Several London labels make ready-to-wear as well as records.
Musicians launching fashion brands is nothing new—Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani, J. Lo and Hilary Duff all dabble in design. But in London, fashion scenesters are turning the trend on its head, nurturing music labels under their fashion umbrellas.
By weaving the two worlds together, musicians get exposure to fashion’s tastemakers, and the apparel brands can tap into the underground, word-of-mouth exposure that musicians generate through live performances and the Web.
“It’s a very English approach—people have to sniff around to find out that the fashion and music label are connected,” says Rupert Meaker of Buddhist Punk, the ready-to-wear brand that quietly launched its own record label last year.
Fellow rtw label PPQ entered the music business in similarly low-key style. “It was never a conscious decision to start the music label, more of a natural progression,” says Percy Parker, who is half of the design team behind PPQ and directs the brand’s record label, 1234. “PPQ started out as a collective of people operating in music and art and experimenting in fashion.”
Buddhist Punk’s music venture came about when Tracey Bennet and Alfe Hollingsworth sold their London Records label, a division of Warner. They reopened under the fashion brand last year, after meeting Buddhist Punk founder Nick Morely in Bali. (Morely has since left the company.) “We were looking at what we, as an established name, could add to a new business that had no brand,” Meaker says.
From the music executives’ point of view, Buddhist Punk’s connections in the fashion world provide inspiration for everything from cover art to future signings. “Rupert’s become a great A&R source,” says Hollingsworth. “He’ll say, ‘Have you heard about this band, have you heard about that band?'” Buddhist Punk has signed, U.K. hip-hop and R&B outfit Mattafix, and is helping to launch the hip-hop artist Jim Screech.
“Fashion and music have always been linked—it’s the youth market,” says Hollingsworth. “The two work in tandem. Every decade where there’s been a strong energy, fashion and music have gone together—look at punk.”
Related Articles
You May Also Like
The danger, Hollingsworth says, is that the music world’s obsession with fashion can put style ahead of substance. “Bands like the Kaiser Chiefs have brought in the trend for bands being clotheshorses, too….Some bands have made it for their personal taste more than their music.”
That’s not the case for groups signed to 1234, who Parker says “got to have the tunes above all else.” The label’s artists, which include teenage rock group Trafalgar, electro rock artist Whitey and indie outfit Cosmetique (with Peaches Geldof on vocals), all tend to wear skinny jeans, messy hair and lashings of eyeliner, a look that fits with PPQ’s rock star-worthy drainpipe jeans and Marianne Faithfull-style smock dresses. “The bands might turn up to PPQ shows, and wear a bit of PPQ on stage, but it’s not forced,” says Amy Molyneux, Parker’s design partner.
Jade Jagger is no stranger to the influence of music on fashion. The original rock baby has put her street-savvy stamp on everything from Garrard jewelry to the New York apartments she designed with Philippe Starck. Now Jagger, who bought a home on the legendary party island of Ibiza nine years ago, has brought together performers from the Jezebel night she holds at the Ibizan club Pacha to record on her Jezebel record label. Her clothing line of the same name will bow at trade shows this fall.
“I like the idea of fashion being led by music trends, rather than high fashion,” says Jagger. “I find sometimes that fashion is going too fast to catch up.” Her Jezebel collection was inspired by “the basics that we all wear” and will include sweaters, T-shirts and HotPants suits.
Jagger’s laid-back design aesthetic has influenced the music scene on Ibiza. “There is a cross reference between the ideas I have about art, architecture, fashion, music and jewelry. We wanted to create a new Ibiza sound, to return the island to the way it had been years ago, before it was all about electronic music and package holidays,” says Jagger. Her label’s latest releases employ U.K. hip-hop artists such as Estelle, with DJs Marc Ronson and Groove Armada remixing the tracks. “I’d describe it as rock with a hip-hop beat,” she adds.
Although Jagger and her counterparts shun the idea of selling consumers a lifestyle, Hollingsworth says these partnerships are an attractive business option for music companies, whose sales have struggled since the advent of the MP3.
“Record companies that had enabled artists to build their brands were not seeing the profits when artists went on to launch their own merchandise. But you can participate in the two worlds.”
As long as you have the street cred in the first place. “There’s more than one European [fashion] label spending an awful lot of effort courting the London indie scene,” Parker says. “The emphasis is on association and exploitation—I think they’re hoping that the effortless cool will rub off.”