‘PATIENCE’ IS THE GIGANTIC message scrawled on every Amish buggy plodding on modern highways.¹ ‘The horse is our pacer,’ as one Amish man puts it, ‘We can’t speed up like you can in a car.’² The slow-paced hymns in Amish church services linger for twenty minutes. The most traditional Amish do not set their clocks ahead an hour in the summer season as other Americans do. These traditionalists favour slow time, God’s time, established by the rising and setting of the sun. In the midst of a hyper-speed culture that wants more and more, faster and faster, from instant downloads, immediate tweets, express mail, and extreme sports to rushed everything, the Amish stubbornly resist the velocity of hypermodernity.

The Amish emerged in 1693 in the Bern area of Switzerland and the Alsace region of France. They migrated to the United States in several waves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the last European congregation closed in 1936. Jacob Amman, the founder of the Amish, was a tailor, which may account for some of the group’s interest in dress. Prior to arriving in North America, they rejected the use of buttons as ostentatious symbols of pride and instead used wire hooks and eyes to fasten clothing. Their critics taunted them saying, ‘Those with hooks and eyes, the Lord will save, those with buttons and pockets, the devil will snatch.’³

Today North America’s nearly 300,000 Amish live in thirty-one states. Their church is organised into 2120 congregations, each consisting of twenty to thirty-five families living in proximity yet interspersed among non-Amish neighbours. The life of each congregation is guided by its ordnung (order). This unwritten set of regulations governs the use of technology, dress styles, furniture and other practices. There are some forty different Amish affiliations, or tribes, with unique styles of dress, buggies, and technology that distinguish them from one another. Even within the same tribe, the bishop of each congregation has some latitude to interpret and enforce dress regulations. Although Amish people may appear as a homogeneous cluster from a distance, their dress styles vary between and within each tribe. One researcher found dozens of variations in women’s clothing across fifteen Amish communities.⁴ This essay, however, focuses on the dress practices of the large (30,000-member) Amish community in Lancaster County, ninety miles west of Philadelphia.

The Amish seek to follow the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament.⁵ Two pivotal religious values – separation from the world and self-­denial – regulate Amish wardrobes. Separation from the world means that their religious community seeks to maintain a cultural difference from the outside society even though they mingle with non-Amish neighbours and buy and sell products in the larger economy. Church elders believe that clothing should reflect biblical values of self-denial, simplicity, modesty, humility, and separation from the world.⁶ They cite Bible verses about dress practices such as the women’s prayer covering (kapp),⁷ but many of their customs, rooted in tradition, are symbolic expressions of separation from the world. When asked why they wear a certain article of clothing, a typical Amish reply is, ‘It’s just the way our people dress.’ Nonetheless, dress habits have a religious legitimation because the local congregation reaffirms them twice a year in members’ meetings. For instance, an Amish catechism manual devotes nine pages and forty-three questions and answers to dress – second only to the topic of heaven.⁸

Individualism is the sharpest wedge between Amish culture and modern life. Amish life accents communal obligations and loyalty, not individual freedom and choice. Amish culture values deference to others and uffgevva – giving up to the group. All cosmetics and jewellery, including wedding rings and wristwatches, are taboo. For the Amish, self-adornment calls attention to personal taste and preference. Clothing that shows off one’s individuality produces a proud, haughty person, and pride is considered an abomination in the eyes of God. The fashions of the outside world, in Amish eyes, are vain expressions of conceit and frivolity.

In hypermodernity, dress articulates individuality and personal taste.⁹ In Amish life, clothing expresses exactly the opposite meaning. When members wear Amish garb, they relinquish their right to self-expression and signal their commitment to communal authority. Amish dress styles have several important functions: to show conformity to the collective order, to restrain individual expression, to promote equality, and to erect symbolic boundaries around the community. Dress provides a distinctive uniform that declares without doubt who belongs and who does not. In short, dress signals group loyalty. It shows whether one is obedient or disobedient, humble or proud, modest or haughty, loyal or rebellious.

Amish women and men have a wardrobe for each of three occasions: work, dress up (public occasions), and church. The most traditional, plainest and most conforming garb is worn to church. Men who might, for example, wear jackets with buttons for dress-up occasions will wear suits with hooks and eyes for church services. Likewise, women wear darker colours and fasten their dresses with straight pins to attend church. Regardless of venue, men and women wear clothing made of solid, non-patterned fabrics.¹⁰

The wardrobe of an Amish woman includes a dress, an apron, a cape, a prayer kapp, and, in winter, a heavy shawl and a protective bonnet. For everyday work, she wears a scarf instead of a kapp and does not wear a cape. The degree of plainness is signaled by whether a woman wears a bib apron (a garment that drapes over the dress and is tied but not pinned in the back) or the more traditional waist-style pinned apron for everyday activities. The typical woman may own seven to ten dresses including two or three specifically styled for church services. Typical colours for the non-church dresses of married or older women are dark blue, light blue, hunter green, winter-green, olive green, light green, mahogany and chestnut brown, tan, deep mauve, and dark plum.

Amish men grow beards but shave their upper lips because moustaches have traditionally been associated with European military officers. They wear shirts without pockets, suspenders, and black zipperless trousers with a ‘broad fall’ flap across the front that is fastened by a button. A suit coat is worn for dress-up and for church. Zippers, belts and ties are prohibited. These items as well as pockets on shirts are considered ornamental and frivolous. The size and style of men’s broadbrim hats (straw for summer and felt for winter) are regulated by the church, and commonly the wider the brim, the plainer the man is understood to be. It is rare to see a boy or man without a hat when he is outside a building. Typical colours for men’s shirts include light pink, sky blue, baby blue, lime green (very common), royal blue, tan, blue/green, olive green, emerald green, burnt sienna (for teenagers), deep purple (for young boys), light purple, brown and other colours similar to those worn by women.

