Christian Blanken: I went to boarding school here in the UK but I am originally Dutch. I went back to the Netherlands to do my BA and I did a foundation year at the Academy of Fine Arts in Arnhem which is predominately famous for having had Viktor & Rolf as graduates. It’s an extremely, extremely good academy. I did the foundation year there and within the context of this foundation year there was the possibility of going either into fine art, architecture, graphics or fashion. I chose fashion because I had always been interested in mass communication, psychology, human sociology - I found art to be a little isolated and elitist at that time. I always thought that fashion was more of a socially interactive medium and it also seemed to be more of a fun lifestyle.

HAD YOU EXPERIMENTED WITH FASHION BEFOREHAND?

CB: I wouldn’t say that I was somebody who was always obsessively interested in fashion, but I grew up in the Far East as the child of expatriates and my mother was very involved in the expatriate lifestyle on quite a high level. There was a lot of socialising, a lot of hosting and within that context, clothing was extremely important. So I would say that I have memories that carry over from my youth and that will undoubtedly have had an influence on my later life.

YOU WERE SPLIT BETWEEN THE FAR EAST, THE UK AND THE NETHERLANDS. HOW DID THIS EFFECT YOU AS A DESIGNER?

CB: Well, as a person it makes you quite rootless even though I consider the UK my home. That’s the downside, but on the plus side it makes you incredibly versatile and an easy traveller; somebody who is very capable of quickly immersing themselves into other mindsets and other cultures. For instance I go to Turkey a lot for our production and for our sampling. When I am there, I eat Turkish food, I immerse myself in that. For my consulting, I am in Italy a lot (I spend most of my time between Italy and the UK) and when I am there, I am completely immersed in Italy - the food, the language, the people.

THIS MUST BE SOMETHING QUITE USEFUL TO HAVE AS A FASHION DESIGNER?

CB: Fashion is so global now. If you are talking to an American buyer or store in LA, you have to have been there to know what they are talking about, the type of woman/man they are dressing, the type of fabrics that you can and can’t use. As a designer, if you really want to operate and be successful internationally, I think you do have to have a global perspective. I don’t think you can just be a London designer who likes London, lives in London etc. You have to have quite an open mind.

Below: CHRISTIAN BLANKEN Autumn/Winter 2009

CB: New York has a fantastic work ethic. You really learn to work at a pace that stands in good stead with whatever you decide to do afterwards. It was certainly easier to navigate as a city than London, because New York is much more concentrated. In terms of being a fashion designer, you have the garment district (39th street) where you have everything. You have all your fabric showrooms, your trim suppliers, sample rooms - everything you need as a designer to get good sample collections made. Everything you need is in less than a square mile, whereas London is entirely different. If I need to do my leather, I will go to Bethnal Green, if I am seeing fabric showrooms here (which I don’t usually do, I go to fairs for that) I will go to the West End, the PR is obviously in the West End. You lose a lot of time here just navigating things. When I was living in New York it was much more compact. Also, people are in New York for a reason - they are there to work, to better themselves. People are very rarely born in New York, raised in New York and that’s why they are there. People go to New York to pursue a dream. It basically means that it is a very high octane way of living. You go out practically every night to socialise and interact. London works entirely differently, it is possible for someone to be born and raised in London and still go along their merry way in London. There is less sense of urgency in London, but in the end, the impact can actually be the same. One thing I do notice when I go back to New York is that people can spin their wheels a little bit and still be in the same spot they were in two years ago, even though they are terribly, terribly busy. In London, people are less busy but you actually get more of a result. I don’t really know whether one is better than the other, but they are just two different ways of working.

WHEN YOU FIRST WENT OUT TO NEW YORK, YOU WERE A BIT OF A ‘NEWBIE’. HOW DID WORKING IN NEW YORK INFLUENCE YOU AS A DESIGNER?

CB: I think I was very open to it, but I hid it in a good way. I was offered a paid internship with a dreadful Jersey company, but they paid something like $800 cash a week and they gave an apartment. Can you image somebody in their early twenties with that amount of cash in an envelope under the bed in an apartment they are not paying for for three months? I had a very good time. That was straight after graduating and then I went to Italy for a year where I was in a very small village with a push bike and not such a high salary. It was very depressing, which was why I went back to New York. I got a job at Michael Kors and I worked there for about a year and half and that was a great experience. I would say that working for Diane Von Furstenburg was a key moment within my development as a designer over there.

WHAT ABOUT HERE IN THE UK?

CB: Here in the UK, I would say that working with Sue Whiteley, who is now at Vuitton, on the Harvey Nichols Private Label Collection was an amazing experience because you are working at a really luxury end. We were doing very clean, very pure products but beautifully executed. Max Mara, I can’t go into great detail about it, but is obviously a classic Italian powerhouse with a massive array of brands, which is interesting machinery to work within. It is an interesting career.

YOU SEEM TO HAVE WORKED WITH COMPANIES THAT DO THINGS ON A VERY LARGE SCALE. IS THAT WHERE YOU ARE MOST COMFORTABLE?

