Courtesy of Jacket RequiredThe scene at London’s hottest new men’s-wear trade show.“It’s about time.” “London should have a show like this.”
Everyone said the same thing. Jacket Required, a new contemporary men’s-wear trade show in London, felt much like a bunch of well-dressed friends finally getting the chance to hang out together. The dominating look on site: men in versions of a blue shirt, ankles showing.
For two days at an art school in Shoreditch, business was brisk with buyers and bloggers. The event was invite-only, as was the after-party, which pleased everyone. “If you are not at Jacket Required,” one boutique in Rotterdam tweeted before boarding the plane, “you are not into fashion.”
Craig Ford, one of the show’s founders, works extensively with Mr. Bathing Ape (BAPE), which meant that cutting-edge Japanese brands were featured heavily. BAPE’s Tomoaki “Nigo” Nagao showed a new line inspired by 19th-century work wear called Human Made; the Tokyo-based Bedwin & the Heartbreakers made its European debut; and the former BAPE designer Sk8thing showed his his new collection, C.E., for the very first time.
Even the British heritage brand Wolsey (perhaps the only line that targets street-wear enthusiasts and supplies hosiery and knitwear to the queen) made an appearance, showcasing a more fashion-forward spinoff called 1755 — a modern brand curiously named after the year the company was founded.
“We normally have to go to Pitti in Florence and Bread and Butter in Berlin, so it’s great to be able to just come here and be with so many like-minded brands,” said Greg Finch of the handmade-in-Portugal line Pointer Footwear, another start-up. “It’s been too long since we had a show like this,” added Michael Singh, who was representing the Catalan shoe brand Maians and has a tattoo of Shiva’s trident pointing to a lotus flower.
The idea for the show came to its three founders — Ford, Andrew Parfitt, 39, and Mark Batista, 38 — in a pub. “We wanted to get brands that hadn’t shown anywhere else in Europe,” Batista said, “to bring something new that buyers won’t find in France or Italy. So they kinda have to come here.” The next spring-summer Jacket Required is already planned for February 2012.
Not everything went their way. The show played against a background of the worst riots in the London since the 1980s. (One of the main backers, Carhartt, had a shop broken into and looted one night.) At the show, the organizers laid out deck chairs for sipping beers after a hard day’s work, only to be thwarted by England’s predictably wet weather.
Still, the Jacket Required founders made many happy, and for many reasons. “The coffee is great, isn’t it?” a grizzled tastemaker in a cotton blazer told his friend. “I mean, you don’t normally get good coffee at these sorts of shows.” He sipped, dodged the puddles and headed back inside.
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