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LARA JOHNSON-WHEELER

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INFLUE

The word ‘influence’ is bandied around these days. On social media especially, the concept has blown up, it’s puffed up like a soufflé and oftens seems to weigh the same amount. Influence feels light and fluffy. Yet, being ‘an influencer’ carries weight with brands, PRs; especially in fashion, influence is capital. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, 57% of fashion and beauty brands now use influencers as part of their focal marketing strategies. So what’s the kernel at the heart of influence? And, more crucially, who influences the influencers?

FOR THE LAST FEW SEASONS, YOUNG LONDON DESIGNERS HAVE BEEN CREDITED WITH INFLUENCING THEIR CONTEMPORARIES AND, IN TURN, HAVE SPOKEN OPENLY ABOUT THEIR OWN INFLUENCES. LARA JOHNSON-WHEELER TALKS TO THREE LONDON DESIGNERS, MIMI WADE, TOM BARRATT, MICHAEL HALPERN, ABOUT THE PERSONALITIES AND CULTURAL MOMENTS THAT HAVE SHAPED THEIR OWN INFLUENTIAL VISIONS.

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Many influential women, actresses and models, have donned the designer’s wares, taking his home grown values onto the red carpet. The likes of Lupita Nyong’o, Adwoa Aboah, Kylie Minogue and Kate Bosworth may seem far from home, but to him, there’s a clear link between these notions. ‘My family is really where my career in fashion started,’ he says. ‘I have listened to my mother and her friends talk about years ago, when they used to dance at Studio 54. Listening to them reminisce about their experiences,how free and open it was at that time, that’s something I constantly refer to in my work. It felt limitless.’ It’s this idea of freedom, cutting loose and having fun that appeals and thus, ensures. It’s interesting that the time of Studio 54, the era in which Andy Warhol first coined the notion of the fifteen minutes of fame, the foetal idea that has spawned a generation of attention hungry heroes and heroines, is a touchpoint. A novelty back then, this idea is a mere banality to us now. But Michael is touching on that nostalgia of influence in his flared dresses, draped tops and wide leg trousers, inadvertently shaping its current form.

His take on the idea of ‘being an influencer’ is somewhat divisive. ‘I probably think of that word a bit different than some people,’ he says. ‘An influencer for me is something who challenges the way I see something or think about something – a provocation in some way. To be an influencer you should challenge that way someone thinks, and get them to see it from a possibly different point of view.’ Whatever perspective you’re viewing from, Michael Halpern clearly knows what women want.

When you meet Michael Halpern, if you are lucky enough to do so, you may be surprised that this baseball-cap wearing guy is the London designer who has become known for the high-octane glamour and red-carpet ready dresses that made his name. Michael is generally found in dark slouchy trousers, perhaps a boxy jacket. He’s like a magpie for glamour, but finds the contemporary notion of an influencer relatively uninspiring. When I begin to probe, asking him about Instagram, he replies, ‘If this gives any indication, I look at mostly cute animals on Instagram…’

Cute animals don’t appear to have too much of an impact, however. Michael’s influences are women. Flesh and blood, loud-mouthed, unafraid to wear sequins at Five Guys on a Tuesday morning women. This woman emerges in both of his recent exclusive collaborations with high-street giant Topshop and iconic British luxury retailer Browns. Sequinned or not, Michael is able to tap into the high and highest of the fashion industry. He has consulted at Versace and is close to Donatella – another bold woman whose influence can surely be seen in his work. Specifically, Michael references his mother. ‘My mother is the driving force when it came to the confidence and fearlessness that comes through in my sister and my work. My sister is a publicist in New York, and I am a designer based in London. Although we have very different careers, the work ethic, creativity, and boldness that our mother gave us is a huge factor to why we are both able to work in the fields we truly love.’

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TOM BARRATT ON HIS FAMILY

and presented in neat little images as beautiful, but probably quite stressful in reality. If you find yourself as an influencer however, then why not! We all want advice and we all want to see what other people are doing,but the more career influencers exist, the less genuine they are as they're paid to do and say everything. It's good to get a recommendation but obviously you want some level of autonomy. Stick to your friends for the advice it seems!’

Art School focus on their community. The people around them, the ‘Instagram icons’ and their IRL friends become their family in many ways. But Tom is equally as shaped by his own family, having grown up the second of four children in Stockport, near Manchester. He describes them as a family of sic, amusingly removing the parent/child hierarchy. ‘We spent all our growing up years being absolutely manic and crazy together, singing, dancing, arguing mostly… making up all these fantasy games in our back garden and gaming, and then going to drama and piano classes on the weekend. We were like the Von Trapps meets Royle Family!’ I asked Tom if his family was where his love of performance stemmed from. Art School’s shows are notorious at fashion week for their performativity, creating a safe space on their catwalks, celebrating femininity, trans culture and queer culture. Tom’s personal penchant for Voguing cannot be missed at any party he attends. Tom considered; ‘Each of us in the family are quite different and growing up I was definitely influenced by them all. I shied away from the aforementioned showiness quite a lot. I loved to perform, but in the context of doing it with my siblings made me freeze up. As I think you compare yourself and can't fully be whole sometimes when in such close proximity to others.’ That being said, his cousin Cat ‘opened his eyes to fashion’. ‘Once we went on a shopping trip with to Manchester to Afflecks Palace, the 6-floor goth superstore. [Cat] was so so cool - and through her, I was introduced to H&M Divided which influenced my whole style Renaissance at age 13, lol!’

