“I’m a bit of a traditionalist” says Luke Derrick in a collection preview just a week ahead of his London Fashion Week debut. Opening Friday’s festivities with a no frills digital presentation the self-described awkward Oxford native made a strong case for casual class. It was a cohesive range, built from luxury fabrics but without the faff and tapping into the idea of a simple and collectable couch-to-club wardrobe. “It’s basically a wardrobe, getting away with whatever; so that sort of idea of you get up, you’re five minutes late to your Zoom call – as I was just now – and then you kind of go for lunch and then go out later on but you don’t get changed.”
Having worked for Dunhill, Alexander McQueen and a number of Savile Row tailors prior to deciding to go it alone, the Central Saint Martins masters graduate’s work reflects the renowned canon of these masterfully versed ateliers: it all starts with the cloth and how it can be manipulated. “Starting with the cloth invites so many new possibilities,” he explains. And from there, his eponymous label aims to revamp “dusty English heritage”.
“Fundamentally you sort of see these default presets [in fashion], and everything sort of has to be ‘made in Italy’ to be considered elevated. Meanwhile in the UK, and on Savile Row, everything is mega stuffy and kind of dying. So I’m trying to have a conversation, where we don’t just have to chuck everything out and just bury our heads in the sand, instead we start back at the heritage and have a conversation whereby we look at why we did this in the first place – like why is a certain piece of fabric is there named after this county in the first place? A lot of fabric gets left as it is, but why can’t we innovate something quite traditional and make something new from it?” Every element of the AW23 was created in collaboration with a 250-year-old mill in Yorkshire called AW Hainsworth – you know, the one that dresses the Buckingham Palace guards. “Each day I’m trying to make a miniature collaboration with a particular British supplier or factory to try and change the conversation a bit.”
Meanwhile, Derrick’s mood boards are overflowing with vintage 60s imagery; the man in flux as he travels between events on a night bus, 90s airport photos of messy, tired passengers. It encompasses a kind of “dishevelled elegance” that translates into his clothes as an exploration of male archetypes in between destinations. “Instead of the James Bond idea – where you’re continuously ironing and getting changed – instead of trying to pretend that we are more organised and have our lives more together than we actually do, I put the idea of grabbing the first five things we see in our wardrobes at the centre of what I do. I like that challenge of, well there’s your wardrobe, find whatever and make it work.”
So, for his debut LFW collection, Derrick created a kind of capsule wardrobe of staple pieces that embody elegant utility. “Nothing [in the range] ever really needs an iron; it can all just be thrown on and has this sort of lazy man solution aesthetic to it”. A quietly reinterpreted Second World War coat is stripped down with raw edges and a lightweight, cinched-in silhouette so it appears akin to a dressing gown. “I take outerwear and make it loungewear,” Derrick explains. He’s wearing one of the subversive coats as he gives us an intimate look into his creative processes, and with a chuckle he says, “I spilled a cup of coffee over this an hour ago; it’s just sort of indestructible.”
Elsewhere, cotton terry funnel neck tops with obscured ear loops could metamorphose to become a masked garment and oversized dinner shirts or scarfs with hidden pockets. “Everyone misses them; it’s all these details that only the wearer knows about,” he says, “They have all these little hidden moments that react to that classic idea of elegance that we love but that doesn’t necessarily work in real life.” Tuxedo jackets, US army cargos and jumpers were permeated by near-invisible stripes as if from a tracksuit. Comfortable t-shirts are embossed by three dimensional oxymoronic idioms such as “Cowboy Boots” and “Double Denim”, despite them being a classic jersey top. Everything arrived in a varied range of materials and hues, rooted in classic greyscale blacks and whites. Derrick says, “None of the colours or materials match, but everything just kind of rolls together.”
As for the Fashion Week film, well that was unscripted. It was simply a black and white recording of models shooting themselves within a single biographical space with video cameras running consistently through the shoot. Over the candid footage Derrick’s voice reverberates softly like ASMR. It’s a recording of a late night message he left a colleague over the phone about a month before the show. He speaks about the making of the film and its authorless identity; positioned to “cut the bullshit”, as he says in the message, just as the clothes aim to, and to be “about the man first”, with the fashion coming in second.
For the future, Derrick plans to continue taking “baby steps”, allowing his label to gain traction organically. “My brand is something that slowly grows and consistently reacts to the way we are living and those urban experiences and what garments are working on,” he says. “I’m the sort of person who spends a month on a jacket, rather than banging out six looks in 10 seconds – it takes time! I don’t think there is any point in rushing stuff. I’m just trying to enjoy the fact I’m not a mega global superstar yet; I’m just here in my box where I can experiment.”
Photography courtesy of Derrick. Film by Cameron Mccully.
