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On Wednesday morning, around 120 invitees will enter the old Carlsberg-Tetley brewery in Silvertown, Newham, to witness the return of Craig Green to London’s runways after an absence of two years. As well as hosting a raucous weekend rave scene, the building has — for seven years — been home to Green’s studio, which is precisely where the show is being held. When we catch up the week prior, Green concedes he’s becoming increasingly nervous at the prospect, then adds: “I wanted to do something this season that kind of scared me. And it’s very much not me to invite everyone into my personal space.”
Pushing the boundaries of space through exploring extreme dichotomies in masculine dress is one of the attributes that made Green the most influential British menswear designer of the 2010s. That title isn’t just hyperbole — Green won the British Fashion Award for Menswear Designer in 2016, 2017, and 2018. His trophies rest on the bookshelf behind his desk.
By the end of the decade, following Burberry’s withdrawal from the men’s schedule under Riccardo Tisci, Green was the biggest draw on London’s menswear calendar: its tentpole. Then, in January 2020, he made the step across to Paris for an epic show that seemed to signal his supremacy’s easy export — until Covid hit shortly thereafter.
Since then, Green’s shows and presentations have been held between the two capitals, every 12 months. “But now we’re changing again. Going back to two collections a year, with one especially big moment.” This off-schedule London show, says Green, is the opening beat in a rhythm of which its shape and tempo will become more apparent next January and June. Holding live shows, he adds, is a key part of that. “I’ve always loved the physicality of a show. It’s part of what attracted me to fashion in the first place — going to see Gareth Pugh shows as a student was so exciting. And it speaks to the idea of bringing together your community, and feeling that energy. Which is partially why this show is happening in the studio,” he says.
Green remains entirely independent, saying, “It’s true that the landscape for everyone at the moment seems very unsure. But I’m quite a cautious person. And I don’t like to be unrealistic. And now we have quite a few interesting new collaborations and partnerships that are going to be announced over the next year.” These upcoming partnerships, he implies, are in part allowing him to plan a return to shows and presentations, and the positive — if not hectic — levels of exposure and expectation that this rhythm brings.
He adds: “That challenging landscape that everyone is going through partly explains why we are doing something less elaborate this time. That feels right for the energy of this moment. In terms of business, we still have strong relationships and great partnerships through wholesale. But this period we are in has been time for a rethink — to consider that just because things have worked in a certain way for the last 10 years doesn’t mean that you should expect them to work that way for the next 10. It’s right to be constantly rethinking what you are doing. And part of the beauty of being independent is that you can be nimble.”
Green burst onto the scene in January 2013 as part of Lulu Kennedy’s ‘MAN’ group menswear show that season. His collection’s materials came from a fabric market in London’s Shepherd’s Bush, as well as home supplies store B&Q; the so-called “fence face” looks were covered in both the national news press and the global fashion press, alongside reactions spanning scathing to rapturous.
Although his designs are sometimes so progressive as to seem fantastical, that cautious, deliberate approach is built into Green’s process. When he was awarded £150,000 as the winner of 2016’sBFC/GQ Designer Menswear Fund, he invested the money into the development of his ‘Core’ collection, built around his emblematic quilted workwear jackets. These went on to account for around 70 per cent of his sales. Further collaborations with Moncler, as part of its Genius project, and then Adidas, have since provided further sources of stability to his lean studio operation: Green currently has 13 full-time employees as well as several more part-timers on board in Silvertown.
On Wednesday, their numbers will be swelled by those 120 or so (fire regulations depending) invitees. Says Green: “I guess we’re calling it a show-slash-studio presentation. It won’t be like a catwalk, it will be different. What scares me is that I’m used to controlling everything; the scene, the lighting, how everyone comes in. And this is going to be a lot more raw, and probably a lot more personal and less about that shiny veneer.” As a designer, Green often presents collections in informal trilogies that look at a central starting point of a theme from various developing directions. This next show, he says, will mark the beginning of what he sees as a fresh trilogy: “Although probably people will see it and think it just looks like another Craig Green collection!”
Since October last year he has been more formally entitled Professor Green, pursuing a noble side hustle as head of the fashion class at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Green himself was tutored by the famously robust Louise Wilson at Central Saint Martins. “I hear her voice in my head every single day! And while I try to encourage and push my students, I think I probably have a slightly different teaching style — it’s a very different landscape in education now,” he says. On Thursday, 24 hours after his own show, he plans to be in Vienna to attend that of his students.
Before we end the chat, I ask Green if he’d do anything different if he could start again with the benefit of hindsight. “The answer would completely depend on what day you asked me that question,” he replies. “On some days, maybe I’d wish I’d done everything differently. But on other days — the good days — I wouldn’t change a thing.”
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Correction: The story was updated to reflect that Craig Green s show will take place on Wednesday and he will be in Vienna on Thursday. A previous version of this story stated the show was on Tuesday and Green would be in Vienna on Wednesday.
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