frank bits
a little chat with… designer jonathan anderson
Hi Jonathan, tell us a bit about what your day-to-day looks like right now. There’s a lot of travelling at the moment – I’m usually in London and Paris but I was also just at the men’s fashion week shows in Milan and Paris, and I was recently in South Korea, Ibiza, New York and Boston, too. What drew you to fashion design? I’ve always wanted to emphasise the creative. Over the years I’ve become more curatorial, but I do find myself drawn back to the foundational ideas I set out to convey at the beginning. As a creative director, I hope my work will be long lived and more permanent. Fashion now can be so temporary: here today and gone tomorrow. What’s your favourite part about being a fashion designer? It’s always the creativity for me. At the moment, we’re rebuilding the JW Anderson brand as a lab of ideas – more like a start-up. We have space to be more creative and experimental – to explore things, and we’re not aiming for perfection. What were your influences for the new Uniqlo x JW Anderson spring collection? I’ve always had a connection to the sea, ever since I was a child in Northern Ireland. I now have a country house in Norfolk on the English coastline that I visit often and felt really inspired there for this collection. What’s your favourite item from the collection? The boat patchwork sweatshirt in grey melange. The inspiration for the boat patchwork came from classic shirting stripes, so it’s diving into the idea of craft, which I love.
kitsch couture
latest collection of toe-warmers is inspired by all things vintage, sugary and gaudy – like excessive lace and sparkly yarn. Each pair is perfectly ugly, which is why we’d proudly wear them with patterned pants, dad sandals and a pep in our
