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Vice Blog

BI-POLAR BEAR DISORDER

Sandy-haired Ryan Noon looks a bit like the Milky Bar Kid and is interested in flying over glaciers, swimming in cold mountain rivers, and talking to animals. I guess that's fresher than being into rich junkie punks like the rest of the fashion world.

Like loads of other good fashion designers, 25-year-old American Ryan Noon went to London's Central Saint Martins. He's also put some designs together for Nike and art tranny dad Grayson Perry. Ryan also says he didn't do very much in 2008 because he entered a "black hole." What freelancer hasn't?

Sandy-haired Ryan Noon looks a bit like the Milky Bar Kid and is interested in flying over glaciers, swimming in cold mountain rivers, and talking to animals. I guess that's fresher than being into rich junkie punks like the rest of the fashion world.

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Vice: What was the Bi-polar Bear t-shirt about? Ryan Noon: I come from America's north and spend a lot of time in Scandinavia, but a lot of my inspiration recently has come from Africa and tribal art from South Africa. So the bi-polar feeling was kind of this dual personality disorder, where I was living in the two extremes – the extreme polar north and the extreme south in Africa. It was in conjunction with a zebra hide print, so in the bi-polar way, the zebra and polar bear were best friends. Also, if I were an animal I'd be a polar bear. And if you were a fashion designer, who would be your heroes? Hmm… that's tough. I think probably my friend Henrik Vibskov--he constructs installations and has exhibitions in galleries and he drums in Trentemoller, as well as running his shop and designing fashion. That's the type of designer I'd like to be as well – not just a "fashion-fashion" approach.

You made an outfit for Grayson Perry? What was it like? Grayson's brief was speaking about himself for over an hour and what he and his female personality, Claire, liked. And then in the last 30 seconds he said that he hated chavs and football. I was living in Hackney and it was the World Cup--scary hot chavs and watching football was my life. I thought it would be clever to do everything he didn't like. I came up with chav-boy-and-Staffordshire-terriers-with-massive-willies print. Turns out he didn't like it at all, but I really love it.

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If you could make an outfit for anyone, who would it be? It would probably be Björk, since she was kind of my earliest inspiration, getting me out of the blandness of the suburbs and over to London. I would love the guys from the Swedish band the Tough Alliance to wear my stuff.

So does Bjork influence your work? Yes! Not so much Björk at the moment, but definitely still Iceland and Scandinavia. I still love the extremes in Iceland from the binge-drinking to the volcanic and glacier landscape. It's the real on and off, hot and cold society that I relate with in Iceland.

What's the idea behind your new collection? At the moment I'm back in Iceland, mentally, and going with Icelandic sweaters printed with some strange religious symbols. I've also got a small collection called "The Wigga Prince" of some tribal stuff, and a collection at Beyond the Valley called "Ryan Noon: The Zulu Don." I'm thinking the next stop is Saudi Arabia.

Photos by Dan Wilton