SARABANDE SESSIONS | PACKAGE 3
Practical Series | 1 Granary: How To Position Your Brand
Your design might be finalised, but the work isn’t done. To take your designs and turn them into a successful brand, many steps are involved: from sales and distribution to product exposure and strategic wholesale partnerships. In this joint discussion, Matthew Williams, Barbara Grispini and Giacomo Piazza explore and analyse diverse branding strategies and explain how to communicate a brand image. Together, they examine how designers can take full advantage of the media landscape and navigate the system.
Giacomo Piazza, 247
Giacomo Piazza is the co-founder and fashion director of 247 showroom, a Milan-based multi-brand showroom and strategic counseling agency, managing over 1000 clients worldwide, from department stores and online shops to independents, in 43 countries. Their labels include both established luxury brands (3.1 Phillip Lim, A.P.C. and Kenzo) and independent designers (Matthew Adams Dolan, Rokh by Rok Huang).
Barbara Grispini, D/ARK
Barbara Grispini is the founder of D/ARK, a brand strategy and development agency specialising in cross-platform marketing communication and wholesale. Her clients include Craig Green, Paula Knorr, Katie Roberts Wood, Vyner Articles and Hyein Seo. Barbara previously worked as a consultant to the British Fashion Council, and curator of the London Showrooms.
Matthew Williams, Alyx
The creative director of Alyx has built a cult following by merging street culture aesthetics with practical garment construction in a luxury streetwear label, garnering global stockists from Dover Street Market and Selfridges to Ssense. In 2016, Alyx was selected a finalist for the LVMH Prize. The brand has collaborated with Vault by Vans, Mackintosh and Fragment, among others. Matthew Williams’ also formed a partnership was with Nike in 2018 and was also tapped by Dior Men creative director Kim Jones to lend his brutalist industrial aesthetic to the brand/s Spring/Summer 2019 collection, making a buckle for Dior's accessories.
Inspiration Series | Polly Morgan
Polly Morgan has had an eventful career: after learning taxidermy on a whim when she discovered a train ticket to Edinburgh to learn was cheaper than buying an existing piece, she was quickly catapulted to fame for her work.
Growing up surrounded by creatures of all kinds - her father bred exotic animals, including ostriches, alongside his normal flock of goats and chickens, and she bred hamsters - Morgan has spent her life studying the animal form.
She has been shown at major galleries, with notable exhibits including You Dig the Tunnel, I'll Hide the Soil, 2008 at White Cube, Psychopomps, 2010 at Haunch of Venison and Daydreaming With Stanley Kubrick, 2016 at Somerset House.
Morgan's work currently focuses on the more abstract form of snakes, depicted coiled in midair and draped around liquid-looking plastic shapes. Watch her in conversation with editor at Elephant Magazine, Emily Steer to learn more about Polly's fascinating life story and her thoughts on taxidermy in this age of sustainable living.
Inspiration Series | Stephen Jones & Matty Bovan
These two ground-breaking designers chatted with one another at Sarabande, fresh from SS19, to discuss designer collaboration, use of materials and the creative process. Stephen and Matty were in conversation with the fabulous Tamsin Blanchard, British fashion journalist, author, and lecturer.
Stephen Jones OBE
Stephen Jones OBE burst on to the London fashion scene during its explosion of street style in the late seventies and, by 1980, Jones had opened his first millinery salon in the heart of London's Covent Garden. Those premises soon became a place of pilgrimage and patronage, as everyone from Boy George to Diana, Princess of Wales, identified Jones as the milliner who would help them make arresting headlines. Forty years later, Jones's era-defining edge continues to attract a celebrity clientele which includes, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Mick Jagger, and the Princesses.
Now, as ever, at the forefront of fashion, his beguiling hats routinely grace the most celebrated magazine covers and enliven window displays of the world's most stylish stores. From runways to race-courses, from pop-promos to royal garden parties, millinery by Stephen Jones adds the exclamation mark to every fashion statement.
Matty Bovan
Having grown up in York, where he is still based, Matty Bovan, 28, graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2015 with an MA specialising in Fashion Knitwear. His 12-look graduate collection opened the final show, exhibiting his cacophony of sculptural knits, textures and wild, handmade adornments, which earned him the L’Oréal Professional Creative Award, closely followed by the LVMH Graduate Prize 2015.
Nominated for British Emerging Womenswear Talent at the Fashion Awards 2017, his work is often seen worn by the likes of Adwoa Aboah, Fran Summers, Georgia May Jagger, Hailey Baldwin, Harriet Verney, Noomi Rapace, Rita Ora, and Winnie Harlow.
Practical Series | Kickstarter: Funding Your Creative Futures
Watch for an in-depth discussion with Kickstarter's Director of Arts, Patton Hindle.
Hindle oversees Kickstarter's Arts/Performance Arts team, who work closely with visual and performing artists, arts organisations, museums and cultural institutions to help them realise creative and ambitious ideas. Over the past eight years, crowdfunding for creative projects has grown exponentially, with the artistic ventures receiving arounds 600 pledges daily. This insightful dialogue will explore why this surge in online fundraising has happened as well as the realities of funding artistic projects in the digital age.