British FOOTWORK

Vogue Singapore's editor-in-chief Desmond Lim speaks to Martine Rose about her upcoming collaboration with Clarks during an intimate preview of the new release at London Fashion Week.

- NICHOLAS SEE, DESMOND LIM

Since the inception of her eponymous brand in 2007, British-Jamaican fashion designer Martine Rose has always referenced her lived experiences in the UK. Having grown up in Croydon, Rose spent much of her adolescence in the company of her grandparents, who migrated from Jamaica in the '50s.

London is a fashion zeitgeist full of buzzy, young designers, most of whom eventually disappear from the scene. What, then, gives Rose such longevity in a landscape obsessed with newness? From music subcultures to the sartorial leanings of her Jamaican family, she has merged her diasporic culture with London's melting pot of different tribes and archetypes.

She displays this essence by using familiar style codes and adding twists to silhouettes, proportions and prints. Fans of Rose's work attach themselves to her intimate and creative recounting of reality, celebrating the beauty in the mundane.

Her brand's cult status garnered attention from others in the industry. From 2016 to 2018, Rose was hired by Demna to be a consultant on Balenciaga's menswear, effectively forming a sartorial code for the house that is still seen today. Most recently, she was crowned best British menswear designer by the British Fashion Council at the 2023 Fashion Awards.

While Rose focuses on menswear, women are frequently seen on the runways of her shows. Besides a polished and thoughtfully restrained streetwear sensibility, her designs carry a sense of powerful androgyny. Women who wear Martine Rose feel strength by donning Rose's exemplified versions of traditionally masculine wear because it subverts the notion that such normative forms of masculinity should not be touched or altered.