Nicholas Daley Is
Good For The Plot

My dad was in the Royal Marines. He was stationed in Scotland and met my mum in Dundee, and then they moved to Edinburgh where they ran a reggae club from ‘78 to ‘82. British roots reggae was their thing. My mum was working on the door, and my father DJ’d and promoted many iconic reggae live acts at the club, such as Aswad. This is why I continue to incorporate music into my work today. My parents laid the foundation for my love of music.

There were a few challenges they had to go through to put on these musical nights and to bring people together. I decided to reissue my parents' Reggae Klub T-shirt, which they curated nearly 30 years ago, to pay homage to what my parents produced through their love of music and bringing people together.

When my parents first arrived in Leicester, there was a strong West Indian and Southeast Asian community, which had always been so prevalent and a big part of my own family. Diwali, Eid was always something we were a part of. Even if we weren't directly connected to that religion, it's still very much part of the community of friends my parents had built. I owe a lot to the city—the melting pot of different cultures which informs my beliefs and ideas today.

My studio is based in North London Haringey, one of the most diverse boroughs in the whole of London. This is an environment I want to be in. There's so much cultural richness.

It was probably at my first retail job at a streetwear store called Wellgosh when I was 16 years old. You listen to a NAS album and he’s sampled a jazz track—that is the introduction to jazz for me. You learn about Miles Davis and John Coltrane, but that came from hip-hop. That came from streetwear culture, which was a big part of my early teenage years. I was trying to be more specific in what I wanted to wear and started buying vintage military surplus clothing which I would customise to make it feel more individual to me.

I managed to get his email through a friend and just explained that I was studying at Central Saint Martins and I had done a lot of research on his life and the intersection between reggae music and punk. I guess it goes back to the elders who have set the foundations for the next generation. Don was immediately a character I felt a connection with. As we started to talk, I said, “It’d be great if you fancied walking in my graduate runway show.” And he did. Some of my friends thought Don was my dad. My tutors were amazed that Don Letts was walking in my BA show. I feel like fashion is one of the best vehicles to tell multiple stories. I think that's what I've always liked doing, telling narratives through my creative work.

I'd yet to do something which explored more punk, hard rock, dub-y soundscapes. I was really interested in the guitar as well. My fiancée has tried to teach me, but I can only play “Redemption Song” and “My Heart Will Go On.”

My SS22 collection Blue Quilt was looking at a lot of folk, acoustic, blues references; elements and the history of quilting. For winter, I felt like looking at the other side of that and looking at more post-punk rock, and grunge at such iconic Black artists such as Slash, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains.

One of my favorite bands, Wu-Lu, performed a live performance at my show during my London Fashion Week show in February. Wu-Lu has an amazing way of capturing the frustrations and the feelings of our generation, when Miles [Romans-Hopcraft] is screaming and projecting all that energy out! I love jazz, I love the spiritual stuff, but sometimes you just want something you can just mosh out to—I’m pretty sure that was one of the first mosh pits at a London Fashion Week event.

I had goosebumps on the back of the neck during my 2018 LFW show entitled Red Clay. I almost forgot it was my show as I was immersed by the artists which I asked to perform, featuring some of the best London jazz artists of my generation Shabaka Hutchings, Yussef Dayes, and Mansur Brown to name a few.

It was a coming together of fashion, music, and culture within a singular presentation which was a celebration of everything which I appreciate. Runway shows are great but for me when I can blur the lines between different creative mediums through a presentation format, that’s when you can curate something more powerful and a true experience for the audience to connect with.

When I see musicians or artists wearing my clothing and it makes them feel they can play that bit harder, or feel more uplifted, or feel more at ease—when I make these garments, that's kind of what I want them to do. The number one goal for all good design is that it serves a purpose.

On my dad's side, my great-grandfather was a coffin maker for the local parish in Jamaica, and my grandfather was a shoe cobbler. My dad built his own music sound system when he ran the reggae club. That sort of hands-on, DIY ideology—craftsmanship—has always been really apparent within my father’s family which I feel has been passed onto me.

On my mother’s side, my grandma, my great-grandma and all the women of the family knitted. All of that was like a big part of my mum’s culture and heavily influenced her upbringing. Dundee was one of the biggest exporters of jute textiles during the early nineteenth century. The majority of the women within my mum’s family all worked in the jute mills. The tradition of textiles, knitting, and weaving is interconnected with my family’s history today, which I love to explore within my work today. Some of our hand-knitted and crocheted items use jute twine, and we work with local knitting circles across the UK.

Collaborating with some of the best musicians of my generation, such as Shabaka Hutchings and Lianne La Havas—I see them all as craftspeople of their instrument, which I also want to explore in my collections. Through the Mulberry collaboration project, which launched earlier this year, I was able to produce specific leather musician items such as saxophone-strap and guitar-strap plectrum. These musician items were crafted in one of the Mulberry ateliers. To see the craftsmanship go into my design, and then to see Shabaka play it—obviously he’s a craftsman of the saxophone, playing since he was 8 years old. It’s amazing to see all that come together. We also worked and supported Tomorrow’s Warriors, a grassroots music charity supporting the next generation of jazz musicians in London which has been running for over 30 years.

You only need to look at my work and you'll start to see faces reappearing in lots of different formats, whether they're walking down a runway, making a mix, taking a photo, or doing a Q&A. That's what I've always tried to ensure, that it's not just a sort of flash in the pan moment when I am working with other creative collaborators.

I curated an ethos called the three C’s—community, craftsmanship, and culture—and this is what I will continue to distill into my creative vision as it touches on the areas which I wish to continue to celebrate.