CLIP: The Fashion Designer Who Built a Clothing Brand That Makes No Clothes!

0:00They return it all. And at one point, companies like ASOS and Mino or Nextdoor, all of them were, it's cheaper just to send it off to cherry stores and send it off to Ghana than it is to pay someone in England to iron it and fold it back up and put it back in the shelf and then send it out. But, you know, it was because it's all, they were producing things, you know, a billion pieces in Bangladesh for two pounds an item. So it was cheaper to, you know, it cost them two pounds to process it in the UK. It's cheaper to get rid of it. What do you think has to change at the time? All of that's got to change.

0:40But how do they change it? Regulation? By teaching the general public. So that's what we, that's what I set out to do three years ago by launching Stuart Trevor. but what about a clothing brand that doesn't produce any clothing? I was taking those young startup brands to investors, trying to get them funding. Right. And all these investors, look, several of them were like, I used to love All Saints. I don't like it anymore, but why don't you do another brand? And I'd be like, the last thing the world needs is another clothing brand. And they're like, but All Saints is kind of boring now. I want to look like you.

1:16And I'm like, well, this is just a bomber jacket. and I made some patches and my daughter, I was teaching her how to design things and custom my upside. They're like, I'd love that fucking bomber. And so I went away and I thought, what about a clothing brand that doesn't produce any clothing? These bomber jackets are 90s dead stock. I've got warehouse in north of England that has about 1 ,000, 2 ,000 of these in different colours. They've been sitting there for 10, 20 years. Brand new, effectively. Brand new, yeah. And so I get hold of them. I print these patches I sew them on I have a little label that I I've got my little Stuart Dresser ST David Bowie inspired awesome label and then I have a a little white label that I zig zag stitch on it and I sign it yeah the view by your name goes on there the date and so it's that's like like almost make creating love walking works bar yeah so they're almost like it's a little bit over the top some of it's plain we do a plane bomber as well yeah so There are thousands of these, but these guys didn't know what to do with them.

2:20So not only these, they've got, you know that military stuff I was telling you about? I used to buy it and I used to buy all these military jackets and take them to factories in Italy and fabric mills and copy the fabric and copy the pan and get them made and order 500 ,000. thousand i go to these warehouse they've still got a million garments in there and and i could go in there and and i started you know i started off doing some sort of flak shirts and and i cut the back out i put this sort of beaded sequin sort of fabric on it or i got these denim shirts and i added embroidery like this onto it and and i and you have people people and it's all garments that are sitting there that already exist and we just make them cool epic and and people love it so Because the one thing we're not going to do is we can't stop people wanting to buy clothes.

3:12Because everybody, you know, it's addiction, isn't it? It is an addiction. But also, everybody wants to look. Even computer nerds nowadays know that they need to, you know, even Steve Jobs or whatever. He knew he used to wear an Issey Miyake turl neck. But he knew that he defined his own look and he might wear the same thing every day. but everyone knows that if you don't you know if you wear interesting clothes you have an interesting life that's a vivian westwood quote but if you if you don't if everyone takes care of how they look and everybody wants to buy something well they come to steward trevor if you look on our website stewardtrevor.com everything is or it's made from clothes that already exist so it's guild free so you're not actually we don't produce anything so everything will upcycled it's all upcycled every single thing and there's and we did runway shows We did the world's first ever designer runway show that had every single item was upcycled from clothes that already exist.

4:11And people flew in from all over the world to St. Louis, Missouri. A lot of them vintage collectors to see it. And they were like, yeah, I've seen it all before. And then when it came out, they were like, fucking hell, that is incredible. All these parkas with these extra patches on or embroidery or beaded. and we had hand paintings on them and things like that. And it just, it's a total. So when I started doing that about three years ago, everyone thought I was insane. I even thought I was insane. I was like, people were like, how are you going to scale this? I had no idea, but I did know. I'm not stupid.

4:46I did know that if I was to announce that I was doing a new label, no one's going to write about it because there's far too many clothing brands in the world. But if you were to announce, what about a clothing brand that doesn't produce any clothing? I'm going to create a whole collection made from clothes that already exist. People have done that sort of thing before, but most of it is rubbish. Most of it is, you know, a jacket made out of a pair of trousers. Random stuff as well. Random, weird. What I do is less is more and it looks really cool. I'm actually, I was, people ask me all the time, fuck it all, you're a coolest guy to work.

5:20You did Reese, you did Allsage, you did Bollingard. I used to buy it. I never ever thought I was cool. I was always striving to be cool. I wanted to be cool. So I produced something and I never ever thought I was, even with all sides. Now I look at what I'm doing and I think, fucking hell, that's cool. It's, I'd walk in. Do you feel like it's your, almost your proudest brand you've created? Yeah. Everyone does. Yeah. Everyone that, anyone that's in the fashion business, I get everybody that I've known in my career or my life, for even me go, fucking hell mate, what you're doing is incredible. And I honestly can actually, laugh and go I thank you I yeah I I honestly believe I'm because it because it's you wouldn't believe some of the stuff I get is so I go I have a relationship with some of these 70 80 year old 70 year old men and women that have contracts with the Ministry of Defense and they have been buying clearing out ex-army ex-REF ex-Royal Navy stuff for years and they don't know what to do with it