, he rarely gets outside, his time occupied by a cross-Channel commute to design collections for Loewe, its Paula’s Ibiza diffusion line, JW Anderson, plus collaborations. “I’ve been twice this year,” he laughs wryly, when I ask how he likes to spend time at his holiday home in Norfolk. “I would like to be outdoors more. I do feel like I live in an urban jungle because my life at the moment is spent between Paris and London. I feel like this collection is a sort of utopia – of what I would like to be doing.”
I ask what Anderson has learnt from working with Uniqlo. The Japanese retail behemoth, owned by Fast Retailing, is something of an anomaly on the British high street: a mass market retailer that largely eschews trends in favour of good quality basics at low prices. Last month, John C. Jay, Fast Retailing’s president of global creative, refuted the idea that the brand was a purveyor of “fast fashion”, telling Forbes: “It’s not fast fashion, because we will never make disposable clothing.”
Anderson agrees. “When you look at the high street now, there is a thing about authenticity. What is interesting is Mr Yanai’s [founder and president of Fast Retailing] direct vision. It’s very methodical. It doesn’t veer. It’s sort of like: commit to something and make it work. He doesn’t rely on creating new trends from existing catwalks. He is there to create things which are universal. There is a democracy to it. That’s what’s so good about Uniqlo. I don’t see it as a throwaway product.”
How does he feel about the state of fashion more generally? He takes a large glug of water. “What I am finding increasingly more disturbing is that we, as the viewer – it’s happening in other things too, music, film, advertising, the way we build houses – we are in a mirage of low-grade happiness,” he says. “We don’t expect things to be pushed anymore. We don’t want anything that challenges us. Which is slightly disturbing because ultimately things that do challenge are the things that progress us.” How does he rail against the system? “When I am designing, I want to look into the abnormal, look into the things that we don’t see. I think fashion needs that. We cannot stay in a state of low-grade happiness. Because if we just accept it, then the powers that be, win.”
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