It was the Smoggy ’60s rather than Swinging ’60s – cobbled streets, not Carnaby Street – that Patrick Grant celebrated in his Terry Street collection for E Tautz. There were backstage jokes that it was simply a wall of grey, and whilst that was the dominant colour, Grant defended his palette, pointing out that if you looked more closely there was plenty of white, navy and sky blue.
The other great story of the show came in the shapes: his oversized overcoats were present again, but this time the trousers were more voluminous and the whole collection slouchy and insouciant (shorter men would be right to worry about this particular silhouette though). i-D caught up with the ever-charming Patrick Grant to ask him about some of the show’s key details.
Can you tell us about this loose, scruffy shirt collars?
They’re soft. There’s no structure. There’s also no collar stand. They deliberately look slightly disheveled. I think everyone looks at Savile Row and thinks it’s all about precision. People have considered suits as an exercise in stricture, and we’ve deliberately done something different. There were no structures in the shoulders, there was no canvas in the jackets, there’s no canvassing in the shirt collars. It’s not normal [for tailoring], so getting that shape right and the form of it took some experimentation. But I think the result was really worth it.”
And how about the big, baggy trousers?
There’s height in the waist. Pretty much every suit you’ve seen on the catwalk in London has been that drainpipe thin trouser and really neat fitted suit. It feels a bit old to me. I used to wear skinny trousers when I had the legs for it, but I don’t now. The high-rise and the volume in the trousers is lovely to wear. There’s a lovely motion in it, so if you like clothes, you like that swish in it. It’s just a joy to wear.
And why pick clogs for the collection?
Clogs are very literal here. They were in the north until quite recently really. Until the ’60s, people were wearing clogs and there are great images of clog shops in the north. That was the staple working person’s shoe. And if you read the first line of Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier it talks about the sounds of clogs on cobbled streets. It’s what you heard everyday: clomp, clomp, clomp down the cobbles.
Credits
Text Stuart Brumfitt
Photography Ash Kingston