Escape to the country with bloke-core’s ex-golden boy, Sam Nowell, as he gets back to his rural roots
Leaving behind the classic geeza’s Burberry check to frolic in fields of gingham, Liv meets up for a couple tinnies and a chat with designer SAM NOWELL, in his Seven Sister’s studio, to find about more about the designer’s style shift.
Hailing from the rural Mancunian Village of Lymm, architect/designer Sam Nowell’s urban-living material mashups were the first of his designs to catch the eyes of fashion fans. Stitching together several prints and textiles you wouldn’t even register on the daily, into an array of eye-catchingly stylish Frankenstein’s of fabric. From a pair of vintage Levi’s with a couple of tourist’s favourite ‘London’ sweatshirt’s covering the back legs, to the Gallagher brothers in an eternal face-off on an old Burberry trench that has been sewn with the material from an Oasis blanket, Sam’s unique knack for repurposing was impossible to go unnoticed - catching the attention of big brands for collabs.
Despite being previously banned from the platform for selling outside of the app and dodging the 10% fee, Nowell teamed up with Depop in running up-cycling workshops in Oxford Street’s Selfridges for several rookie seamsters. “It was funny, like going from being banned on Depop, to Depop themselves actually setting me up a new account.” Sam reveals as he sipped a can of Strongbow in his section of studio space, where the room is shared with a couple of other intriguing creatives making the tucked away industrial space a hub of inspiration. “It was great, Depop gave me a budget, and I went onto Depop and bought all these things, like football scarves, or like, you know, neckerchiefs and stuff like that and got all this fabric. And then Fila got involved and donated all these old jumpers and jackets and stuff. So ended up being a really fun day and a day that, like, I couldn't have done it without their support.”
"And after that, I quickly was like, I don't really want to do the random one off, one of one shorts out of shit anymore. I want to just put all my time into like being taken more seriously, rather than ‘Oh, you're the guy that cuts up stuff and sews it back together.’"
So, what was the turning point that sent Nowell’s design formula running for the hills of Lymm?
“The turning point for me was working with Wimbledon. When they sent me all these towels, and I was kind of forced to create this like, collection, I guess, of stuff that was kind of all related to tennis, you kind of take a theme. And then you work around that theme. And I really, really enjoyed that - I enjoyed drawing out all these like bits of clothes that would work well together then thinking of how it was going to be shot.”
For the first time as a designer, Sam was fully immersing himself in the role of the storyteller, creating additional Sam Nowell Tennis Club printed tennis balls and t-shirts. “It was like bigger than just one thing.” He continues, “and after that, I quickly was like, I don't really want to do the random one off, one-of-one shorts out of shit anymore. I want to just put all my time into, like, being taken more seriously, rather than ‘Oh, you're the guy that cuts up stuff and sews it back together.’”
'Wimbledon' images taken by Daniel Delabastide
Spurred on from the Wimbledon experience to create a cohesive collection, and as Sam says, to use “clothes as a way to tell these stories about things that I'm interested in", his following collection, Am I the ‘it’ in British? does just that. Swaying away from his previous London-centric productions, it’s miles off anything he’d put out before. “It was looking at my up-bringing and questioning “am I the ‘it’ in British? and what it meant to be British.” He continues to say “My collection (Am I the ‘it’ in British?) is my favourite thing that I've ever done. It was kind of like turning what I've done in the past, like, on its head, like leaving that behind. It was me doing stuff because I really wanted to do it. And again, like, no one asked me to make a collection of our village life, like no one really gives a shit about village life, which is funny, but it was me like not really caring about that and not really doing what was expected of me… which is a big word - no one expects me to do anything. But you know, people came up to me after the show and was like, ‘I was expecting like a load of like, cut up stuff and like, made into other things.’ And it's like, it wasn't that, and it was really nice to see.”
He continues, “with both my parents being from the north, my Mum’s from Manchester, my Dad’s from Liverpool, and they lived what I like to call, this English dream where it’s like they grew up, they got a job, they got married, they got a car, they got a mortgage, you know. My Dad mows the lawn every month, my mum redecorates the living room every four years. And there are these two labels that I made for the collection. One was my father on a school trip in London, the other was my mother when she was a child in my grandfather’s arms in front of their terraced house in the village she grew up in, outside of Manchester. And that element was about me deciding if I stay in the village and have this cushty village life: go work for my Dad, meet a girl and settle down. Or, whether I up all that and do and be something that my parents weren’t. So, I think the collection kind of focuses a lot on that. And a lot on this conflict in my head when I was towards the latter end of my teenage years. But also, it’s capturing the folklore and those aspects of village life, with the Morris shirt, but there’s also a jacket which is based on all these stain glass windows from churches in my village.”
Photographed by Evie Shandilya
Photographed by Evie Shandilya
Photographed by
Photographed by Evie Shandilya
Photographed by Evie Shandilya
Summing up his newfound brand direction as “village-life-dreams”, before following up this statement by saying that “may be the most pretentious thing I've said in a long time.”
Though as we sat in front of the massive mood board, detailing various images of vintage rural connotations and events, it was certainly the trio of words which made the most sense. Particularly when looking at the collection itself, it echoes that aesthetic countryside lifestyle lusted over by Romantic poets like William Blake, combining the archaic fabrics and patterns such as tweed and gingham, and silhouettes of Morris dancers and the parish, with symbolism such as you might find on a stain glass window. All living harmoniously in the collection, as it would in the village, with the aspects of the pub and football, topped off (literally), by the distinctive headwear of Benny Andallo and the classic footwear of George Cox.
Photographed by Evie Shandilya
Photographed by Evie Shandilya
I asked Sam who would he love to see wearing these designs, thinking the answer may run along the lines of rural loving celebrities like Alex James, or even Cotswold dwelling Kate Moss, but no, in fact, “Kim Kardashian” was the decided upon answer! Even if this conclusion was reached after mentioning “I'm not too fussed by the idea of celebrities wearing my stuff”, before again reflecting on that statement as pretentious and talking about celebrity endorsements leading, to what I agree, would be an iconic moment of two world’s colliding. “Kim Kardashian in my little ‘village life’ stuff from Lymm.”
With the recent sightings of Kim K getting stuck into British culture; smashing a Guinness in a North London pub and daring to touch the piss sodden telephone boxes, Maybe KK could be the ‘it’ in British?
Although not beating Kim to the position of celebrity endorsement, Kate Moss was revealed to be one of Nowell’s biggest British icons. “Just an English sweetheart. You know, like, yes, she's like this massive model, but you could see her frolicking in a field and then sitting down, on a picnic blanket to eat Scotch eggs.” He then revealed his first tattoo to be in homage of the supermodel, with ‘Kate’ tattooed across his upper arm, and his village life dedication also displayed in ink across his chest.
So, what’s next for Nowell?
“I'm doing like, these button-up shirts, which I got some new labels for as well, which I'm really happy about because my old labels weren't really like…they didn't really scream ‘village life.’ Like this is token classic - the font in that folklore book- it’s is taken from that. So, the ‘W’ that's the one. I saw that and was like, that is just pure, pure sex. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
I’ve never got that excited about calligraphy myself, but it seems an import element in the total re-brand that is underway.
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