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After a guest show at Pitti Uomo in Florence last season, menswear designer Martine Rose returns home tonight — staging her Spring/Summer 2024 show in an unassuming community space in north London. She’s arguably the de facto headliner of a very pared-back June edition of London Fashion Week, though Rose isn’t on the official schedule; preferring instead to show when she feels like it.
“I’ve carved out my own little space in the calendar now. It feels magic,” she says from her London studio, two days out from the show.
The size of Rose’s business hasn’t always reflected her outsized influence on the fashion industry. She has been candid about the struggles of growing a small, independent brand sustainably: she famously showed just one look from her Spring/Summer 2015 collection for incubator Fashion East, because she couldn’t afford to produce more. She is not alone: several up-and-coming British brands have fizzled out, or their founders have been snapped up by big luxury houses, because the pressures of scaling were too great — something the British Fashion Council acknowledged in its strategy reset announcement on Friday.
But now, with backing from brand incubator Tomorrow Ltd, Rose is primed to scale her own label by broadening her supply base, building new wholesale relationships, hiring additional talent and driving sales through her revamped direct-to-consumer website. She currently employs a team of 20 and has around 200 retail doors, including Matches, Ssense and Farfetch. “In terms of size we’ve gone from strength to strength. It’s going in the right direction,” says Rose, though she declines to share revenues.
A rare talent
Rose has been on an upward trajectory over the past few years. She worked as a menswear consultant for Balenciaga under Demna from 2015 to 2018, during which time the brand created its now signature maximalist proportions. Last November, American rapper Kendrick Lamar posted to his 12 million followers that it was a “bucket list” moment to work with Rose, after she created some looks for his The Big Steppers tour. She was also one of the rumoured frontrunners to fill the men’s creative director position at Louis Vuitton left vacant when Virgil Abloh died, before Pharrell Williams’s appointment in February.
Italian menswear trade show Pitti was a major moment for the label, bringing new international exposure and helping to raise Rose’s profile. “I probably underestimated Pitti from my little studio in north London,” she says, “but [the show] definitely hit a lot of new places.” The US market is a growing opportunity, as is China (Machine-A Shanghai is one of her biggest stockists).
In a world where the young consumer is less interested in mega brands and more invested in the person behind them, Rose is hugely influential, says Tomorrow CEO Stefano Martinetto. “So influential I’d compare her to Raf Simons from the previous decade.” He adds that, in a booming menswear market where some of the most influential brands have lost ground, Tomorrow sees a white space for Rose to enter. “Our ambition is to make this a sizable business,” he says.
Rose’s label, which launched in 2007, is informed by her British-Jamaican heritage and inspired by London’s many subcultures, from 1980s and 1990s club kids to football fans or mods. She plays with proportion, volume and high-low dressing, blending tailoring, denim and jersey. From her square-toed, open-back loafers to her broad-shouldered coats, Rose drives trends in menswear, rather than following them, says Harry Fisher, founder of London store HTown, who’s collaborated with Rose in the past and has stocked the brand since the retailer opened in 2020.
Matches has stocked Martine Rose since January 2017. “Her mix of proportions in fashion tailoring, jersey, and denim connect with our customers and the addition of footwear has been a total hit,” says the e-tailer’s head of menswear, Damien Paul. “Martine hits the sweet spot of being totally ahead of the curve while designing wearable, real clothes. It glimpses back but pushes forward. It’s a rare talent.”
Tomorrow, which also works with the likes of Coperni and A-Cold-Wall*, was Rose’s first-ever partner — 14 years into building her label. “It’s not that I was ambivalent about the business — I’ve always been really committed to it. But, I always wanted to do it my way. And figure out who I was as a designer, first,” she says. It’s fear-based, too, she admits: “Fear can make you afraid of success as well as failure. I was in some ways worried about what would happen if I grew.” In 2021, Tomorrow acquired a 60 per cent stake in the Martine Rose brand, in a share swap deal that also gave Rose an undisclosed stake in Tomorrow’s business.