Although undergarments are typically purchased, most Amish clothing is homemade. A few Amish seamstresses make suits and overcoats for men and organdy prayer kapps for women, which require special skill. Mothers typically sew most of the clothing for their family, including their own dresses. They purchase fabrics from Amish-owned shops and spend much time perusing the aisles filled with dark hues, holding the fabrics up to the light, inspecting the slightly different textures and fabric compositions. In the past, women wore one hundred percent cotton fabrics primarily, which required ironing. Recently, more women wear cotton/polyester blends, which wrinkle less. Mothers occasionally purchase some of their sons’ and husbands’ work shirts from thrift shops.

The Amish value thrift and frugality. They frequently repair, recycle and reuse clothing. As one woman commented when asked, ‘If the clothes are patched and if the patch needs to be patched, then I know it needs to be replaced.’¹¹ Another woman said wistfully, ‘I feel a bit badly for my youngest son [of four boys] because he has never had anything new, but he hasn’t minded, either.’¹² Amish children wear their clothes hard, given all their chores and their frequently long walks to school. Families share children’s clothing among one another. Occasionally, mothers purchase contemporary-looking jackets (without hoods) for their sons and then painstakingly remove the zippers.

From the age of sixteen to the early twenties, Amish youth experience rumspringa, a time for socialising and courtship with their peers. During this period, they are not accountable to church regulations because they are not yet baptised and official members of the church. Many continue to dress in fairly traditional ways, while others rebel more openly and wear some non-Amish clothing to youth parties. Teenage boys, for example, may wear blue jeans and fashionable shirts and cut their hair according to contemporary styles, all of which is prohibited for adult church members. During rum­springa, some young women wear dresses in non-traditional colours and complement their dress choices by painting their toenails with brightly coloured polish and wearing sandals or flip-flops, or by wearing coloured socks, which they call ‘anklets,’ with other non-traditional footwear. Many youths try to respect their families’ preferences even though their dress violates the church code. Such violations may elicit gossip but are not punished because the young people have not yet pledged to obey the ordnung.

In the Amish mind, fashion is a bad word that is associated with the vanity of popular culture. An Amish manual says, ‘We know that worldly fashions have their origin in the most wicked cities on earth, that their foundation is not modesty and godliness but lust and pride.’¹³

Amish dress practices are slow to change because they are viewed as religious precepts. But change they do, and not only for utilitarian reasons. Amish fashion – change for the sake of change – exists, but it is subtle, slow, and miniscule. For instance, for many years baby boys typically wore dresses until they were toilet trained, but that practice is changing, as some parents worry that a dress on a baby boy may lead to gender confusion when he grows up. A more progressive mother, with a wink to tradition, may take her baby boy to church in a dress one time and thereafter dress him in trousers and shirt. Individual signs of rebellion or boundary testing include, for women, wearing prayer kapps that are smaller and thus expose more of the ear, kapps with untied strings, kapps with pronounced heart-shaped designs on the back, dresses in brighter colours, decorative pins on jacket lapels, and small frills and ruffles on sleeves. In addition, women’s dresses are now longer than they were in the past. The waistbands, which had been dropped toward the hips, are now at the waist. The pleats on the sleeves of short-sleeved summer dresses have changed and, occasionally, teenage girls add decorative buttons to those sleeves. To circumvent the prohibition of pockets on shirts, some men wear a leather pouch on their suspenders to hold pens, and more progressive men are likely to wear short-sleeved shirts. Occasionally, they may wear a window-pane patterned shirt or a cherry red shirt, both of which exceed traditional patterns of decorum. Other widely accepted changes in the last decade involve more and brighter colour choices, athletic shoes worn in work settings and Velcro, which, in a nod of respect to the taboo on buttons, is frequently used to fasten coats and other clothing items instead of hooks and eyes and straight pins. However, none of these glimmers of fashion would ever appear in a Sunday worship service, where conformity to the dress code is paramount.

Unlike moderns who welcome change and applaud the endless arrival of new gadgets and gizmos, the Amish prize patience and slowness, and are averse to change – especially change simply for the sake of it. Such deference to durable traditions might make Amish life appear drab to the outsider. Yet Amish life has many benefits for those who have chosen to abide by its rules. In a culture where abundant choice frequently spikes anxiety and where the emphasis placed on individuality is often at odds with our desire to fit in with the group,¹⁴ the demure and self-effacing nature of the Amish is arguably not just a way to rebel against the stresses of the modern world, but also a deft manner of finding personal satisfaction in acquiescence to the group. Perhaps then, the Amish know what the rest of us are still struggling to accept: slowness no doubt brings its own kind of joy.

Dr Donald Kraybill grew up milking cows on a Mennonite dairy farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and is today the world’s foremost expert on the Old Order Amish. He is a Senior Fellow at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elisabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and lectures widely on Anabaptist faiths. 

This article was originally published in Vestoj ‘On Slowness.’

