Skepta’s mid-2000s emergence as a leading voice in the UK grime scene helped hasten the sunset of the scene that came before: UK garage. Ironically, though, it was his mixed fortunes getting into the late-’90s/early-aughts, super-dressed-up garage nights in venues like Aquarium, Bagleys, Camden Palace, and the Colosseum that, in part, inspired him to focus on the form that eclipsed it—and to thus shift the needle of London’s nightlife fashion.
As he said during a preview for this second show in his Mains reset: “I do take some of the blame. I used to walk up to clubs when we were doing Tracksuit Mafia, and they were like, ‘You can’t come in wearing that.’ Then someone would say, ‘This is Skepta,’ and they would let me in with the tracksuit. That’s was that whole ‘That’s Not Me’ shit was about. It was saying, ‘I’m going to break the mold because you’re not seeing us. I’m going to make it in a tracksuit.’ But now I want to bring back getting dressed up.”
The preshow set list featured old-school legends Oxide and Neutrino, Artful Dodger, and the mighty MJ Cole. The printed denim yearbook sets were an irresistible Mains take on the Moschino equivalents that almost assured you entry into the hype-iest garage nights back when, prestardom, Skepta was working retail at TK Maxx (the UK version of TJ Maxx) and plotting his look for the weekend. Working with Moschino now, he added, is something he would very much like to explore. The Mains printed jeans were delivered in the “garage cut” that was originally refined through alteration to allow the wearer to best display their loafers from Patrick Cox or Gucci. This collection’s equivalent to those original pieces of trophy footwear was a sprawling collab collection with Kickers that included a satisfying sample of Alessandro Michele’s Gucci 1.0-era kangaroo-lined snaffle slide.
The clothes and show approached nostalgia from multiple angles. The collection was titled Non School Uniform and revisited some of the tailoring (ties included) and varsity tropes of institutional education from both sides of the Atlantic. The opening and finale played out to Tim Minchin’s “When I Grow Up” from the Matilda musical: At the close, Skepta’s daughter, River, ran happily through the crowd alongside her dad and a bunch of friends. Wearable freshness included the hilarious faux wig/headpieces cooked up by Skepta and his head of design, Mikey Pearce. We were the first to hear a strong new Ye x Skepta track that sounded like it sampled Pink Floyd.
Said Skepta: “We’re doing one show a year [with Mains], so there’s not so much pressure. I feel like we established a lot of the language at the first show, so now we’re having fun with the silhouette and developing that language.” Distinctly British, specifically autobiographical, but also highly translatable beyond these shores, Mains feels like a project with potential and momentum.