CB: Not necessarily. I like doing both, but what I enjoy very much about doing this (my own collection) is being involved on every level. Yesterday I was in our office warehouse in Hatfield packing a box of fabrics, trims, buttons and everything else you need to do a sample run, because I am going abroad again to do a big part of the women’s samples for the Spring/Summer season coming up. I do all of that myself and I really love having full control.

YOU MENTIONED THAT A DESIGNER NEEDS TO HAVE A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE AND NEEDS TO BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY WITH CULTURES. WHAT ARE THE MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FASHION IN LONDON AND NEW YORK?

CB: Well, I would say that London definitely leads. The difference between the two cities is that in London you are more protected, which gives people more leeway to experiment, mess up and make mistakes. New York has a more rigid social structure, but I wouldn’t say class structure because the UK has that as well but definitely a more rigid social structure. If you are on the upper east side, you are not down town, if you are not down town you are the upper west side etc. There is just this complex hierarchy and you have to determine where you want to be when you are there. If you are going to live and mix in the upper east side, you are going to eat in certain places and dress in certain ways, if you are down town, then you are going to have a completely different way of being. I think in London, there is slightly more flexibility, but of course you still need money to be mobile in both places. I don’t think our cities are that different, there are other places that are much more different.

CB: Interestingly enough, even though it has been getting a lot of press lately, Istanbul is a very interesting place fashion-wise, because they are absolutely obsessed with fashion. They love it and they have the money for it. I think the evidence is there because there are lot of stores opening up and French Vogue just did a big feature on Istanbul. It is being covered a lot. You have very good shopping districts there and incredible shopping centres such as Kanyon where Harvey Nichols Istanbul is. It’s an incredible complex, the Harvey Nichols is bigger than it is here so everything is on quite a spectacular scale. For fashion it is a very interesting place, in terms of manufacturing etc. It’s a really inspiring city at the moment and the old city is really inspiring architecturally.

IT SEEMS TO BE EVERY DESIGNERS DREAM TO HAVE THEIR OWN LABEL. IS IT SOMETHING YOU HAVE WANTED FOR A LONG TIME?

CB: This is not the first time I have launched, I have done it before, so it must be a dream if I keep returning back to it. When I did it in the US, the timing wasn’t right. When you are a designer, I think three things need to be in place, you need to be very focused, your finances need to be in order and your production needs to be in order. Those three areas need to be in the right place and when I did it before, there were some things that were not. It is a dream in a way because when you have your own collection you can see your vision absolutely realised. When you see somebody dressed up in the way you visualied it, it is quite an amazing experience, particularly within a show context. It is also an experience fraught with incredible lows, which any designer can testify to. The moment right after a show is devastating because you spend six months trying to make this thing happen and then it goes by in ten minutes. It is a very big low afterwards. I am lucky because I am well financed and my production is in order but if you are trying to do without those things, it is something I wouldn’t attempt right now, certainly not in the current climate. It is something that is very, very difficult and you nearly need a masochistic streak to pursue it. It is not impossible, but is very difficult because the consumer at large is buying less designer goods, less branded goods and when they do buy they focus on accessories such as bags, shoes and value added products. I think that a suit is something a man will not buy cheaply but I think a man will buy inexpensive shirts and t-shirts. That is something I do myself so I am sure other people do. As I do invest in bags and custom leather goods, I am purchasing things that have a visible high value. I think that is something that the consumer is starting to do which is why brands are so reliant on their accessories for sales.

WHAT IS DIFFICULT TO ACHIEVE IN MENSWEAR?

CB: I find menswear very easy actually. I find womenswear very difficult. Menswear is a relatively new venture for me but I love doing it. It is obvious that as a man I find it much easier to relate to menswear. I look at a garment and say ‘I wouldn’t wear it like that’. I enjoy menswear a lot, but I don’t have a long history with it which is maybe why the menswear is getting more of a response than the womenswear. The menswear is getting a slightly different response because I don’t have a vast amount of experience with menswear, so I am going into it quite blindly and naively. It has been quite a revelation for me and career-wise, it has doubled my career options. Menswear has been nothing but a blessing.

DO YOU FIND THAT YOUR CREATIVITY IS STUNTED WHEN IT COMES TO MENSWEAR?

CB: I think for me, not yet. It is a relatively new thing for me but one thing I am trying to do is to refine my shapes, to get to really good jacket and trouser shapes. I am still building an archive of shapes so for me, it is something that hasn’t even scratched the surface.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE IDEAS BEHIND YOUR A/W 09 COLLECTION?