1. I am grateful for the kindness of Judy Stavisky for granting permission to use her observations of Amish dress and for the editorial assistance of Cynthia Nolt ↩

2. Author interview with Ohio Amish man, October 10, 2012 ↩

3. For details on Amish history and an overview of Amish communities in North America, see D B Kraybill, K M Johnson-Weiner, and S M Nolt, The Amish, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2013 ↩

4. S Scott, Why Do They Dress That Way?, Good Books, Intercourse, PA, 1986, pp.122–123 ↩

5. For an introduction to Amish spirituality and beliefs, consult D B Kraybill, S M Nolt, and D L Weaver-Zercher, The Amish Way, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010 ↩

6. I Timothy 2:9–10; I Peter 3:3–4 ↩

7. I Corinthians 11:2–16 ↩

8. 1001 Questions and Answers on the Christian Life, Pathway Publishers, Aylmer, Ontario, 1992, pp.129–137 ↩

9. R Sennett, ‘Foreword’, in G Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994, pp.viii–x ↩

10. I am indebted to Judy Stavisky’s unpublished research notes, July 2014, and Louise Stoltzfus’s unpublished ‘Treatise on Lancaster Amish Dress Practices’, July 2000, for many of these observations. For a lengthy discussion of dress, consult D B Kraybill, K M Johnson-Weiner, and S M Nolt, The Amish, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2013, pp.125–130 ↩

11. Judy Stavisky interview with Pennsylvania Amish woman, July 24, 2014 ↩

12. Judy Stavisky interview with Pennsylvania Amish woman, July 23, 2014 ↩

13. 1001 Questions and Answers on the Christian Life, Pathway Publishers, Aylmer, Ontario, 1992, p.131 ↩

14. See, for example, B Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, HarperCollins, New York, 2004 ↩

Anja: Many people complain about the detrimental effects that the speeded up pace of contemporary fashion has on creativity. Is that something you’ve noticed too?

Christophe: Yes, the speed of the business now is crazy. I don’t agree with it. You need time to create and to think, but today designers have to make a new collection every three months. You don’t have a choice. Or I don’t in any case. Pre-collections have become hugely important – if you want to increase sales, you need to offer products as early in the season as possible.

Anja: How do you think that the tempo affects those who work in the industry?

Christophe: There is so much anxiety in this business. People are anxious all the time. Every few months, you have to prove that you’re still at the top of your game. The competition and the time pressure can be overwhelming at times. It’s very hard to achieve something you’re completely satisfied with in the limited time we have now. And at the same time, this is an industry full of sensitive, creative people who are always doubting what they do. I think this is one of the reasons why fashion people sometimes behave in ridiculous ways. We overreact and behave badly. I catch myself doing the same at times.

Anja: What do you think has prompted the industry to accelerate in this way?

Christophe: It’s something that’s been happening for the past ten, fifteen years. Some powerful company must have realised that the earlier they could deliver to stores, the more they would sell. If you deliver your collection in March, as we used to, you have two months to sell it before the sales start – if you deliver in January you have twice as long. Customers have become used to buying summer clothes in January now, so the smaller companies have had to follow suit to keep up. At Hermès I would be choosing fabrics for the winter collection in June/July. In September I would prepare the fashion show for spring/summer and at the same time present research, design ideas and sketches for the winter collection, which would be shown to buyers in early December. In May we would be delivering the winter collection to stores. You’d be surprised if you knew how many clients want to buy fur in May. The wealthy want to show that they’re first with everything.

Anja: Has this affected the way you work at Lemaire too?

Christophe: Yes of course. Our development manager tells us that if we want to reach the next level in our own growth, we’ll have to start showing the womenswear autumn/winter collection in January instead of March. The buyers all come to Paris in January with their budgets now. If you wait to show the collection until after the fashion show in March, it’s too late – the big budgets have been spent. Buyers prioritise brands that they know will deliver early. So of course this shift has deep consequences for our way of working, for how our team is organised, let alone for my peace of mind. But it’s just the way the industry works now; we all have to adapt to survive.

Anja: Do you think that this means that a permanent change for the fashion seasons is under way?

Christophe: Yes, I think eventually what will happen is that the fashion show schedules will shift. They’ll have to happen earlier to accommodate the change in buying. Right now, we’re stuck in between the old and the new rhythm. Fashion is a global business now, and there are so many brands and markets that operate on different seasons. As a designer you have to make sure that you show some wool in the summer season and lighter fabrics in the winter. It’s a bit chaotic now because we have to accommodate two different timings simultaneously.

Anja: On a slightly different note, you’ve received rave reviews these last few seasons, and both critics and buyers seem very susceptible to your vision of discreet sophistication and everyday elegance. Is this something you’ve picked up on also?

Christophe: I’m very aware that this is our moment. Fashion now is about minimalism, a subtle silhouette and everyday garments. What we do fits the trend. But I also know that the only thing you can count on in fashion is that it changes. So I see this as the moment for us to strengthen our team, our communication and our business. We need to become well established enough as a company so that when the tide changes we’ll be strong enough to carry on.

Anja The dichotomy between creativity and business is one that’s very keenly felt in the fashion industry. How do you balance your need for creative expression as a designer with the knowledge that you’re also a business leader who has to always be aware of the bottom line?

Christophe: If you want to endure as a designer today you have to be business savvy. But I’m also aware that when fashion becomes all about business, about profits, it loses the ability to really affect change. It’s a bit sad but the designers that become famous are the ones who play ball and know not to challenge the system too much. When it comes to my own work, I’m an idealist really. I’m interested in history, I’m interested in politics; what drives me is how to create better conditions of life.

Anja: When you say ‘better,’ what do you mean?

Christophe: I’m interested in how clothes are worn in everyday life by regular people. Clothing is so very intimate; it’s about how we want to be seen. Fashion is a projection of an ideal, but to me it’s also tied up with ideology. It should be about liberating a woman or a man from the constraints of untenable ideals. Otherwise being a designer is just about playing with dolls.

Anja: What exactly is important to you in terms of design ideology?

Christophe: To me there is something political in everything. It baffles me that in fashion we seem to think that our work is disconnected from politics, or that it’s pretentious to talk about fashion as something ideological. The work we do at Lemaire is, in its own humble way, very political. We have a very specific point of view about dressing. We communicate so much about ourselves, or about how we want to be seen, by what we wear. So of course it’s political.

Anja: Do you think that fashion has become more or less political since you started?

