DESIGN TALENT:Jonathan Anderson is a star on the rise, with a fresh approach to menswear and womenswear. One of his bestsellers is a reworked Aran sweater and he also takes inspiration from doilies. DEIRDRE McQUILLANcaught up with him in Paris
JONATHAN ANDERSON, drawing on a cigarette and downing an espresso, is a bit on edge the morning when we meet in a cafe in the Palais Royal. It’s near the showroom where he and a number of hot young London designers specially selected by the British Fashion Council (including Simone Rocha) have been installed for Paris fashion week. Anna Wintour, editor of US Vogue, has just been in to see his collection, as has Carine Roitfeld, editor of French Vogue. “It was a scary morning, but Anna liked my collection and said it was youthful and fresh – and Carine has borrowed one of my T-shirts for a shoot,” he says.
A talented designer fast making a name in the world of fashion, Anderson, who only launched his first collection a year ago, is known for his sophisticated, craft-based, street style collections with a boy/girl resonance. His T-shirts, featuring tie-dyed doilies, have given a shot in the arm to this emblem of gentile Victorian afternoon teas; his denim pinafores have a slightly Amish quality, while his Aran cardigans have become bestsellers.
From Magherafelt in Derry, Anderson is the eldest son of celebrated Irish rugby international Willie Anderson, who was 27 times capped for Ireland before becoming a much sought-after coach. Though he says his father “is an important person for me”, it was his grandfather Jim Buckley – former creative director of textile firm Lamont, who also worked for Liberty – who taught him how to draw, taught him about proportion and repeat pattern. Anderson’s use of Liberty prints in his menswear collections is, he says, a kind of homage to his grandfather.
After school in Blackrock College in Dublin, he studied acting for a time in New York at the Actors’ Studio – “full-on Stanislavski for two years”, he says – before dropping out, much to the fury of his father. “I realised it wasn’t right for me, but I worked for the final three months in costume and got to like that.”
Back in Dublin, he landed a job in the Prada menswear section in Brown Thomas where his merchandising, mixing sport with the main line, attracted the attention of Prada’s fashion co-ordinator Manuela Pavesi, best friend of Miuccia Prada, who offered him a job in London. There, he juggled work and study of menswear design at the London College of Fashion. “I learnt everything from [Manuela] – especially the idea of rich meeting poor in fabric: nylon with wool, nylon with crocodile, like mixing an Astrakhan coat with a nylon skirt. Her taste was amazing and, being a photographer, she had an acute eye. It made me love fashion,” he says.
When he graduated in 2005, he started styling for singers and made a “tiny” women’s and men’s collection and some jewellery while living off consultancy jobs. For the past two years, for example, he has rebranded a luxury British underwear company called Sunspel very successfully. With the money earned from creative work with Lee jeans, he did his first show in London last year, based on Irish knitwear. “I’m obsessed with knitwear,” he says, dressed in one of his own samples – a striped dark blue and red angora and wool sweater.
“I found this genius knitter, Rosaleen Hegarty in Buncrana, who knows everything. She has 40 women knitting away and has knitted for Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Paul Costelloe and John Rocha. We went to the Ulster Museum together and saw this Aran sweater that had been found in a peat bog. She worked out the patterns simply by looking at them. That redone cardigan is in my new collection. Another jumper, in blue denim yarn, has sold to every store.”
As for doilies, which he now buys in bulk from the US, he describes their composition as “epic and intricate, and there are so many types. I like the idea that I can make them look like holograms by tie-dying them.”
His work has taken off in the UK, where his collection is stocked by Liberty and Harrods, as well as by cult boutiques Colette in Paris and Corso Como in Milan. “People are starting to know the name. We are doing several products for [online fashion retailer] Asos. But you never really know where you are and where you are is never enough,” he shrugs. He knows his fashion history, describing Digby Morton’s unsung influence on Dior, and the importance of Irish culture to a designer. “A lot of good designers from Ireland are quite intellectual and there’s a lot of storytelling. It’s nice to be an Irish designer in London and to do something new.”
Next season he is planning “to go to town on basic knit structure and layer it up with leather and lace, cashmere, nylon and Swarovski crystal, replicating old Russian fabrics. It will be a good three-week process of non-sleep until we know what the boy/girl look will be like. I think my style is more about overall shape: I am not a pattern cutter and I hate that everything is so body-conscious these days. My work is about structure and craft and I love application – you have to make every collection interesting.”