Often described as ‘one-half’ of a duo, Tom Barratt is a designer whose unique looks and vibrancy of spirit dominate when he enters a room. Working and living alongside his partner – his other half in design and in life – Eden Loweth, Tom’s agenda is that of inclusivity. The brand Tom and Eden are growing is Art School. Having cut their teeth as a menswear label, Art School showed alongside the likes of Rottingdean Bazaar, Stefan Cooke and Per Gotessen under the umbrella of MAN, Lulu Kennedy’s menswear arm at Fashion East. At the time of writing, they are preparing to show their debut show at London Fashion Week Men’s. This is pertinent as Art School are a non-binary brand. Their work celebrates queer culture, providing a platform for their contemporaries, with work inspired by the queer icons they grew up around.

Critics have occasionally been stumped by the work of Art School. There’s a notorious story about an ignorant fashion journalist describing one of their first shows as ‘guys in gowns’. It’s a clumsy mis-step and one that sweeps a hand across the rich references that pervade their work. From Judy Chicago to Tori Amos to Isabella Blow, Art School have been influenced by women in the public consciousness who consciously subvert and celebrate femininity. Tom often mines popular culture and Instagram icons in his work. ‘I’m very influenced by certain images,’ he says. ‘I keep lots of folders and save a lot of images, and develop these snapshots of moods in each folder.’ Indeed, having watched Tom and Eden work, they’re scouring over John Galliano’s notorious noughties Dior collections, as well as constantly turning their eyes to their feed. Fundamentally, they’re not exclusive in their inspirations. ‘Instagram is constantly being updated by people in the moment and always changing, so it gives you an up to date snapshot of what's happening. It’s really important to us to stay relevant to the ever changing digital zeitgeist we all live in nowadays!’

But the polished version of an ‘influencer’ doesn’t totally appeal; ‘I think it's this new lifestyle and career.It’s very manufactured

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Social media plays a crucial part in the Mimi Wade brand. Mimi’s designs are often spotted on Instagram, on the likes on ‘influencers’ in the contemporary sense of the term. Joanna Kuchta, Adwoa Aboah, Lily Allen, Lana Del Rey, even Pamela Anderson have posted themselves in Mimi’s clothes. And thus, a market emerges. As a tool, Mimi is conscious of the role social media plays; ‘You have to be savvy. There are designers whose target audience aren't on Instagram, but the people who buy my clothes are on Instagram. It's empowering to be able to sell like that. You have full control over your image you can take the profit not selling through a third party. It's much harder if you don't use Instagram.’ Mimi often talks to people on Instagram, people who tag her clothes in their posts or comment on her pictures.

Still, there’s a confusion in her mind about what 'influence' and being an 'influencer' means today. ‘I suppose,’ she says slowly, ‘it’s someone people who find fascinating for no particular reason?’.

MIMI WADE ON GRANNY PAMMY

You’ve probably seen photos of Mimi Wade on Instagram, or you might have seen young girls emulating her signature block-striped, two-tone blonde vs brunette hair. In fact, as I walked through Granary Square, past her alma mater, Central Saint Martins, to meet her, I spotted no less than six (six!!) two-toned lookalikes. Dalston-based hair salon Bleach, who first created the style for her, now call this style ‘the Mimi’. Talk about influence.

Mimi’s take on this is surprisingly generous. While she immediately dismisses the term ‘influencer’ as ‘reductive’. In her work as a designer, she is often self-referential. Her A/W 18 presentation featured an army of Mimis, complete with two-toned streaks. ‘I suppose I am trying to influence people! I'm not protective over my look,’ she says. ‘I first got it from a picture I saw of Gloria Steinem, and that influenced me to try it.’

Mimi’s work takes prints and graphics from old Hollywood - movies, street signs - and puts them onto cotton T-shirts with lace trim or ripped negligees. Her main influence is her grandmother, the affectionately named Granny Pammy, quite the indomitable woman it seems. ‘She was dealt a blessed and cursed set of cards,’ Mimi says. Astonishingly beautiful, Pamela Curran was born into an aristocratic American family. They summered with the Kennedys. But she got pregnant, by a ‘businessman, someone much older than she’ and became a single mother at eighteen, having married and divorced only a year after appearing on the front cover of Life magazine in 1947.

Much to the chagrin of her family, Mimi says, Pammy pursued her career in acting and went on to star in The Blob. She also notoriously modelled for Dali and was photographed by Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton. Granny Pammy quit acting at 40; she couldn’t trust people. Her husband blackmailed her, accusing her of smoking weed in the press in order to seek sole custody of her son - Mimi’s father. Nonetheless, her sense of humour prevailed. ‘She’s very vain,’ laughs Mimi. ‘While her house is amazing - it’s covered with old Hollywood posters - there are also hundreds pictures of herself.’ I ask whether Granny Pammy would have taken to Instagram and Mimi wrinkles her nose; she doesn’t understand the concept of the Internet.