Christophe: It seems to me that fashion is much more reactionary today than when I started out in the early 1990s. If you read fashion magazines, they seem to be conditioning women to become less independent, more stupid. Follow the crowd; don’t think for yourself. It’s fascinating really. So many women seem to think that they have to run to the sales as soon as they start, and that their worth is measured in the latest shoe or handbag.

Anja: You talked earlier about how the pace of the industry affects designers, but is there anything that can be done to circumvent it?

Christophe: I don’t know if you can circumvent it but you can find a way of dealing with it. When I started I wasn’t confident enough to be at odds with the fashion world. I felt I had to reinvent myself with every collection, which was very stressful. It was only when I understood that the problem wasn’t actually the pace itself, but that I’d bought into the idea of having to renew myself every six months, that I reconciled with the fashion system. I realised that I could actually rework the same garments season after season – that was a very liberating moment actually.

Anja: You seem to have found an interesting way over the years of balancing your own brand with, at times, being a designer for hire at major fashion houses. What are the advantages or disadvantages of working like this?

Christophe: Well, the luxury of having your own brand means that you decide who to listen to. I know firsthand how hard it can be to work for a big corporation: the hypocrisy, the fierceness of big business – everything that is contrary to my own values. Knowing that through my work I can actually provide an alternative to what I don’t like about the fashion system has always motivated me to keep going.

Anja: As a journalist I’ve noticed how the corporate influence has changed the relationship between a designer and the media. The involvement and influence of the PR or agent is hugely important now. Having a PR in the room with you when you do interviews is becoming very common, and often a journalist has to kowtow so much to a fashion brand leading up to the interview moment that when you finally get access to a designer, you’ve become neutered before you even start. Considering your experience working both for major fashion businesses and for yourself, what’s your take on this?

Christophe: At Hermès, they would always place a PR in the room with me when I was being interviewed. If I said something even slightly divisive, they would break in and say, ‘Oh Christophe, maybe you shouldn’t say that – it’s a little bit controversial.’ I realise that an interview is a promotional exercise most of the time now. But I wish it wouldn’t have to be at the expense of the actual opinions or ideology of a designer.

Anja: What do you mean?

Christophe: I’m incredibly frustrated by how enormously powerful fashion conglomerates have become. I’ve seen how it affects the level of honesty and freedom in what critics write. For instance, everybody knows that you can’t say a word against LVMH today. I remember one of the last shows Marc Jacobs did for Louis Vuitton, for autumn/winter 2012, where he showed women dressed all in black with huge hats, in early twentieth-century style. They could barely move. There were men on the catwalk carrying the models’ suitcases, like servants, as if they were on their way to board the Orient Express. But what does this say about the woman of today? Fashion has to say something about life today, about what a modern woman’s life is like. When I saw that Louis Vuitton show, what I saw was a big circus and a lot of money being spent. There was nothing progressive about what a woman should be today. And still, the reviews were all predictably good.

Anja: What’s your opinion on how women are represented in contemporary fashion?

Christophe: Fashion today propagates the wrong idea of femininity or what being sexy is about. Women are told that being sexy is about showing off your body. But what about looking smart?

Anja: You’ve talked in the past about the importance of having a partner in fashion, as you now have Sarah-Linh, and also of working as a team. Why is it important to emphasise fashion as a team effort?

Christophe: How you work together says a lot about the ethics you have as a company. I used to play hockey for a long time; I play soccer. I like team sports. A team has to have very strong ethics. When you succeed, you share the glory, and when you fail, it’s the responsibility of the whole team to correct the flaws. In work, I try to apply the same logic. I want everyone I work with to feel that we’re building something together that’s bigger than any one of us, and that depends on us all. It’s about creating team energy. That doesn’t mean we have to be nice all the time, but it’s about having the right expectations and playing to everybody’s strengths. In a capitalist culture, an enterprise is a little society. I see it like that. Of course, I’m the leader; this is my project. But I could never do it alone.

Anja: The politics of design has been a recurring theme during our conversation, and I’m getting the sense that you’re constantly oscillating between needing to fit in for survival, and wanting to rebel against the system.

Christophe: I try to be radical in my own quiet way. I want to go to the source of what I think is the problem in fashion today and look for long-lasting and profound solutions. That doesn’t mean destroying and replacing everything – that never works. It would be pretentious and conceited to think that I could change the system. The system is what it is. If you want to survive, you have to deal with it. I have employees that depend on me. I’m not an artist. I’m a manager; I can’t take risks that jeopardise the livelihood of those who depend on me. But having said that, I believe in reform. I believe in real democracy. I very much admire the French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès. As he said, one must ‘aller à l’idéal et comprendre le réel.’ Aim for the ideal, but be aware of reality. Small, subtle changes can become very important over time.

This article was originally published in Vestoj On Fashion and Slowness.

Louise Riley is a London-based textile artist and illustrator.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj‘s Editor-in-Chief and Publisher.

Anja: In an interview you once said that ‘The good thing about fashion is that you always go ahead, the next, the next, the next – you don’t have time to look back’. Why is it good not to look back?

Dries: It is good to look back, but I don’t want to be nostalgic. I don’t see the point of dressing up in clothes from the past; there’s a reason why fashion changes with the times.

Anja: But nostalgia seems to have become a very important element
in contemporary fashion – why is that do you think?

Dries: People think that things were easier or more pleasant in the past, but that’s not the case. My team and I often have discussions about this. It’s interesting because I’m an older guy now and they are all very young. When we talk about the 1970s for instance, they think about ABBA as one of the icons of the decade. They don’t know that ABBA at the time was considered to be extremely bad taste – vulgar and completely unfashionable. ABBA was still wearing platform shoes when everyone else had already moved on. What I mean to say is that it’s not always the best versions of the past that live on.

