‘Fashion's About Selling Dreams'

His fashion moment is seemingly unending – and for very good reason. Here, Jonathan Anderson talks broken Britain, cult bags and why he refuses to work with ‘yes’ people…

“I never went into this industry to be mediocre – that would just be depressing. I went into this industry to be the best,” says Jonathan Anderson. He admits it’s not very ‘British’ to say this and acknowledges it could be perceived as arrogant, but this is his focus and ultimately what drives him. “It’s like running a marathon; you don’t enter the race if you don’t want to come first. I do see fashion like that; it is about winning. I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, but if you want to do good collections and you want to make a successful business, then you have to be out to win.”

I first met Jonathan at the beginning of his race, when he worked out of a windowless studio on Shacklewell Lane in Dalston, East London, and lived close by in a flat above a computer-game shop, furnished with chairs he’d picked out of a skip. Back then, he had a team of four, fitted his designs on a boy, and his debut A/W ’11 womenswear collection, with its hairy hiking boots and silk paisley kilts over matching trousers (inspired by Granny Anderson’s penchant for wearing aprons over trackie bottoms), had been received with rave reviews. We went for lunch and he told me that he worked 24/7 – including Christmas Day. Then in his twenties, he was all lanky limbs with floppy sandy hair and a milky County Derry complexion. Initially, he’d set out wanting to become an actor and trained at the Studio Theatre in Washington DC, but decided acting wasn’t for him and had moved back to Dublin, picking up work in the department store Brown Thomas.