Newcastle Fashion Week: Wayne Hemingway

During Newcastle Fashion Week, I had the chance to see an unmissable lecture presented by designer and founder of ‘Red or Dead’, Wayne Hemingway.

         
Living in London in the 1970s, life was hard. Falling on financially difficult times, Wayne and his wife Geradine realised they needed to find a way to get some cash to pay the rent to avoid eviction. Geradine came from a family of makers and had spent her childhood designing and making her own clothes. It was at this moment they decided to sell the garments she had made at Camden Market.

     After selling almost all their goods and making a tidy profit, they quickly realised that if they had a prime location, they would be able to sell all their stock and therefore increase their profit. Hemingway began to look for stock to sell at the stall, buying fabric and clothing from auctions which Geradine could reuse for her designs.

It was at this time that he noticed people wore Doc Martins and that there was a demand for a worn/used style that could not be bought from shops. He then sourced a warehouse where all the old returned Doc Martin shoes were stored. Buying 600 pairs for 10p each with the money saved from the stall, the couple took them home and repaired them in their flat, selling them each week at their stall in Camden Market for £15 each. Soon the couple had 16 stalls and decided to expand the business to Kensington Market.
Geradine designed 8 different garments, which she would make and sell in the back of the premises. It was here they had their first wholesale order from the American department store, Macys NYC. Against the odds, the couple, with the help of friends and family, were able to make the 1600 garments needed to fill the substantial wholesale order.

Hemingway wanted his label to be affordable, eclectic and individual like the roots it came from, so aimed it at a high street level. In 1985, he sold their designs to Topshop and Miss Selfridge, which were at that particular time, shunned by designers for being cheap copies of catwalk collections. Hemingway and his label were designers and after being banned from London Fashion Week for 4 year, the label could not be kept from the catwalk any longer. In 1989 they held their first catwalk show for Topshop, showing that true designers and true design are just as much at home on the high street as they are in boutiques.

Hemingway went on to tell us about how the label ‘Red or Dead’ came from a Cold War saying in the 1980’s, referring to communism – ‘red rather than dead’ and how they would rather embrace communism than nuclear war. Hemingway stuck to what he believed in and what the label stood for. In their 1996 catwalk show, they controversially banned all French from the show and had a political backdrop to show they were against nuclear testing in France. Risking his career in fashion and business paid off.
His collection and protest made front page news and the headlines on the main BBC news. Sales rocketed to 400%, leading to international stores and eventually the sale of ‘Red or Dead’, allowing Hemingway to be free to explore other design projects, which included the Staiths Housing Development in Gateshead, UK, which Hemingway beamed he was “most proud of”.

I thoroughly enjoyed this lecture. He showed me that to be a designer you don’t have to put yourself into boxes and categories of ‘interior’, ‘fashion’, ‘textile’ designer. If you are a creative, imaginative individual, you can turn your hand to any kind of design, just stick to what you stand for.