2021 Archive: An Interview with Adam Jones

Below is the interview I conducted with Welsh upcycling designer Adam Jones. You can browse the website and social media using the buttons below. I really enjoyed doing this interview and was a great insight to the person behind the eye catching and highly innovative designs.

Interview in full below:

MJ: To start off, what would you say is the worst thing in fashion right now?

AJ:  Aw god that’s a hard one, there’s so many things, I don’t even know that answer to the first question, the worst thing regarding sustainability?

MJ: Yeah, anything really you know, there’s so much!

AJ:  I kind of, more than the sustainability side, hate the way it’s run by the British fashion council and fashion week. The way that it’s perceived that you have to be a part of official London fashion week, you have to be a new gen and fashion, part of the system kind of thing, you have to be in certain shops, you have to be in Dover Street Market, you have to be a brand.

I think British fashion council is still kind of run by an older generation that are not aware that things have changed they still have unless you don’t have certain things then you can’t have your official schedule and like all these really old-fashioned rules that still exist unless you pay, so it’s kind of they kind of say they support you but they don’t unless you give them money or you are already quite established. It’s still quite difficult to get into.

It’s very strange. I think the youngsters don’t mind doing it the wrong way. But I’m kind of a bit old fashioned kind of older, and I started my business and grew up thinking that that’s what you have to do so it’s disappearing a bit later in my mind that I do have to do that.

MJ: I find it really interesting, like the way you design I’ve like, never, ever seen it before. And I was just wondering, like, what made you start designing like, the way you do?

AJ: I think, being back in Uni, I mean, it was, you know, we went on, like school trips from 

Manchester to London to buy your fabric, that’s just what you did and that’s what everyone was doing, and you went in big groups and in the same shops buying the same thing, You know, spending a lot of money on these fancy, you know, expensive fabrics and it wasn’t exciting, if I make a shirt out of this beautiful fabric aesthetically it’s probably gonna look nice, yeah just kind of looking for looking for alternative materials that other people weren’t looking at and didn’t see.

Yeah just kind of looking around, I was just always painting on fabrics, dust blankets. blankets and things laying around. I just started playing with them. And I just thought, okay, yeah nobody else is making anything out of these. So that’s how it started and i’ve just always kind of worked that way since.

MJ: I mean, a bit of a loaded question, again, what do you think it would take to for 

sustainability to become more of an issue for the general population? Because you know, if you do fashion if you are involved in fashion, you’re very aware of what’s going on but like, what do you think the general population need to take sustainability a bit more serious?

AJ: Yeah, it’s so difficult because people don’t have the money to buy sustainably because it is more expensive. It’s really tough because, you know, some people do need to shop in Primark and ASOS, you know, to dress themselves and their kids. It’s really hard. It’s kind of I think, I don’t know if there is a rule where you have to manufacture in your own country, or something you know if kids were taught to sew again in school.

It’s hard because you want to work out terrible working conditions abroad and if some of these factories stop producing that will take away any income they will get in anyway and these countries rely a lot on this manufacturing income. So it’s a tough one, yeah, maybe bring back teaching kids solely from primary school just so people are aware of the work that goes into it.

MJ: What do you think the future of fashion is like, next five years?

 AJ: I mean it changes, it’s like an old-fashioned industry that changes very slowly. I don’t think there’ll be any big changes in the next five years. Like, fashion is one of the only industries that isn’t really regulated by the government. Dealing with like, what is it the second biggest employer base income? Biggest money generator in the UK after cars, I think.

The car industry is so regulated where now you know it has to be electric cars, they put up all these charging stations. You know like the government seems to be they’re like, behind the sustainability of cars, but they’re not interested in sustainability in fashion. It could be like you know this generation of kids where it’s like the latest fit and it’s like, these 

You Tube Kids where they just buy things from ASOS and it’s so easy to return them. Maybe there should be regulations on that like when you can only have so many returns a month or maybe you can only spend so much every month, I don’t know just some kind of regulation like that. The return thing is pretty bad, you can just drop it at your local shop it’s just become too easy. 

MJ: How hard was it for someone like you from a small town in North Wales to get into the fashion industry?

AJ:  Very hard, I guess. Graduated in 2013 did my first show in 2016, I guess it stems from when you’re a kid like doing textiles in school wasn’t a thing so I didn’t even take textiles in school because it just wasn’t the thing for young guys in Wales to do, College I wasn’t going to do fashion and in the last minute decided no, I’m gonna do it.

