I couldn't help repost these shots my great friend Kate took of British band Will & The People recently, not simply because they are stunning photographs, but because I feel there is something sartorially perfect about their inherently British eccentricity to their style. This was all 'them', Kate tells me, from the feathers to the fur collars, and every theatricality is pulled off with such panache. Since the 80s flamboyant band styling has been lost, killed first by grunge and then by the rise of manufactured G-star clad boybands, which is a real shame, because music and the visual arts (including that of dressing) should walk hand in hand. This look is all their own : at once expressive, inspiring, curious and completely home-grown, much like their music.
But theatricality or no, it is the nonchalance that is the most important. Hardy Amies once said "A man should look as if he had bought his clothes with intelligence, put them on and then forgotten all bout them."
There is definitely a charismatic nonchalance about Will & The People. Click here to listen to their music.
It's got me thinking about British music, about styling, about boys and clothes and I'm looking back to the 60s and 70s...thinking about the Stones, about the many faces of David Bowie, about the new romantics, about the luxe hippie of Stevie Nicks.
It's interesting to look back and realise where our influences have come from, but it's more exciting to look forward and imagine where we are going.
I watched the film Almost Famous at 11 (in secret from parents who religiously adhered to film certificates) and was sold to the dream. For the past few years I've been heading towards fashion journalism but there will always be a part of my soul that rebels against the fixed realm of offices and fashion closets and wants to be out on the road, styling a band. Staying up all night hunched at the back of a tour bus stitching zig zag patterns onto a pair of purple suede jeans, or trawling the most far-out godforsaken shops where clothes come to die, because that's where I know I'll find the perfect worn-through blazer for X and the weirdest looking belt buckle you ever saw for Y.
If you've never seen Almost Famous, go watch it, tonight. And be sold to whatever part of the music dream calls to you, because it is there for everyone.
It's got me thinking about British music, about styling, about boys and clothes and I'm looking back to the 60s and 70s...thinking about the Stones, about the many faces of David Bowie, about the new romantics, about the luxe hippie of Stevie Nicks.
It's interesting to look back and realise where our influences have come from, but it's more exciting to look forward and imagine where we are going.
I watched the film Almost Famous at 11 (in secret from parents who religiously adhered to film certificates) and was sold to the dream. For the past few years I've been heading towards fashion journalism but there will always be a part of my soul that rebels against the fixed realm of offices and fashion closets and wants to be out on the road, styling a band. Staying up all night hunched at the back of a tour bus stitching zig zag patterns onto a pair of purple suede jeans, or trawling the most far-out godforsaken shops where clothes come to die, because that's where I know I'll find the perfect worn-through blazer for X and the weirdest looking belt buckle you ever saw for Y.
If you've never seen Almost Famous, go watch it, tonight. And be sold to whatever part of the music dream calls to you, because it is there for everyone.
