From fashion hungry Texan farmboy to the Paris Fashion Institute and now Central St. Martins in London, Levi Palmer is a fashion designer with talent and passion. Armed and ready to redefine menswear with an impressive CV and a collection that takes the cowboy into the 21st century, Levi Palmer is sure to ride us into a fresh sunset of innovation, exploration and pure style. The Montebury met with Levi at Central St. Martins to discuss fur, powerful women and his first love.

The Montebury: Where are you originally from? Were you a fashion convert at a young age?

Levi Palmer: Well, I grew up in a small town in Texas of about 5000 people, a small farming cattle community. Being gay, I was out at an early age and of course with that life, there is this pretense that fashion is involved, which when you get into the gay life, you realise that most gay men do not dress well. Anyway, so I was searching for fashion in a small town, but everyone's idea of fashion in Texas is WalMart so not having any other avenue for design, I started making clothes for myself and adjusting things.

Were your family supportive of you?

LP: Yes, my family have always been supportive. They thought that fashion was one of these childhood dreams that would never get anywhere because most of them had gone and bought some land and bred cattle and grew corn. But, I moved from Belton to Dallas when I was twenty and did a pattern-cutting degree there. I had a jewellery business for about two years and from there I always wanted to go into fashion, but jewellery was a lot more accessible. It was a smaller overhead and a higher markup, and didn't take much investment to get it started.

What was your first great love in fashion?

LP: The very first guy I dated, he was goth. That was in the mid 90s and he was very much into Gaultier, because Gaultier had a very S&M/Madonna thing going on at the time. So, everything was either Gaultier or was styled in that manner. I was this mixed up child wearing a mixture of big baggy jeans and Bob Marley t-shirts - it was actually quite tragic. He would dress me in his wardrobe because he could not be seen with me in my clothes, and so my first icon in fashion was Gaultier. Then I started learning about these fashion magazines such as The Face and I-D, which of course we had to drive two hours to the neighboring city of Austen to buy issues of. That was really my start.

You have had the opportunity to study all over the world?

LP: Yes, when I was studying in Dallas I entered a competition, called ‘Career Day'. I had won this competition amongst the design students that sent me to London to study. I was supposed to study at American Intercontinental University but I found out their programme was lacking in every aspect. So, I just got a work placement at Sandra Rhodes and I worked there for two months and then I went to study at the Paris Fashion Institute, which is sort of just a creative workshop. We had really good lecturers such as Christian Lacroix, Diane Pernet was a tutor of ours and Diane Pernet I still keep in contact with. She is such an inspirational fashion icon and when I went back to the States I actually ended up making some of her hair pins.

Where was your favourite place to study and why?

LP: Definately here at St. Martins - that is the most inspiring. It gives me the most thorough graft of what the industry is about. I think that when I was designing in Texas, I really pushed myself to be a lot more conceptual, just because there wasn't that there. At the same time, conceptual doesn't always mean valid, it just means that it is just out there, but nobody really likes it. It's not actual fashion because nobody is going to be seen wearing it. Here in London, you are faced with all of the underground scenes that are quite aggressive and in your face, so you don't necessarily do all of the wild and outrageous things, but you can take bits from here and there and mix it in with something that is more commerical, for lack of a better word.

Do you think London is leading the way in terms of fashion?

LP: I think it always has. It is never going to be a big scene, but I think it is something about the misery of England that makes people come up with these ways of escapism. I think escapism is the creativity that England has. The one big export you have, is your ideas. I do think it is a lot to do with the climate. Not that I dislike Milanese fashion or anything like that, but if you look at fashion from warmer climates, it is always about the body, not so much about the clothes. The body is great, but when you are here in the grey weather without the summer, you start to figure out clever, witty ways to make fashion fun.

Who in fashion is inspiring you at the moment?

LP: I like what Gianfranco Ferré is doing, I think the duo behind that is 6267. I really like what they are doing, really great inspirational shapes in menswear. I really love what Bruno Pieters is doing for Hugo, I think it is very true to the German aesthetic. Very Bauhaus, very aggressive, almost nightmarish in his most recent collection. Those are my two favourites at the moment.

What do you think about celebrities in the fashion world? Do you think that has been and gone or do you think celebrities are still very powerful?

