Martine Rose

Menswear designer Martine Rose started out designing t-shirts with her friend Tamara under the moniker LMNOP, but it appears that any proof of that ever happening has been completely wiped off the face of the Earth—or internet, at least—so you’re just going to have to trust me on that one. LMNOP was doing well and had an international following, but Martine decided to sack that off and go it alone with her own brand. To begin with, Martine focused mainly on shirts and gradually started to branch out into other clothing, but her amazing patterned-print shirts remain the focal point of each collection. Well, to me, anyway. Managing to mix sportswear and tailoring without it looking like some ill-advised corporate tactic of appealing to men in the midst of their mid-life crisis seems like a tricky prospect, but Martine has nailed it with every single collection so far, which seemed like a good enough reason to have a chat.    

VICE: Hey Martine. So, when you left LMNOP and started out on your own, you were all about button shirts and not much else. Why was that?
Martine Rose: Because everyone loves shirts. They’re a classic men’s staple that runs through menswear at all levels, which I think is a good place to start when designing menswear. There’s already such a structure and format to shirts, so that’s really fun to push and play with. I hope my taste and application has got more sophisticated since starting out with them, though. Not in a pretentious way, but more in the way of understanding my market—what it is people like about my work. Refining my voice, I guess.

Did the experience of running LMNOP before help when you went solo and moved up from t-shirts to tailored, collared shirts, do you think?
I think so, yes. LMNOP taught me a lot of things, but probably one of the the most important was to focus on one thing first, perfect it, and then gradually include other pieces. We—Tamara Rothstein and myself—had no idea what we were doing, who would like it, how we would produce it, basically anything before we started except that we wanted to do something. We were 23, restless and ambitious, we had no funding and no money, so we had no choice but to start small anyway, but it definitely made an impact on how I started my own thing off.

How was it trying to break into the industry as a young designer with a very small amount of experience?
Well, maybe it’s more because of other people’s perceptions, but before starting out I always assumed that the industry would be really bitchy, but it’s not at all. I’ve found that other designers are generally really supportive of each other.

Do you think that’s more of a London thing rather than a global thing?
Yeah, I think London’s the only place where you can be a young designer and set up a brand from scratch. I don’t think it works the same way in Milan, New York, or Paris. New York and Milan are far more about the business side of the industry, and Paris is obviously dominated by all of the big houses, whereas London is far more low-key and grassroots, which makes the community of designers in London way different to Europe or the States.

Yeah. Let’s talk about your label. It’s pretty much a 50/50 mix of sportswear and tailoring, has keeping to that vibe limited you at all?
No, not at all. Both disciplines are so different so the fusion is something I find really inspiring and I don’t actually feel that I have to follow a strict format either. I would get really bored if I did. But yeah, I think it’s just my natural aesthetic—I always come back to it organically so there’s no way it could be restrictive.

Cool. I saw an interview where you said that Kurt Cobain wearing a dress and burnout skateboarder Jay Adams have influenced you for your SS12 collection. How exactly?
Well, there was a sexiness, a belligerence and a swaggering confidence, entirely underpinned with such fragility and tragedy in both of them. I was inspired by that ‘I look great but I don’t give a shit, fuck you’ attitude. Isn’t that what everyone tries to capture every morning?

Ha ha, I guess so, yeah. So do you prefer that grittier side of fashion to the whole Italian, super-glamorous side of it then?
Well, I think it’s where I’m from, you know? I’m not an Italian designer, I’m a London designer. So it’s not that I prefer that side of fashion, necessarily, it’s just that I am it, so it makes much more sense to me.

Martine with her collaborative Timberland jacket.

Good reasoning. So, would you say you take more inspiration from general culture rather than following what’s going on in international fashion?
Yeah, yeah, definitely. You know, these fashion trends will pop up every now and then and they all go into the big melting pot of what’s current and what’s relevant at that time. The problem is that a lot of designers will all be dipping into that same pot at the same time and they might have similar tastes. So, I think things can end up becoming a bit same-y if everyone designing clothes just takes inspiration from what is on-trend at that particular moment in time.

So you prefer looking to the past for inspiration rather than obsessing over what’s current?
Totally, yeah. There are obviously millions of designers that I find inspiring, but in terms of direct influence on my work, my past has had a much bigger role. I’m big into music, so that’s always been an important source of inspiration. Also, my dad is Jamaican and growing up in a Jamaican family has had a massive influence on who I am, so subsequently how I design, I guess.

How exactly?
Well, I think it’s more the attitude towards everything rather than directly having an impact on a specific piece of my work, you know? Music has had a big effect on me in terms of what I find beautiful and appealing, so that definitely has an impact on how I approach what I’m doing and how the final piece ultimately turns out.

JAMIE CLIFTON