'It's our job to know what's happening, and we do masses of research and travel. We get so much inspiration from Tokyo.' Deirdre McQuillanmeets the design guru of the fashion store Topman, which opens a flagship shop in Dublin next week
With his black trench coat, black baseball cap and straggly grey hair, Gordon Richardson looks for all the world like a member of a revived 1960s rock band. He is, in fact, design director of Topman, the hip UK menswear chain steadily earning the reputation enjoyed by its big sister, Topshop, as a key destination for fashion-conscious young shoppers.
Richardson, who is on a flying visit to Dublin, is enthusing about Topman's first stand-alone shop outside the UK, which is due to open in Grafton Street next Thursday. It's part of an expansion programme that will also see flagship stores open in UK cities in the year ahead.
So much is happening in menswear, he says. "There has been a growing awareness of men's fashion, and men are becoming more image- conscious. I am convinced that it all started with hair products, like gel, and haircuts; that was the first transformation. I don't think guys talk naturally about clothes - sport, yes, and laddish things - but they may say something about their hair. It progresses from there."
David Beckham's influence was central to this change in the UK. "He was the first image- conscious male and kick-started the whole thing. When he wore a wide white tie we bought in a white tie - and sales were astronomical. Now the main influence is music and indie bands. We indirectly style a lot of these bands, because the stylists come to us for clothes - and then guys come in and buy what they've seen the bands wear. Very few men want to be fashion leaders, but they all want to look cool."
Topman's customers are predominantly young, aged between 20 and 24, and about a quarter of them are students. As design director, Richardson is responsible for the creative and visual aspects of the brand. He starts the creative process with a design team of 12 people. Having taught fashion for 11 years at Kingston University, he says, he remembers what a struggle it was for anyone starting out, "and I felt it was important to reinvest in young fashion designers." Selected up-and-coming young designers now produce particular ranges for the brand, such as one-off printed T-shirts, knitwear or shoes.
A significant breakthrough for Topman was the decision, two years ago, to show its MAN collection at London Fashion Week. "We felt menswear had been neglected for too long, and there was so much good talent out there," says Richardson. "Now we've just done our fourth show. It's a good vehicle for Topman design, our equivalent of Paris or Milan."
Menswear has its own lifestyle and logic, he says. "If guys have been wearing wider jeans, it takes longer for them to readapt to a new shape, unlike women. Men love familiarity, so for them to change is harder. It needs to be endorsed. The key is to know when that change happens. Skinny jeans took a while to establish, but, once they're in, you don't see guys going wide for a while. With skinny jeans, we sell them first in indigo, then in colour, then white and then pattern and check and more treatments. Then suddenly there is nowhere to go, and it is at this point that you see change happening. It will be the one-pleat trouser with the slightly higher waistband, and that will progress into fabric and move into the wider-leg two-pleat trousers. And women will help that change - they have a huge influence."
Clothes are geared to customers who spend time "at gigs, out with their mates, surfing on MySpace or at the gym". Twelve trends are identified for the year: one a month. Typical of the current collection is Solstice: clothes with a festival mood, washed cottons, layered looks. White Riot is more rock'n'roll, more black and white with a lot of graphic print jackets.
"The music base is our heartland," says Richardson, who admits to being a music junkie himself. "Fashionability" is a priority. "It's important that Topman should offer the look of the moment," he says. "We have to be a democratic fashion brand. I want everything we do to be great value, from a T-shirt to a mac for €99. It's our job to know, and we do masses of research and travel from Tokyo to Los Angeles. We look at how people dress. We get so much inspiration from Tokyo. Anything that is about clothing and image we need to be aware of. It's a big team exercise."
The figures speak for themselves. Last year Topman sold 1.2 million pairs of jeans, and sales of cardigans increased tenfold. A military jacket style sold out, and scarves have doubled in sales. In the UK a T-shirt is sold every two seconds. The Dublin shop will house not only the key styles but also more "fashion-focused and more exciting limited-edition pieces". For men, skinnier looks are very much in vogue, in marked contrast to the emphasis on volume in womenswear. Suits are clean and narrow, some with shawl-collared fabrics, along with casual dinner jackets. Internationally, fashion-forward menswear designers, such as Thom Browne in the US, are injecting originality and modernity into men's suits.
Richardson has served a long apprenticeship. An MA menswear fashion graduate of the Royal College of Art, he initially launched his own brand with a partner that was taken up by Liberty, Harvey Nichols and Joseph. He eventually left for Paris to work with Daniel Hechter for four years. "A lot of what I know was learned from him, such as how to work colour and how to put products together," he says.
Back in London in the l980s he taught at Kingston before joining the Burton Group, as Arcadia used to be known. Having seen its fashion potential and harnessed youthful energies and ideas, he has transformed Topman from a cheap fashion brand that "no one was particularly proud of" to something "as cool for blokes as Topshop is for girls", as Sleaze magazine puts it.
Youthful and lively in manner and appearance, Richardson clearly loves what he does and is an inspiration to young designers, receptive and sympathetic to their ideas. "Menswear is a much more subtle playing field but hugely interesting, as you cannot be as spontaneous as you would like to, because you are working with men's reticence to change. You are lucky if somebody iconic comes along and endorses that look, but you can't plan for that. I just love the job, and I never switch off. As a brand we're always looking at doing new things for our customers, to keep it alive, to help customer confidence. We are getting older customers now, but our heartland is still the 18-25 student, and we're not going to move away from that."