CB: With Autumn/Winter, I wanted to do the opposite of what I was doing for Spring/Summer which was very light, deconstructed and very casual. Autumn/Winter is quite serious. There was definitely a military overtone, because military is such a rich thing to mine from for myself and for other designers. The starting point for it was to essentially create a great wardrobe. When I am going to do a pea coat, I want to do a pea coat that I would really love to wear and nobody else is doing. I do the same with bomber jackets etc. It is about creating a fantasy ultimate wardrobe. There are certain designers who throw very themed collections out there each season which I think does a great disservice to the public, first of all because you confuse people and ultimately they respect you less. I think if you tell people that this is the shape one season and it is absolutely different six months later, in my opinion, you are completely discarding what you did six months ago and you are obliterating it. You are also convincing somebody that what they have just bought is not valuable anymore. I believe in a slow evolution and progression rather than a complete change.

CB: For me, it is a personal thing. I think I have a certain rigor to my vision, sometimes to my own detriment. Certainly with womenswear, I have been told that from a commercial angle there needs to be colour in there but if it were up to me, it would be a lot more limited. I tend to work with colours that I find beautiful which for menswear are navy blue, black, grey and certain shades of brown. That is already a lot of colour for me, so I don’t want to see a man in a red coat. It is interesting because Mediterranean men dress a lot more colourfully than European men in general. When you are in a Mediterranean climate, it works. When you see Dolce & Gabbana or Versace in an Italian context it actually works. You get on a plane in Milan dressed a certain way and halfway across the alps you start feeling a bit weird. Gold aviator sunglasses don’t work as well in London as they do in Milan.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR FAVOURITE BRANDS?

CB: I think Lanvin is beautiful, especially the menswear. I think he is just amazing and is really a designer’s designer. Other designers look to him and realise how beautiful the clothes are and how well constructed they are. I think Givenchy have been really clever at rebranding because that collection was so destroyed and it has been given a lot of kudos in a relatively short space of time. I used to really love Helmut Lang and I love Prada as a brand. Some key accessories from Vuitton are very beautiful. Even with designers I don’t really like, I can still appreciate how difficult it is. I would never speak badly of another designer. Also, I am not a devotee of one brand, and I think that is shows a degree of laziness and lack of confidence when somebody is dressed head to toe in Chanel. I don’t think that is interesting and it is certainly not an English way of doing things. I think that is one of the strengths of the UK as a fashion entity is that people mix and match. A slavish devotion to one brand is not commendable at all.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR OWN PERSONAL STYLE?

CB: I tend to not go for a very wide wardrobe, so I go for narrow things that I really like. I pick and choose but working in the industry I am a nightmare shopper. When I go into a shop, I am turning clothes inside out, looking at the fit, seams, finish, where it has been made etc. I can even price a garment, so I know how much markup they are making. So when people go shopping with me, it can be a blessing and a curse because I can tell them whether something is real value for money or whether they are getting ripped off. I am a very hard consumer. It is very difficult for me to spend money on clothes because I know what it costs to make and what kind of work went into it. I wear my own stuff, but when I do spend, it’s on accessories and bags.

WHAT IS FASHIONABLE THIS WINTER FOR MEN?

CB: I still see quite a narrow silhouette, it’s the newest looking thing. I think an investment on fabric and good trims as well as on cut. Cut is absolutely crucial. A nice slender silhouette always looks good. I think we are still working towards the ideal male silhouette.

WHAT DO YOU HATE IN MENSWEAR?

CB: I hate cheaply made menswear. High street mass chains that do Autumn/Winter menswear in particular. Mass chains’ tailored clothing I tend to like more, because it's something you can’t duplicate. To do a beautiful coat or a beautiful suit, you have to spend money because you can’t sell that for £40. I think rolling your trousers up and having very long shoes does not work on anyone and very lop sided cuts only work on some men. I really don’t want to criticise because I think anybody that makes an effort deserves recognition. From a professional perspective, I hate mass chains doing tailored clothing. They do such a shoddy job but they can’t help it because they are doing it so cheaply, which is not a nice thing to see.

WHAT DO YOU PREDICT FOR THE FUTURE OF MENSWEAR?

CB: This is something I talk about a lot with people who work in the industry. You have to consider that fashion is all hand labour and is not done by machines or computers, it is done by people sewing. What worries me for the future is the fact that we won’t have really skilled artisans. Italy, and to a lesser degree, France are the only two countries that are maintaining an artisan tradition with young people going in and really learning how to make shoes, bags, belts etc. on an exquisite level. It is a dying art, just as couture is a dying art. I worry for the future because everything we are wearing has been stitched together by somebody and I don’t know where these markets will be in a hundred years time and who will be sewing and assembling these clothes. I don’t know if the future lies in much less complicated clothes that are glued together or partly industrially assembled. The art of making clothes on every level is bound to decline because nobody anymore is born with the desire to be a sewer or is socially put into a position where they have to become a sewer. In terms of fabric, I see new things all the time. I see light reflective fabric, touch sensitive fabric, hybrid fabrics etc. As a designer, it is one of the few things that gets you excited. There are a few mills that do some very exciting things and they are the suppliers that a lot of designers flock to. Fabric wise, I think we are always going through a very interesting evolution, but what worries me is the commercial output of clothes. Things are just getting cheaper and cheaper and I don’t know where the future lies. It is quite a worrying thing when you start to think about it.