LP: Unfortunately, I do think celebrities are powerful. They don't always have the best style sense, they just wear what their stylists tell them to wear and then take off what their publicists tell them to. I don't know how many advertisements I have seen in Vogue with Patrick Dempsey advertising, but I swear he is probably doing about two perfumes and five different brands. I can't even tell you what he is in and where he is from, but I recognise the face. Then of course there is David Beckham, who I think has been quite a leader especially in the wider genre of the male audience in fashion. Because of him, straight men in Essex will wear pink shirts whereas five years ago, it was something really taboo. He is really the only major icon, because the rest are just suited and booted. Celebrities are just moving with it, rather than pushing it.

Tell us more about the jewellery label you were running in Dallas?

LP: Well, when I had returned from Paris I was in this bout of depression for about three months simply because of the lack of the creative vibe and this wonderful culture surrounding me. America is only about two hundred years old and most cities are about fifty years old. In Dallas, everything is new build, everyone is new etc. I had finished my degree and returned with nothing to do. So, I took a jewellery class just to learn about the small metals. A constant inspiration for me was a woman named Jan Strimple. She was a supermodel in the eighties, walked for all of the major houses and had a mannequin made of her. She resides in Dallas now, is six foot tall and has glowing ginger hair. She has a kind of Marlene Dietrich sense of fashion about her. She always wears gigantic jewellery and I wanted to make the biggest piece in her wardrobe, just to have some sort of title to it. So I made her this gigantic sterling silver ring with a bunch of set feathers in it. She ended up wearing it to a store called Stanley Korshak which is one of America's top ten luxury boutiques. The buyer loved the ring and wanted to buy the line. It was one of those things where when a store with such a high reputation says they want to buy your line, you just make your line even if you were not intending that. I made a line and they bought it. When they bought it, other stores starting approaching because Stanley Korshak had it. Within six months, I was in eight luxury boutiques across America such as Fred Segal, Tootsies in Chicago, Georgia and Houston. I wasn't internationally known, but I wasn't losing money. I was making profit and I was getting some good publicity, Womenswear Daily did an article on me. It was good, except accessories were always the thing you put on after your clothing, and I didn't want to play second fiddle in the hierarchy of fashion.

So, you decided at a point just to leave?

LP: I always wanted to return to Europe after my taste of it, and the easiest way would be a student visa, and If I were to be a student again, the only place I would want to be was at St. Martins in London. Having a womenswear degree from El Centro, I thought I might as well do menswear. Also, it was based on the fact that I could not really find things that I wanted in men's fashion. So, I enrolled on the menswear course here and was accepted. I think I have developed, although it did take a while to get that conceptual drive out of me and try and embrace

Your most recent collection shows quite a bit of fur. You have completed some training with Saga Furs?

LP: Final collections within anyway pathway can be expensive and I think with menswear, it is all about details. It can't be too much adornment, menswear has to have a luxury factor about it. Around September I started approaching different companies that I knew sponsored students. I do want to work within the luxury market when I leave university, and I knew that with fur being a luxury fabrication, I wanted to work with Saga Furs. So, I approached them, had some interviews and was selected as one of three students to do the Saga Furs sponsorship. So, they flew us out to Denmark for a week where we stayed at their headquarters, just outside of Copenhagen and played around with fur, learning about the design techniques. It was a wonderful experience although quite surreal. Their headquarters are in this countryside manor where everything is covered in fur: fur rugs, headboards, bed covers etc. It felt like a storybook, because I was reading ‘The Beautiful Fall' by Alicia Drake at the time, which is a fabulous book. All of those things at the same time was quite surreal.

What is your own personal opinion on the use of fur?

LP: Well, I have never had a problem with it. I think growing up on a farm where I had to butcher chickens and help my grandfather make sausage, I was always used to this life and death scenario that happens, but where I just happened to be at the top of the food chain. With my designs, I have always tried to pull something inspired by nature into it, because it gives it an earthy feel and something you can relate to. In my jewellery, I always used to use horns, so with fur, it is the oldest fabrication really and it is a bit of luxury, but without luxury, what is there to aspire to in fashion? The animals are bred for that purpose, it's pretty much the same as meat to me.

What about fur in menswear?

LP: You are seeing tit-bits of it already, it has started creeping into collars. In the African communities, it is a status symbol, which I think is quite good. I think it will creep in but I don't think it will be at the same height as the thirties when college boys had their giant beaver fur coats to the ground and their plus fours. I do think it will make more of an impact, especially as it is accessorised, so being used more in the trims and especially in the collars. There is always this flamboyant factor to it and it is very difficult to design in. It is hard to not make it flamboyant and unapproachable, because it has to have a masculine aspect to it and if you take it out of black, grey or the natural browns, it's too flamboyant for a market. Although that is fantastic, I think that something is lost with that Savile Row mentality where you know the construction, luxury and quality behind it but there is a clientele out there that is dying to be a bit more of a peacock. I don't necessarily think it is the extreme right-hand side of the fashion arena, which is just the fashionistas that wear whatever fashion says, but there are men that do want to be more noticed than your standard man.