Anja: How do you negotiate the conflict between, as you’ve been known to say, there being too much fashion in the world and at the same time, having always to produce more to stay in business?

Dries: I wouldn’t say that I’m completely at peace with this, but I don’t think of my clothes as just more products in the world. I try to do an honest job and make things that have a reason for existing other than just making money. I want to make clothes that allow wearers to communicate something about their personality. Of course I also have to compromise and make basic T-shirts to survive sometimes. But overall, I put my heart in everything I do. I can only hope that this makes my work worthwhile.

Anja: Do you ever have doubts?

Dries: Everyday. I never stop questioning what I do. Before a fashion show I might get nervous and start thinking, ‘Maybe we should have chosen different music, or maybe those shoes aren’t quite right’. But at the same time, if you’re perfectly sure of everything you do, then what’s the point?

Anja: What is success to you?

Dries: Success and happiness are intertwined. To me success is not about scoring, as it is to a lot of people. It’s about feeling good about things, it’s about living a good life.

Anja: How do you apply that principle to how you do business?

Dries: I try to do business in the same way. Had we wanted to, we could have had a store in every major city in the world, but that sort of success was never for me. When we open a store I want it to be in a nice location, I want the staff to be people I like. The most important thing to me is that my work is creative. I want to put all my energy and enthusiasm into colours, fabrics – things like that. I don’t automatically think about whether it will sell well or if I’ll earn a lot of money.

Anja: Is this a strategy that you’ve deliberately followed throughout your career?

Dries: I wouldn’t say it’s ever been deliberate. When I started in the mid-Eighties it became clear pretty quickly that to be a Belgian fashion designer was seen as an anomaly. The other designers from Antwerp that I started out with, well, we realised that we wouldn’t fit easily into the system. We had to find our own way. We had no money, so working together made us stronger but forming a group was never a marketing idea. It was just that people couldn’t pronounce our names so we became ‘The Antwerp Six’. I didn’t set out to be different though, it all happened very organically.

Anja: How do you feel you have changed as a designer over the years?

Dries: I hope that getting older and more experienced has made me wiser. I don’t want to ever fall back on formulas – that’s the worst trap for a fashion designer that’s been in the business a long time. You know, when you follow a tried and tested recipe that dictates adding a little bit of this, a pinch of that, shaking it and hey presto – there’s the new collection. I want to surprise and I want to stimulate creativity in my team – that to me is very important.

Anja: How do you ensure that you don’t fall into the trap?

Dries: The research process is incredibly important. Every season I start afresh – I want us to begin with a blank page, even if where we end up is not far from the last collection. To feel creatively stimulated I need to go through the whole research process – I couldn’t just pick up from where we left off last season. That’s why we aren’t yet part of a big conglomerate. I want to be able to make my own choices.

Anja: Not yet, you say?

Dries: Well, you never know what’s going to happen in the future… I’m fifty-six now, I don’t know what the situation will be like when I’m sixty-five. Maybe I’ll want to stop. But the fact is that I’m responsible for my team and all the people who have invested in us; all the people that work in production are dependent on me. Maybe when that time comes, the best thing to do is to take a partner or to sell the company. I don’t know. But I do know that I’m not going to do this forever – I’m not Armani.

Anja: Why is it important to you that the company remains even if you’re no longer involved?

Dries: It’s not that it’s important for its own sake, but of course it’s nice to know that what I have built will live on. It’s not that I’m looking to leave anytime soon, I love what I do. But I have to start thinking of the future, because I don’t have eternal life. We have to consider our options. In Antwerp we have over a hundred people working for us and in India there’s a few thousand people just working on our embroidery. It would be a pity to just suddenly say, ‘Okay, that was it – bye!’

Anja: Do you worry that your legacy might be misinterpreted, were you to leave it in the hands of somebody else?

Dries: I can pass on my message to the people who continue when I’m no longer here, but I can’t control what happens of course. If I step out, I step out and I have to assume responsibility for my choice. And I still have enough things to do in life that, once that day comes, I won’t always be looking over my shoulder to see what’s happening with the company.

Anja: You often seem to be represented as an outsider to the fashion system:
no advertising, no pre-collections, based in Antwerp, independently owned – do you see yourself as an outsider?

Dries: No, because it was never something I set out to become. Every decision we made was based on our circumstances at the time, and my position in the industry is a result of that. It’s all happened very organically. I lived in Antwerp when I started, rent is cheap here. We found an incredible building so why move to Paris? The same logic applied when we found our shop in Paris. My intention wasn’t to set myself apart from the well-established shopping districts, it’s just that we found a shop that I really loved with an amazing view over the Seine.

Anja: How do you see your own role in the behemoth that the fashion industry today has become?

Dries: I don’t know. We’re not the only ones who work in a different way. There are others. But my decision not to make pre-collections like all the major brands do for example, is based on the fact that we wouldn’t have the time to make it as well as our main collection. My team is not big enough. Also, I want to see every yarn, every palette, every button – every element of every collection. That, to me, is the fun part. I don’t like meetings; I like to be hands-on in the creation. But really, we just do the best we can with what we have.

Anja: Are there parts of the fashion industry that you find hard to identify with?

Dries: Actually, I think that the good thing about the fashion industry today is that it allows for a lot of different alternatives. In the Eighties and Nineties there was just one way. In the late 1990s when the big groups started buying up independent designers, it looked for a while as if that was the future – we all had to become part of a big conglomerate. We also considered it seriously for a while. But we didn’t make that leap, it wasn’t for us – or not yet anyway. Instead we just kept working and with time people have come to respect that. Today, difference is celebrated. It’s the same with fashion itself. You can be dressed in Versace or in Yohji Yamamoto and be equally fashionable. There’s a lot more space for individuality today.

Anja: How do you feel about the pace of the fashion system – is there any way to circumvent it?

