Professorial Lecture Speech Notes PART1
Hey all...
last night was my Professorial Lecture at the Western Auditorium in Hatfield UK, where i cut a dress live on stage against a video backdrop... was a really great evening & i'd love to do it again in other countries... i'll post pics when i get them, but here are my speech notes for anyone who'd like to know more:
My students aren’t used to seeing me onstage looking frightened,
But I do scared & nervous as good as anyone.
Talking & showing stuff to people is pretty easy, but my audience is usually frontstage watching my work while I hide backstage, or they’re in a studio or classroom, surrounding me, on my level, nearby & close at hand.
You respond to them, you talk & show them what you need them to see,
you continuously connect with them, check them, watch their eyes, faces & expressions.
An audience like this sits at a distance, watching & observing.
There is not the same emotional connection for me,
not because you’re not connected or engaged, but because I am simply not used to standing on stage reading my own words.
It’s an unfamiliar place for me to find myself.
So yes I’m scared. I feel awkward, but I am more than happy for you to see my weaknesses, because weakness & fear are human, endearing & real.
They are something to amplify & build on.
Life is a matter of confidence,
And confidence is not something you conjure from nowhere, or a switch you flick on or off.
Confidence grows, with opportunity, with time, with understanding & support from those who believe in you.
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Behind me is a video I’ve edited showing all my sketchbooks, videowork, collections, catwalk shows, exhibitions & successes.
I’m a practicing fashion designer that has shown 13 collections under my own labels at London & Paris Fashion Weeks, and designed 12 further collections as a consultant designer to companies such as Jasper Conran, Marks&Spencers, Debenhams, and London Denim.
I’ve taken my work to 10 countries, received the coveted ‘New Generation Award’ from the British Fashion Council 5 times, I’ve sold to stores in Japan, America, Italy, Hong Kong & London, and my fashion & video work has been extensively featured in the press in newspapers such as The Telegraph, The Times, The International Herald & Tribune, The Evening Standard, Le Monde, The Observer and The Guardian. As well as in magazines such as English & French VOGUE, i-D, The Face, Nylon, Tank, ELLE, SuperBlow, Surface, The Sunday Times Style, ICON and Blueprint.
I’ve cut garments for Bjork, Naomi Cambell, Kylie Minogue, and at the moment I’m cutting vestments for St.Paul’s Cathedral & the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I use a method of garment cutting that I have taught & demonstrated at 10 universities in the UK, and I’m Creative Director of BLOW PR who represent 23 of the newest & most upcoming talents showing at London Fashion Week.
That’s the hype & buzz, and I imagine is the reason why the University of Hertfordshire took a risk & gave me the fantastic opportunity of starting it’s new BA Fashion course.
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I started with just a desk & a phone, it didn’t take me long to find the stationary cupboard & a computer, and in no time at-all I was lost in a whirlwind of post-it notes & to-do notes, imaginary studios & students, floorplans, timetables & project briefs.
I made my own pathway, resisted anything that seemed outdated, boring or overly institutionalized, and tried to make something that actually answered the needs of industry, a course that is fun, experimental, fast moving, that wasn’t solely focused on creating ‘designers’, but which was all about skills,
about showing the students different approaches & techniques, showing them how wide the industry is, how it crosses over into music, film, art, communication, marketing & business, a course that respects the breadth & diversity of the fashion industry, and which explores the creativity brought to bear in each area.
I’ve now been here 2 years, we have one of the best looking fashion studios in the country, by September we’ll have 120 students of the highest calibre I have seen at any university, and a first class teaching team with excellent skills & industry links.
I am as proud of this place & what we are achieving here than anything I have ever done.
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But I am restless, I find it very hard talking about successes & achievements when there is always so much left to accomplish, so much work left unfinished, and fashion never sits still for long. You have to chase it waving your arms about and not sit around believing your own hype.
My own confidence levels continuously rise & fall.
I have my own design work that I must get off my chest, ideas I need to get out of my system, my goals constantly extend & contract according to budget, time, workload & responsibilities, and though I am a teacher I cannot disengage from practice.
I picture my best work lying in front of me rather than behind me on a screen.
When I was first given the title of Professor I didn’t know exactly how to wear it… it didn’t much go with my ripped jeans & tramlined hair. UH certainly took a risk.
I thought the title was rather amusing & that the people I know in industry would think it rather hilarious. But now, I find it so much easier getting tables at restaurants & getting into bars & clubs. I don’t have to carry ID anymore.
In fact I’ve aged terribly since becoming a professor, I’ve started wearing suits & shoes, and it’s made me behave outrageously.
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At school I was never a high achiever.
I had very low concentration, and was very easily distracted by everything going on around me. I only passed a small handful of GCSE’s, not because I didn’t put the effort in or know the answers, but because I was rebellious & found the idea of being assessed both patronizing & limiting.
Fashion caught my eye because it was a way of life.
It was the clothes I wore, the music I was into, the way I cut & coloured my hair, the shoes on my feet, the bars & nightclubs I lived in, the friends I hung out with & fell in love with, in stark contrast to all the people I hated everywhere who were boring & everyday, and who seemed to be in charge.
Fashion was hope, it was a brighter, happier, crazier, more beautiful & proud version of reality, it was unafraid, it didn’t observe the rules, it kept changing continuously, it didn’t care for stopping still, staying in being normal, doing your homework & what you’ve been told.
I was at different times a skinhead, a mod, I hung out with older rockers & teds, I was a bit of a Goth &New Romantic wearing rather too much make-up, and I was a right little raver, punk & rudeboy throughout the 90’s.