Why did you decide to study men's fashion design in particular?

LP: I think that without boundaries, you have no vision, and it is hard to focus. With menswear, you set boundaries, so if you are one of these people that thinks in every direction, it is quite comforting to have something that limits your possibilities, so that way you can focus more on creating something that is plausible to a market. It is more exciting when something is desirable to a consumer. A lot of womenswear designers can go astray because they think more about this wonderful vision in their head rather than about their actual consumer. I think menswear makes you focus on consumer. If you take trousers for example, men will never wear skirts. Trousers can be a bit mundane but you always have to draw trousers. You can only really change the length or the silhouette. Actually, one thing I really think is changing in menswear is suiting. Ten years ago a menswear designer would be all about suiting, not to say a man in a well-dressed suit is not wonderful, but I can't think of one person in my life that wears a suit on a daily basis or even necessarily a blazer. It is always mixed with sports wear or designer mix-and-match, but it is never a complete suit. The boundaries are expanding but I do think it will always go back to comfort and utility.

You spent quite a long time as an assistant at Jean Pierre Braganza - what did you learn from that and did it have an influence on your designs?

LP: When I first moved to London, Jean Pierre was a tutor of mine. I didn't want to waste time by not working and I wanted to start building a network of support in the fashion community. I admired what he did and I think his menswear has a fresh approach. Womenswear is so saturated with designers so it is hard to make an impact, and I admired Jean Pierre's silhouette in menswear. So I worked with him for almost three years off and on, in between classes, alongside class etc. We became good friends because he trusted my opinion and because I was honest with him, because in the fashion industry it is so hard to find someone who is honest with you and can be brutal with their honesty. It is those types of people

You were an assistant designer and consultant for Zandra Rhodes. The designs are quite quirky - was it your type of thing?

LP: I do think I learnt a lot about pattern cutting at Zandra Rhodes, because she has a really interesting way of letting the prints design dictate how the patterns cut. It really expands your mind to think about the new ways a pattern can be cut. While I was there, I did learn a lot from their head designer, who is quite phenomenal with the way he pushes people and he is very encouraging. He always wants you to strive for more, he always wants more options even if you have designed something that is perfect. Although, Zandra Rhodes is not my aesthetic. I admire her, her drive and what she stands for, but it is very pretty, very girly stuff. More so, I think I enjoyed the creativity and pattern cutting there.

You were assistant menswear designer for Robe di Kappa - have you attempted to incorporate any of that casual wear experience into your current designs?

LP: One of my design tutors here, Kevin Talen, was working as a design consultant for Robe di Kappa and he needed to bring in a design team, and I was one of the people he chose for menswear. I learned a lot about the commerical industry from that, because there was a team of four/five of us and we did a collection of 250 garments, overall designing over 2000 garments. It was nice to see how a collection like that was built. Robe di Kappa were trying to launch a high end range and they wanted the St. Martins name behind them. This was not the Vicky Pollard sort of Kappa, with the tracksuits etc. This was aspirational design with a sportswear mentality. We did three different designs that functioned in aesthetic sports such as yachting, golf and fencing.

Could there be more room for casual wear on the catwalks?

LP: It's a doubled edged sword with that one, there are good aspects and there are bad aspects. With menswear, I think it is always about the casual comfortable feel which is why some people like Rick Owens and his very cool t-shirts, (utterly simple and lots of impact) do so well. I do think we will see more on the runway but I don't think it is a good or bad thing, I think it depends on the type of designer and how they use it. Again, I saw a really beautifully tailored jacket by Rick Owens that from ten feet away looked like a slightly different, but traditional men's tailored jacket. When you got close-up, you realised that it was constructed in the same way as a t-shirt. I think he is a very aspirational designer as far as casual wear goes. You do see a lot of traditional sports wear mixed in, such as jersey on the bottom of suits which is the real obvious way to go, but Rick Owens is taking the non-obvious route, which is the future in casual wear.

What inspired your latest collection? Have you always been into the cowboy look?