Dries: I’m lucky in that it doesn’t affect me too much. I get by without the pre-collections that are so essential for many other brands. When pre-collections started to become important, we felt the pressure to make them too of course. But we stuck it out, and today buyers seem grateful that we don’t make any. They spend so much time running around the world buying new collections that they complain about not knowing which season is which anymore. I think they appreciate a little time off.

Anja: I’m surprised to hear you say that. I’ve spoken to so many designers
who seem to feel that making pre-collections is an absolute requirement these days. How can you survive without it when so many others seem to think they can’t?

Dries: Well, for most designers the pre-collection is their commercial collection – it’s what they sell. Then they make a ‘fashion show collection’ that is useful in terms of image and gets them attention in the press. The equation, in terms of sales, is usually 75% pre-collection and 25% fashion show collection. The fashion show collection for most designers arrives late in the sales season, but we do it differently. We invite buyers to see us in Antwerp one month before we show it to press in Paris. This means that we can get early orders, which in turn helps us when we place fabric orders with our suppliers. If a fabric won’t arrive on time, we can let our buyers know and they can choose something else instead. All in all, this means that we can deliver a big part of our collection nearly at the same time when others deliver their pre-collections. to make pre-collections like all the major brands do for example, is based on the fact that we wouldn’t have the time to make it as well as our main collection. My team is not big enough. Also, I want to see every yarn, every palette, every button – every element of every collection. That, to me, is the fun part. I don’t like meetings; I like to be hands-on in the creation. But really, we just do the best we can with what we have.

Anja: This pace that you’re describing owes a lot to fast fashion, doesn’t it? It’s as if the fast turn-around that customers have come to expect from the stores on the high street, has also ended up completely altering the way high fashion brands work.

Dries: That’s true. You have to remember that in the past sell-through at department stores was assessed every six months; now it’s done every month. Department stores look at a designer’s monthly turnover per square foot now, so of course if you always deliver new products you’ll have a much more even sell-through. A brand like ours by contrast has a very high turnover for the first three months after a new collection arrives in stores, but that will be followed by two months of slow sales.

Anja: But seeing as you’ve been in business for over three decades by now you’ve also had a chance to build long-lasting relationships with buyers. Would it be fair to say that, as a designer who is very well established and well respected by now, certain allowances are made for you?

Dries: You have a point, but the fact is that my collections sell well. I don’t want to come across as a commercial designer, but I am a designer concerned with creating garments for men and women that sell. Other designers are concerned with creating an image so that they can sell accessories or perfume. In most companies, accessories, shoes and bags make up 60–70% of sales – for us it’s only 7%, the other 93% is clothing.

Anja: You have been stressing the importance of designing garments to wear, rather than garments for show, but how do you keep this balance in an environment that now puts so much emphasis on the photogenic nature of clothes?

Dries: I have had to start thinking about what garments look good viewed on an iPod or smartphone. The first three looks have to be intriguing enough to make people want to see the rest. You can’t tell the whole story at once.

Anja: On a slightly different note, what’s important to you in terms of ideology and design ethics?

Dries: The fashion industry is full of tricks about how to create desirability and make things more commercial. You can find it in how you merchandise a collection, how you link garments or how you connect an element that sold well one season to items the following season. I try to avoid all that. I want my work to be honest and straightforward – I don’t like tricks.

This article was originally published in Vestoj On Fashion and Slowness.

Louise Riley is a London-based textile artist and illustrator.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj‘s Editor-in-Chief and Publisher.

Anja: You’ve had a real upswing recently in terms of popularity – why is that do you think?

Nigel: I’ve had plenty of ups and downs but I’ve had my own brand forty-three years now. There aren’t many people around who can say that today. It took me sixty-three years to figure it all out so I ain’t that fucking smart. I’m sixty-five now and I started to get really popular when I was about sixty. I was like, ‘Why am I so popular all of a sudden?’ And I realised that it’s because I’m so approachable. I’ve got plenty of personality, plenty to say for myself and I love what I do. I travel around the world and a lot of people know who I am. A lot of people photograph me. All these things are part of the brand. At least my brand has got a character to it. I look like what I am. A twat. [Laughs]

Anja: Your work today is completely based on vintage clothing. When did you first start working with vintage?

Nigel: Well, my first love was pop music. English pop music between 1967–1971 was fucking brilliant! I was a fashion student then and everybody was into flower power. I only went to fashion college for the birds you know. I met this kid when I was about seventeen and he told me, ‘You’ve got to go to this college, it’s full of fucking birds!’ It’s true! But pretty soon I realised I wanted to design menswear, which was unheard of in Newcastle then. Everybody else did either womenswear or children’s wear. And I wasn’t gay like most other male designers. They’re all gay, let’s face it. And they all design womenswear because they want to dress like women and look like women. So it was hard to get inspiration for me back then. When I went to Paris in 1968, all I saw was the couture houses. And of course, they all had gilt chairs and giant mirrors – it was all crap. I thought, ‘What’s this? What have I gotten myself into?’

Anja: Clearly the gilt chairs and elaborate mirrors didn’t put you off fashion for long…

Nigel: True. In my third year of fashion college I started my own business. I was manufacturing everything locally and selling to a radius of about forty miles, that’s what we all did back then. And in 1972 I met Paul Smith who became my agent – he got me into all the London shops. In fact Paul showed me the first vintage garment I ever saw – I didn’t know vintage existed until 1978.

David: What was the garment?

Nigel: It was a RAF jacket, a little short green one with the button and tape. Paul gave it to me and it made me a fortune. Once I discovered that button and tape, I did a whole range of similar pieces in 1979 – I was the first one to do that.

Anja: What were your clothes like before you discovered vintage?