Fashion was the one thing to hold my concentration.
It was a brave new world, a lifestyle, not a subject.
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Fashion connects with almost everything now.
In a world increasingly filled with image & product it is in the details, surface, the manner & style of just about everything out there, the sounds we dance to & pump in our ears, the images we connect with on screen, the things we buy & covet, the style we feel part of, comforted by, that turns us on, sparks our interest, and makes us want to make things ourselves.
Fashion just doesn’t seem to ever end, and this state of mind set me on fire as a student & when I first started out as a designer.
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At university I heard critics, journalists, writers & tutors say that everything has been done, that everything is referential, endlessly connected & repeating, that there is no such thing as the underground, that everything is now absorbed into the mainstream, and quite frankly this just annoyed the hell out of me.
People who don’t choose to look, or who are only looking for the similarities, are not likely to appreciate or recognise anything really new.
The media tends to obliterate anything outside its focus, but there is so much more to fashion than just a reworking of past styles.
Fashion is an activity and a statement.
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People NEED to be continuously frightened by newness, freaked out by stuff they don’t recognize & can’t get their tiny heads around, because otherwise they are frightened into submission by the flipside, by small mindedness, hatefulness, jealousy, by the idea that we have reached the dizzy heights of civilization, and don’t need to design new things any more.
Fear is a good thing, but only if it shatters your little world to reveal a new dimension otherwise unexplored, a new horizon or escape route, a hope that something better, happier, brighter might lie beyond the hatefulness of the present moment:
the here & now & all there is to it.
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Fashion gave me the confidence to be myself, but never to accept that i am myself for all time, unable to evolve, change or seek new directions.
To my students & those with tools in their hands I say of course there are new things to be discovered,
that there will always be more underground than mainstream,
that there are shapes that have never before been cut, and ways of exploring the visual arts that are yours to define by practice,
and that is why we are here:
If the world was perfect there would be no reason to design new things.
You have to seek out the flaws & want to put forward your own alternatives.
Push it as far it will go, all the way.
Society goes no further than it is taken, we need test pilots to show everybody that they can dare to venture forward, that confidence can grow, that we can make our mark on the world, that there is money to be made, good times to be had, and that for as long as there are new ways of thinking, doing & making things, there is the possibility of change & progress.
The style of a decade doesn’t kick in on it’s own,
it’s the artists, designers & musicians who venture forward new ideas;
it’s the people who sit at home and read about it all & who suddenly want a slice of the action, who want to be your fans, want to be involved, want to buy into you;
and its the media who communicate what’s going down & create focuses, who weave it all into something mythical that’s infectious and exciting.
Hope is a vibration that buzzes in the air, and there is definitely something new going on in Hatfield that people should know about.
But lets not get too lost in this psychedelic moment.
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Confidence is something you CAN give to others.
The fashion industry can receive a better quality of graduate if it invests its knowledge & skills within it.
What drove me to teaching & drinking initially was survival,
I was a poor suffering artist designer & I needed to eat, pay rent & keep producing my work. I therefore turned on my skills & techniques to bring in extra money as a visiting tutor at Central St.Martin’s & the Royal College of Art in London.
I have always been between a student & a teacher, because I always come into universities as a designer.
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One way of saying it, is that I am the new Professor of Fashion at the University of Herfordshire.
Another way of saying it, is that I’ve just kidnapped a group of students from their parents, and they’re accompanying me as hostages on the next steps of my fashion career. Teaching them everything I know along the way, showing them new skills, introducing them to new lecturers, my contacts & friends, bouncing ideas off them, taking them to London Fashion Week and letting them see & experience the fashion industry as I have done, as I experience & live it.
I can’t keep my own design life separate from my life in education. I have to cross it over, let the students feel what it’s like early on, not protect them at university from the harsh realities of the real world.
University has to encourage students way beyond their education.
To be resourceful, committed, excited, confident, respectful, communicative & opportunistic.
Students have to graduate with their eyes open,
too many fashion students leave university disorientated by graduation.
Thrown out after the catwalk show party is over into an industry that doesn’t actually need a load of upstarts thinking they’re ‘designers’.
What the industry needs is hard workers, people with more than one skill, creative people who are a safe pair of hands, and who appreciate that there is creativity beyond the garment, in the promotional, marketing & business sides of fashion, that you have to make money & balance the bread&butter work with the high art creative statements.
Knowing who you are talking to & who your audience is high on the agenda.
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There are thousands & thousands of fashion students graduating every year in the UK, most of which all show at the same time of year, apply for the same jobs, & show their work in the same catwalk show formats.
Fashion is highly competitive, success & opportunity is very unlikely to land in your lap, and if it does & you are able to establish a following it won’t last long unless you cleverly maintain interest, because the focus of fashion is ever changing & you have to be able to overcome rejection, and when you’re last seasons next big thing pull another trick out of your repertoire.
Don’t think for a moment that it’s the qualification you earn that is the measure of your success. You never stop learning in fashion, and you have to be very resourceful & flexible, to anticipate & respond to it’s ever changing landscape
You have to hold onto the enjoyment of making & creating things.
Don’t take no for an answer, be determined, and be prepared to take on challenges that take you into completely new & unexpected areas.
You may even have to try your hand at something really weird like being a Professor.
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i also find it hard having time to blog, in the future i would like to but for now i'm not sure i have the patience.
*sigh*...
. Though I'm schooling myself in the ways of the grown up world I may be able to co-ordinate a proper visit for you, maybe even at a lecture hall at my old school or something.