LP: That was my homage to my upbringing. I also did my thesis on the reoccurring trend of western wear in fashion history, and I think I really understood a lot about why I wanted to do this. Growing up in Texas, the cowboy is America's fashion icon. This is a very hyper-masculine image, with this fraternity of men doing rugged things with their hands, working long hours that are excruciating. Growing up in that environment, this ultra-masculine image was something that was very foreign to me, so when I was there, I completely rejected it. On moving here, and with a bit of home sickness, I started to embrace it, but i had to figure out a way for it to work for me and my slightly effeminate sensibilities. I wanted to combine a softer feminine approach with some masculine attributes that doesn't scream macho. People buy black, and I most often wear black, but for the runway, don't do black because you can't see details. I wanted to choose a colour spectrum so I took loads of pictures of sunsets when I was last in Texas and based my colour way on the Texas sunsets. That gave me the pastel, dusky roses, aubergines and blues etc. From that I then did loads of research on things that inspired me. I started by looking at womenswear in the forties and eighties, and both of those decades go hand in hand because there is this powerful image in womenswear. I took that and fused it with a lot of western research and one of the things I always went back to was John Voight's ‘Midnight Cowboy', which is a cowboy satire that is very sexualized and homoerotic. I liked that whole sexual image and also liked the powerful women from the forties and eighties, so I wanted to combine the two. I think with my denim, I achieved that. I feel that a lot of my jackets have a softer drape to them and I am quite pleased with them.

What was the message that you wanted to convey?

LP: I design my collections thinking of some of my straight friends, thinking of separates and thinking ‘if I designed this, could they mix it into their wardrobe'? Menswear is all about styling, so I wanted to create a collection that anyone could wear and mix in with their own wardrobe. Of course you have some show pieces, because you need that, but for the most part, if you took any of the shirts and put it into any wardrobe, you could wear it. The fabrication of the trousers might make them unwearable by most men but if you did them in a grey or black, you could put them into any wardrobe.

What type of men are you targeting through your collections? Who would you like to see wearing your creations?

LP: In the end, it all goes back to me. Whilst I want to do things that please the consumer, I have to do things that please me and I have to do stuff that I feel I would wear. Because of that, it would be people like myself. I have a friend who is doing a work placement at Galliano and his personal style is cool, flamboyant but completely traditional menswear. I think he bases himself on Michael Jackson, which works for him. He is the type of man that I am designing for, someone who is not afraid to be a bit cool and a bit edgy. It screams that I should be a womenswear designer, because I would want people like Tilda Swinton to wear my clothes, women who style themselves in a very masculine manner. Grace Jones has always been an icon of mine, but I don't think we have found this balance of masculinity and femininity in a man yet. We have some style icons in menswear who are flamboyant, such as Jake Shears, which is why I would love to dress him and I wouldn't turn it down, but I do think he is just a bit too gay. I don't think that is a bad thing but it is something that is not

What do you think of the future of menswear? Something more traditional or more flamboyant?

LP: I think with youth, you follow the youth culture and how it has progressed. The baby boomer generation rebelled against their parents from the fifties and wore denim but now, the younger generation are starting to accept something that is a little more formal and requires a little more care in the way they present themselves. I don't think it will go all the way back to being straight-laced, clean and proper but I do think it is something you will see a lot more of. You see more men wearing shirts that require ironing and buttoning-up and you see cufflinks in youthful clubs, which I think is fantastic. Ten years ago, you would have just seen a baggy t-shirt and some horribly styled jeans, and they may have cared about their shoes.

What are your future ambitions? Will we see a return to jewellery or will you stay focused on menswear?

LP: I have had a few companies approach me for interviews so I will see what offers are laid down. I will be flying out to Milan and Paris to do interviews at some of the big houses there. I am open to all possibilities, but I would probably only do jewellery if it was within a very big house. I wouldn't mind doing accessories for Louis Vuitton or Marc Jacobs, but then again, that would be on the womenswear side. I do think it is always the garment side which is the most inspirational for me. It is the first thing you think of and gives the most impact.

What clothes/designers do you wear?

LP: [Laughs] I don't think anyone in the fashion industry spends money on clothes! I own a large quantity of Jean Pierre-Braganza, some given to me, some that I bought. Being a student, I don't like to spend anything more than £200 max on a single garment, and that is if I really like it. I have lately been wearing a lot of vintage Etro and Versace, because I am missing Summer and I want a lot of awful, naff tat to brighten up my days.

Photo credit to Cleon Manz, model credit to Pete Cairns and Jan Burchard at D1 models.