Nigel: When I first started all I did was clothes inspired by pop music, but in the mid-Seventies I lost my way a bit. When I discovered the vintage I got myself fucking up to speed again and I never looked back.

Anja: What do you mean you ‘lost your way’?

Nigel: Well, I was showing in Paris from about 1973–1985. I can’t even remember what I was doing back then. Life’s always been a big rush for me; it’s never been easy. I’ve always been rushing. Everyone thinks I’m on drugs! [Laughs] Truth is, my only drug is the exercise.

Anja: Exercise? Really? What’s your routine?

Nigel: I read a book a couple of years ago and it said that if you want to stay young you’ve got to exercise six days a week. So I thought, ‘I’m up for that!’ Now I get up at 5.30am every morning to go training. I take a ten-pound medicine ball with me when I travel, and I go running with it. When I’m at home I have three trainers: a boxing trainer, a table tennis trainer and a tennis trainer. I train two hours every day, six days a week.

David: That’s very impressive! But back to the fashion… How do you decide on what historical eras to focus on?

Nigel: Mainly that’s to do with the events that took place at the time. For me the 1910s is Robert Falcon Scott and the British Antarctic Expedition, the 1920s are about George Mallory’s Mount Everest expeditions, the 1950s is Sir Edmund Hillary ascending Everest. I always start with a character. I even did a collection based on my dad once – he was in Burma during World War II you know.

David: Do you ever think of who actually designed those vintage garments?

Nigel: That’s a good point. Mountaineering garments would, for example, usually have been designed by someone on the expedition. Clothes were often passed down too. But if an expedition was going up Mount Everest they would probably have employed scientists to work on their gear. The Everest parka I make was originally designed by Fairydown in New Zealand, a company that made sleeping bags.

Anja: A lot of your garments are still made in England, why is that important?

Nigel: Because I’m an old fart. [Laughs] England is my heritage but I also do it because I have control, it looks beautiful and I’m proud of it. I don’t want to make stuff in fucking China.

David: You make quite a few things in Japan too, right? How do you get on with production there?

Nigel: I have partners in Japan, six shops and a full team. I go to Japan five times a year. I have a wife and children and everything there. I’m just joking! [Laughs]

Anja: How did you get big in Japan?

Nigel: It started in 1980. I was showing in Paris and this Japanese man came to my stand. He loved my product and said he wanted to represent me. I was one of the first European designers in Japan. Margaret Howell was there before me, in about 1979, but she’s a bit older than me – thank-fucking-god. Anyway, I arrived the year after. We had the same partner then, Sam Sugure – he’s seventy-one now. The Japanese love British style and they love vintage. If everywhere were like Japan I’d be a multi-millionaire by now.

David: Your brand seems to fit very well with the trend in menswear that’s been around for the past few years: heritage brands, made in Europe, Japan or America with great attention to craftsmanship and details.

Nigel: It’s true that my product is niche. There aren’t that many niche products out there: Engineered Garments is sort of niche, Yuketen is niche, so is Viberg. Visvim is sort of niche, but then he makes it all in China and charges the earth for it. I’m sorry but I don’t see how you can charge £1,000 for a pair of shoes made in China.

David: When you use the word ‘niche’ – what does it mean to you?

Nigel: ‘Niche’ means that something is exclusive, small and beautiful. I’m all about niche. I still support Scunthorpe United, where I was born. I don’t support fucking Newcastle even though I live there! I’ve always been an underdog. I’ve had to fight for everything I get. I compare myself to my football team, which is in the lower divisions of the English football league. You can get from the lower division to the premier league, but you’ve got to be the best.

Anja: You’re a well-known vintage collector by now, but I imagine a lot of the garments that have been the most important to you – Edmund Hillary’s or George Mallory’s mountaineering gear for instance – can’t be bought. How do you get to the garments that aren’t on the market?

Nigel: I’m a nightmare in museums. They all know who I am, and if they don’t know I tell them! And when I go I want everything out too! The only place that hasn’t helped me is the Imperial-fucking-War Museum – I’ve been knocking on their door for twelve months now. The Royal Geographical Society opened their arms to me though. They asked me, ‘Would you like to see George Mallory’s clothes? We’ve actually got them here!’ I was like, ‘You’re fucking joking!’ I picked up his neckerchief – it’s still caked in blood you know. I tell everybody that he went up the Everest in a tweed jacket, but he didn’t really. What happened was that he kept a tweed jacket in his rucksack and whenever someone took a photo, he put it on as the gentleman he was.

Anja: Are there any living men who have inspired you?

Nigel: I’ve worked a lot with Nino Cerruti, he’s a marvelous man. A fucking card. He’s inspired me, I tell you. I bought cashmere from him and made him a duffel coat. He makes amazing fabrics. He employs four thousand people now and he’s eighty-four. You know what he told me five years ago? He said, ‘I was an international playboy until I was sixty. Then at sixty I really started to work’. [Laughs] Well I’ve always been a hard worker but I’ve worked harder between sixty and sixty-five than I’ve ever done in my life! My business had a real facelift in 2003. Not me though. I’m still the same – I have a dropped eyelid and a few other bits and bobs that need sorting out. [Laughs]

Anja: What happened in 2003?

Nigel: I was pretty much on the bones of my arse in 2000. I was doing terrible. Sam Sugure told me, ‘Look, you’ve got to get back to doing things you really believe in’. At the time I was doing a consultancy job for Berghaus and I was digging into mountaineering books for them and I realised that the fiftieth anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent to Everest was coming up. I went to the Lake District to look at his clothes and I couldn’t believe what I found. I just hit lucky, and it changed my whole life. I found images of Hillary and Tenzing and their whole team and their clothes are fucking amazing. I just looked at them and thought, ‘I’m going to fucking make all those clothes’. And I did. And I’m still living on it today. It’s a bit like that song ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’. Ricky Valance recorded it in 1960, and he was still fucking singing it in 1990. Let’s face it, Bill Haley & His Comets, they only had ‘Rock Around The Clock’, but it kept them going a long time!