I think growing up in a place like that it’s yeah,it’s I don’t know maybe it’s in your mind or maybe it’s changed now because I was embarrassed to buy like Vogue in the corner shop, but it was like all these negative connotations of having an interest in clothes or the way you look.

Yeah , well where I’m from it just seemed weird And yeah, I guess it has been difficult 

because fashion is very like London centric and when you graduate, you don’t get much attention if you’re not in one of the London schools. 

You just had to work hard and persevere which I have done. Sometimes I think maybe it’s all in my head and I’m just holding myself back or did because of where I grew up and the way it was. Things have become a lot easier now like, I wouldn’t have social media back then. You know, I wasn’t on Instagram so it’s become a lot easier. Hopefully, there’s young guys from Wrexham now trying to do something.

MJ: if you were to do a collaboration with any brand at all, what brand would you want to collaborate with?

AJ: Probably like want to do one of the classics like Dr. Martens or Levi’s or 

maybe like a homeware company.

MJ: As a fellow Welshman I completely relate to your love of pubs, because they are normally the centre of a community so I would like to know what about the pub inspires you the most?

AJ:  It’s just a place I spend a lot of time and was one right opposite the studio, I didn’t drink until I was 18, I was a good boy and then as soon as I discovered the pub I just became obsessed and made up for lost time.  It’s somewhere I'd just go to sit and think and then that's where I get my ideas when I wasn't doing anything. 

So yeah, that place was obviously gonna inspire me. Yeah, I think it’s a place when your Welsh it’s a place where you grow up like every kid's birthday is in some function room in a pub and every Christening, you know. And they're all kind of stuck in the 70s and you're always surrounded by that kind of colours and patterns. 

You know, when you look at photos of you as a kid, it's like you're always in some kind of brown wooden room in some pub and just kind of sticks with you.

MJ: As a fellow Welsh creative it has been really inspiring to see you, from Wrexham, to continuously grow and just wondering how has the last year been for you with the pandemic and everything?

AJ: I mean, it's been the best year ever, to be honest. I know, it's weird to say that. I was always working full time and this has been an expensive hobby side project. Whereas, you know, being furloughed has just allowed me to get like, free money I just had every day to work on what

I want to do so it's been a blessing in disguise to me. Yeah, like, rather than when I did my last show, it was kind of just working on it in the evenings on the weekends and trying to book a day off work to be able to do my show at fashion week, a lot of hard work, whereas this time it was you know,

I had so much time to prepare and since the show in September, it's really taken off because now I got time to make stock and i’ve been in a studio this year. So yeah, best year ever really.

ME: What do you see the future of your brand being like in terms of like, do you want to scale up? Do you want to continue doing getting in certain stores, or that type of thing?

AJ:  It’s weird like I’m kind of at that section now where like I am getting a bit overwhelmed by orders and I've always wanted to make them myself because I really enjoy making them and most designers don’t make their own things which is crazy so sometimes, I think of myself like a maker like an artist because actually make it and I love doing that.

But it’s starting to get to the point where I feel like I'm gonna have to start outsourcing something. I want to do knitwear, maybe I will get someone freelance to help me do a bit of this and a bit of that, so that the business can grow but not too much I still want to be in control of it. I never want to do more than one show a year I think that’s enough.

ME: I have always been curious about this, how do you get like, all of your stock? Like the beer towels, etc?

AJ: It’s been hard, mostly it comes from boot sales, junk shops and markets. Going to certain markets, one on a Monday one on a Thursday, one on a Wednesday and Saturday. It’s going to all these different places every week.

I usually do like a big trip back home to Wales and go around all the shops there. Yeah, and then it’s usually like I find something I like at one of these places and then searching on Gumtree, Facebook and eBay like every day I will check. I don’t really want them to be one-offs, some of them are many because so it's kind of a have to collect these materials in certain quantities before I put it into a collection.

So, I know I can sell a few of them. And so that kind of kind of decides what the clothes gonna look like, depending on how much of a certain thing I can find. If I have collected 3 of the same tea towel that can’t go into the collection now because that’s not enough, maybe it will be in it in the next two years. I kind of just work like that. Which is really exciting. You never know where you can find what you can make.

I would like to thank Adam Jones for giving me the opportunity to interview him and for taking time out of his very busy day to talk to me which at the time was a 3rd year uni student trying to make something great.