We shoot James Long’s SS14 collection for an exclusive HERO online fashion story, and speak to the designer in his London Fields office.

Since his 2007 debut at London Fashion Week’s MAN show, James Long has established himself as one of  London’s most successful young menswear designers. His trademark knitwear and leather have become staples for fashion buyers – the instantly recognisable use of leather, print, denim and hardwearing utility wear is the key to the James Long aesthetic.

Thomas Davis: Your FW13 men’s collection featured embroidered imagery of Divine [the American drag queen] and Pink Flamingos – was that a straightforward reference for the collection?
James Long: I mean, they have become the focus of the collection but there obviously is a ton of other things that go into it too. But yeah, Pink Flamingos was the key film that was being referenced along with John Waters’ own personal style. But it isn’t like, “Oh I just like this person or film for this specific season”. I’ve loved his films for ages!

TD: Do you have a particular favourite?
JL: Well I sort of grew up on them, the first one I watched was Hairspray, and I didn’t even know then that the person playing the mum was Divine! We used to watch that on repeat, me and my sister. Then, when I was living in New York, I kind of got more into the whole Studio 54 history and found out more about Divine. I liked the fact that John Waters and Divine egged each other on a bit – it was more about that story beneath the relationship that excited me, like with Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. A lot of the fabric referenced his film Polyester, the fabrics we used for the collection were either made up of polyester or had that sort of sheen to them. Even Pecker was quite an influence, the film he did with Christina Ricci, a lot of the colour and seventies hues came from that. It always has to be something real to me to fuel a collection – something relevant that interests me – I just loved the bad taste in his movies.

TD: Do you have any other style heroes? Living or dead?
JL: I have so many, but I’m not sure I have one in particular. I guess it goes without saying that I love David Bowie, I could say my dad even! I think growing up he has definitely inspired something in the way I look at men’s fashion.

TD: Which other artists or designers inspire you?
JL: Vivienne Westwood inspired me, especially when I was younger, because punk was a massive British influence. I have always been interested in Robert Mapplethorpe too. I loved McQueen, I remember coming to London when I was about eighteen or nineteen and calling my mum to tell her about this perfect McQueen sheepskin coat I’d seen in Harvey Nichols. It was in the sale for £400, she told me she’d sub me the money and I could pay her back. I never bought it though, it was a lot of money. I still wish I had.

TD: Your recent SS14 inspiration was ‘beyond the velodrome’. How did you arrive there?
JL: I was looking around and I noticed these cyclists all over London. I was thinking if I wore one of those outfits I’d be laughed out of town and called all sorts of names. It was about the cyclist cults, the straight men going around in these hilarious lycra outfits, but because it’s to do with a sport people don’t take notice of. I became fascinated the way the clothes are put together. I wanted it to be clear that it wasn’t a sportswear collection, it was a fashion collection, but it was just more the idea of how those clothes are put together.

TD: You are known for your leather and knits, what were those material mixes you sent down the catwalk? Denim was rubberised, leather was bonded with satin… where do you make them?
JL: With that collection, because we are a stage where we are selling internationally, it is a key point that these clothes need to be lightweight. People don’t wear heavy clothes anymore. We did a lot of research and started to make some of the fabrics ourselves. The mesh was sort of a new take on the idea of knitwear. When we were in Florence earlier in the year we found all of these old cycling jerseys, it was fascinating to see them in all these amazing flat matte colours and woven fabrics.

TD: What about the gold polarised sunglasses you made too?
JL: They were a collaboration with Lunnex in Berlin. My friend Dorothy used to have a label called Cooperative, she shared a studio across from us. We met in the studio one day and she showed us some of their work. We took their circular flâneur style, with new colour coding. The styles coordinated with cycling-inspired blocked colours.

TD: Girls have been known to wear your menswear too – is that one of the reasons you started designing womenswear? Had you thought about doing it before that?
JL: We’re just on our sixth season of womenswear now. I was in New York and the British Fashion Council was doing a party with Vogue, I styled some of the girls in jumpers from my menswear collection at the time and it was around then that girls had started to buy them too. Lulu Kennedy was always saying, “Oh you should do these for women – do some womenswear!” It started just like that, I never intended on doing a full womenswear show. It’s been quite interesting though, now they often feed quite a lot into each other. My sister Charlotte is my business partner and there are girls who work on the collections who have a voice too, so it just sort of happened! I mean, I can’t believe we used to do two shows in the same week – it was good training!

TD: Would you say James Long is an evolution from season to season?
JL: Well I would say it’s all part of the same story. I think now the men’s and women’s collections are in fact variations of the same ideas. The women’s have obviously different shapes and silhouettes but this season we focussed on them being able to be shown as part of the same catwalk show. Beyond that, as a whole, I tend to continue with or revisit things constantly to link everything together.

TD: How do you think menswear in London has developed since you started?
JL: Well, I don’t know how successful I would be if I started now rather than when I did. I had such great support from the BFC and NewGen since it started in 2009. There were only three designers doing the MAN show when I started, now there’s a whole array of menswear designers in London and it’s all so different. I really love Christopher Shannon’s aesthetic, Lou Dalton’s too. We are all friends as well as contemporaries so it doesn’t feel as competitive as it does supportive. I guess there is just a stronger incentive now for young designers to produce commercial pieces from the beginning, and I really don’t know if I would have coped with that. I came out of the Royal Academy making all sorts of stuff that wasn’t very commercial. It’s all about the learning curve and using the space to develop as a designer. I have great stockists now, like Browns and Harvey Nichols in London, Opening Ceremony in New York… I don’t think I’d have achieved that if I hadn’t learned progressively.

TD: Who would you most like to see wearing your clothes?
JL: I like seeing people on the street rather than a celebrity or fashion blogger wearing James Long. There have been people who have bought my clothes from the beginning and that means a lot to me. I never gift clothes to celebrities through a PR, even though it’s good for my brand and rewarding to see for myself, it’s just more important to see my clothes on people when they have gone out and bought them themselves because they like them.

TD: Do you have any fashion faux pas that you just can’t suffer?
JL: Probably millions but I bet only because I’ve done them all in my past collections already. I really can’t stand a man in flip-flops actually. I love summer clothes to wear personally, especially shorts, but I have a real problem with flip-flops. I don’t like it when someone comes into the studio in a low cut vest either! I mean, style is style, I just like it when someone doesn’t look too put together and ridiculous for the sake of it.

TD: Tell us something we wouldn’t expect of James Long.
JL: Well, I really like the Antiques Roadshow – that’s one of my guilty pleasures! That’s a safe answer, I’m sure there are a lot of things I could say but I doubt whether anyone would ever buy anything from me again!

TD: What do you have coming up besides designing your next collections? Do you have any collaborations?
JL: This year we’ll be concentrating more on the brand itself. I have been lucky enough to collaborate and produce lines with other companies and brands, but I think it’s important to focus on us and keep expanding. We will soon be travelling to Japan to visit some stockists and get a feel of the customer who is buying James Long out there. I like having the needs of a certain type of client in mind – to design something and know exactly who it will appeal to is a great feeling.

Model: Charlie Jones at Premier
Hair: Alexander Soltermann using Bumble & Bumble
Make up: Thom Walker using MAC Cosmetics
Special Thanks: Nina Fourie & Bar Bar @ Spring, Luke Thompson @ Spring Lighting