“It’s an amazing security blanket in terms of growth,” Rose says. “When you are independent, you are always slightly on shaky ground. It’s always very hand to mouth. Now, I can focus on creativity.”
Finding suppliers and fighting competition
As Rose’s stockist roster grows and her collections slowly get bigger each season, supply remains a challenge. The designer has long struggled to meet minimum orders and secure suppliers, in London and more recently across Europe. “In the beginning I would go into factories in London and beg them to do it. That’s not suitable for growth necessarily,” she laughs. Now, after Brexit customs costs and delays made London manufacturing near-impossible, she’s taken most of her production overseas to Portugal. “Don’t even get me started on Brexit, it’s too depressing,” she says.
Rose still works with a lot of London sampling units and independent small businesses, including a hosiery supplier for SS24. Tomorrow provides “muscle” in conversations with overseas suppliers and helps her structure the relationships in a way that “supports growth and not panic”, the designer says. That said, they’re only about 50 per cent of the way there in securing a good supply chain, Martinetto says, pointing out that it takes time to find the best suppliers and work with them to get things right.
It also requires time to find new vendors that are able to understand Rose’s vision and execute the product on time, in the right quantity and at a fair price, Martinetto says. There’s stiff competition from the major luxury brands or conglomerates who are increasingly buying stakes in their suppliers.
Pricing is also a challenge, as Rose and Tomorrow fight to keep the brand accessible in the face of rising costs. Rose’s pieces range from £95 for a T-shirt to £1,000 for a blazer or coat (retail). Collaboration helps Rose bring her brand to a wider audience, at a more affordable price point. Last month, she was announced as the new creative director of 200-year-old British high street footwear label Clarks.
Rose says part of the appeal is that Clarks shoes are worn by so many people in both the UK and in Jamaica. For Clarks, meanwhile, Rose’s “unconventional approach to design and development” and her British-Jamaican background were a draw, says its chief marketing and digital officer, Tara McRae. The shoes will debut on the runway tonight and Clarks is already feeling the “Martine effect” on brand buzz. “The excitement alone of having Martine part of Clarks has infiltrated throughout all the brand. Even before launch, her impact is already starting to be felt far and wide,” says McRae.
Prior to Clarks, Rose has produced sellout collaborations with brands including Stüssy, Tommy Hilfiger and Nike. Her The MR4 Nike shox trainers, which blend a mule and a sneaker, went viral upon their release last summer and are now reselling for up to £600 on sites including Goat and Kickgame (they retailed at around $179).
All killer, no filler
Alongside the Clarks shoes, the collection she’s showing tonight is bigger than usual, Rose says, but that doesn’t necessarily mean more looks on the runway, as she learned while studying at Middlesex University. “One of my art school teachers always said ‘all killer, no filler’. It’s better to have a smaller show with really great looks that you believe in than a big sprawling show with lots of stuff in it.”
Rose has always been one to buck convention when it comes to fashion week. Tonight’s venue continues her tradition of showing in familiar pockets of London linked to communities and subcultures, rather than the grandiose or warehouse locations favoured by other brands. Previous venues include a covered market (2017), an astro-turfed rooftop atop a corporate building in the City of London (2019) and even her daughter’s primary school (2020). (After tonight’s show, she plans to spend time with her two children, now eight and six years old.)
While it’s typical for London-born menswear brands to decamp to Milan or Paris to reach international buyers and press as they start to scale (think A-Cold-Wall* or Jordanluca), Rose is firmly attached to her London roots. “Pitti gave me the scope to see what I can do in other cities and I’ll definitely show in other cities again,” Rose says, “But London is where my heart is. I ll always be here, I’ll always come back like a boomerang.”
For Rose, the joy is in the journey. “I follow my instinct. I want to keep collaborating with people that I’m inspired by. I want to continue to do shows and have experiences with people that I feel are having a cultural impact. As long as I keep doing those things, as long as those things punctuate my year — I’m fine.” When asked what success looks like, she simply answers, “Really, I think success looks like this.”
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