Anja: How do you decide which vintage garments to work from? Do you alter or update the pieces at all?

Nigel: I do. I Cabournise them. I mean, there’s only so much you can learn from images; at some point I have to decide what fabrics, colours and textures to use. And I can’t have the clothes fitting the way they did in 1950. But I do try to copy the little things when I can, trimmings and things like that. I love all the wooden components from the 1940s and 50s – nobody else makes those.

David: What was the first garment you made in that way?

Nigel: It was the Everest parka, and after that I made the Cameraman jacket. I actually found out that Sir Hillary’s Everest parka still exists, in a museum in Christchurch, New Zealand. I couldn’t get off the plane quick enough to get to the fucking museum! When I saw the Everest parka – well it’s actually the Antarctica parka. I tell everybody it’s the Everest parka, but actually he went across the Antarctica in it. I’ve just rolled it all into one. Everyone thinks he went up the Everest in a red parka, but it was a blue one actually. [Laughs]

David: What’s the value of the – real or imagined – narratives that you spin around your garments?

Nigel: I’m a great romantic – I could tell you stories about every little detail on a garment. People come up to me and ask me why my clothes are so expensive, so I tell them. The stories justify the price you know. What I’m saying is that it’s not just any old garment. The thing is, most people make clothing just for money. I do it because I love making a good product. If I make money out of it, that’s a bonus. If I don’t, it still doesn’t bother me too much.

David: Designer collaborations have become hugely popular the last few years – they’re like the contemporary versions of the licensing deals of yesteryear. You’ve done several – what’s the appeal?

Nigel: Well you make money from it. You loan your name to somebody and they pay you for it. But I don’t say yes to everything. I said no to Moncler. They were doing a collaboration with Visvim but didn’t want to continue and I said to them, I said, ‘If you can’t make a success from working with Visvim, you’re not going to make one with me – we’re two peas in a pod’. And also I asked them about their vintage and they didn’t have any. When I asked them about their customer they were after the same as me so I just thought, what’s the point? I’d be doing a me two. But I could have made a lot of money from it; for those sorts of collaborations you can make £3–400 000.

Anja: Recently you started doing womenswear, after forty years of only doing menswear. How come?

Nigel: Well I met this girl, a real pretty girl she was too. When I first saw her I thought, ‘She looks like a nice girl, I bet she’d be good to hang with’. But she turned out to be a nightmare. She was Hungarian and I’m romantic about the Hungarians because of Ferenc Puskás. Do you know him? I love Puskás. He was one of the best footballers in the world. This girl, she looked like Gerda Taro. At the time I was obsessed with Robert Capa and Gerda Taro and I was thinking about doing something on the Spanish Revolution. But I had to find a British angle, because that’s always my take. I found out that 2,000 British civilians volunteered to go there and so I did the story on them. And Robert Capa of course. I roll it all in. And what I don’t know, I make up! Anyway, so I worked with this girl for eighteen months on the womenswear. We travelled all over the place. I didn’t lay my hands on her or anything – I’m not like that! I just liked her company. And she looked like Gerda Taro. Have you seen Gerda Taro? She got crushed by a tank in 1937.

Anja: Is this girl still working with you?

Nigel: No she ran off. She was completely mad, but I liked her. One day she just flipped and ran off. I was quite shocked actually. Now I have a girl from Dover Street Market who designs the collection. She’s so good. She’s normal and she just fucking gets on with it.

Anja: What does ‘authenticity’ mean to you? Why have you chosen to use it as a tagline?

Nigel: Authenticity means that something is original, and that it comes from a vintage piece. The fabric is real. It’s functional. It does what it says. If I’ve taken a design from a 1950s garment with wooden trimmings, then my garment will have wooden trimmings too. I want my garments to be the real deal. I don’t want anything nancy pansy.

Anja: How does the ‘authenticity’ of a garment change when you adapt a piece intended for practical use – like the military or mountaineering garments you so often use – into a ‘fashion’ garment?

Nigel: You’re asking me deep questions now. I don’t know if my thinking goes that deep most of the time. If my garments happen to be fashion garments, then so be it. They’re only fashion garments because that’s what people perceive them to be – I don’t see them that way. You could still go mountaineering in them. They wouldn’t be so practical because garments today are much lighter than they used to be, but you could still do it. I just do what I do because I love it. I don’t know if I have a better explanation. It’s like when Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he decided to climb Everest; he said, ‘I just like going up’.

David: Considering that you’ve been working in fashion for over forty years, what changes in the industry have you found the most striking?

Nigel: Fucking hell – they’re endless! When I started in the 1970s everybody wanted to help me. I got a £6,000 loan from the bank, just based on the fact that I looked like a nice young lad. You didn’t have to put your house up back then – bank managers were willing to take a chance. And then there’s all the new technology. Until 1982, before the fax machine, we had to send everything by courier. And the last ten years the mobile phone has changed everything again. My daughter has taught me how to send emails with my phone. I still can’t send emails with the normal computer. [Laughs] Fucking technology is frightening – you know, for an older person. I get loads of help. My boxing coach tells me ‘Nige, you’ve got someone doing everything for you!’

Anja: Except the training.

Nigel: Yeah, except the training – I’ve got to do that myself! [Laughs]!

This article was originally published in Vestoj On Fashion and Slowness.

Louise Riley is a London-based textile artist and illustrator.

David Myron is a Paris-based cabinet-maker and set designer as well as the original Big Monkey.

Anja Aronowsky Cronberg is Vestoj‘s Editor-in-Chief and Publisher.