Becky Smith

0:38 Mmm buddy a bit a bit old school. And I did a printer because not very good with this stuff right okay.

0:44 So yeah I'm the founder editor-in-chief the creative director of twin magazine twin magazine is a fashion magazine and I guess at the beginning I always had a dream to have my own magazine because I had worked at lots of other magazines like vogue and Harper's Bazaar and 10 magazine and wallpaper magazine and after working for lots of people I wanted to work for myself I also did Lou the magazine and I kind of yeah.

1:13 I had a dream to have my own magazine so one that represented me a little bit more one that was kind of maybe tomboyish that has sort of masculine and feminine sides to it one that was open-minded to race gender and sexual sexuality one that had a slightly feminist theme but wasn't Ram Daniel throat and and it was kind of it was actually before all those are the magazines that came out like that as well like ones that I love and admire like gentlewoman and things like that.

1:47 So we kind of came out mid 2009 around the same times that it's nice that boys as well.

1:51 That's how I met them. And I gathered together a group of lovely like-minded women five women who is still with me to this day which is a really nice clothes group.

2:03 And we worked really well together. And this is what we did for the first issue I had this idea to do like a I don't know it's just kind of like a black moleskine sketchbook that was carrying around with ideas and I ended up making it look like a black mole skin I wanted it to be leather and expensive but couldn't really cuz I didnt advil what money so it looked quite nice but you know it was my handwriting on the front twin and you know the idea was to make it more of a book that was big and hard back that you wouldn't be able to throw away like all those magazines that you have it was a bit more traditional in design it had chapters like a proper book and yeah it was called twin because it was twinning of mines and people so when I did the first one I thought I was clever I thought was rebelling by not putting a picture of somebody on the front cover which was just a stupid idea because I had to put people on the cover to try and make it make some money and sell it.

3:05 So I thought was rebelling but I was being silly so then I changed my mind when I got to issue 5 did well to to last issue 5 when I got to issue 5 I thought I've got a better put somebody on the cover so Agnes being got put on the cover there the green one she wasn't a bad starter I suppose and I just kind of decided to make it look like a little Polaroid because I was a big fan of film not huge digital fans I still love the old school film. So it's a little Polaroid and then had the person's name scribbled into it again fan of handwriting but the main thing about having a magazine is you get work with amazing people you get to meet lots of amazing people so photography is my passion I'm I love photography and I've had the pleasure of working alongside lots of lovely but the photographer's people like boo George lachlan bailey Scott trindle been Weller Nick glory all these people of kind of worked with us from the beginning and they still work with us now five years down the line so it's really good to kind of develop these relationships with people and grow with these people also we have amazing models in the magazine which helps sell the magazine something that I had to realize a little bit more people like Agnes teen samra lips am rolling some Freya Bayer Erickson edita V Drake Burnett and kati nescher also you get to work with lots of amazing young talented people.

4:40 And so this is one thing that we do lots of time we sort of fright feature all these bright young things so no doubt lots of you in this room are going to be featured or will be featured at some point and just great hot young British talent really because there's so much of it around in London. And so it's great to work with these people people like Sean Frank who's a video director doing very well working with lots of big-name fashion brands at the moment PB Collins James his girlfriend as an artist and now a vogue darling our morale has another one Jessie kanda graphic designer like most others in the room are and Harriet in Polly who got a lovely Brown cauldron light Olympia Campbell to spur beating being beautiful Josh Bush just because he can ride a BMX ok. So clients clients I my day job as well as working in advertising with brands like Nike and commercial clients so the idea with this was to try and not be commercial again it doesn't always succeed and you end up having a plan and diverting it slightly and so I didn't want to put traditional advertising and that I wanted to do something a little bit different so again trying to be a bird at aunty advertising but ending up being a bit like advertising I try to do more of these subtle ads which I call n pages which is sort of the beginning double page bread and end double page spread which are essentially still paid for to an extent but they're kind of creating a lovely image rather than just the bog standard ads that you see in every other magazine some of the other clients that we work for a really big brands like louboutin which is great to work with them.

6:36 But it can be difficult sometimes but this shoot in particular was interesting I guess they come to twim' magazine because they want us to do something a little bit different I guess we wouldn't do something that they'd maybe do and say vogue magazine so this is a photographer called Cole Anderson and he's from California originally and we talked about this louboutin collection in the Louboutin collection.

7:00 There was lots of this check which we know we discussed about he was like oh it's like you're British ambulance on the side you know that the color pattern so that right. So let's do the shoot where she's kind of dead and been shot and looks like she's been run over and I get a phone call from louboutin saying Becky we've got a bit of a problem with the shoot we don't think we like it she looks a bit stoned off her face as a bit like that's a bit awkward for what do you do I managed to convince them it was brilliant it was genius and that when they come to us.

7:36 This is what they get and yeah they looked it in the end they went went with it. And I got a nice little louboutin handbag out of it.

7:44 So I was happy so yeah we look we love to shoot that yeah actually. There was two to that I ended up taking out they did persist and it was warm where it looked like she was doing a we on the floor or something it was maybe pushing it a bit too far but it's great that we can kind of do things like this with big brands like that which leads me to being playful with things which getting ahead of myself so in a conflict paper fast enough and which leads me to playfulness which we did this to which I guess was inspired by this image which is a real street style picture of somebody who I thought was genius you know they couldn't afford a Chanel bag so they made one out of paper and I just thought it was so really cool so we did a whole sheet based on it and Harry malt completely replicated these big very expensive designer handbags of just basic Brown old you know bog standard paper which was quite nice and we kind of put little notice as long as if it was kind of high-end or under the person that we've collaborated with is being Gary card and at the time it was kind of all that phenomenon on YouTube with those kind of sloths kind of like just kind of mooching around not doing much so he made some out of plasticine and which was genius and had lots of little cute faces that look like et we gave them silly names like Duncan and Bernard and we put lots of very expensive high-end jewelry with them from Tiffany and etc which cost a fortune and it was quite hard selling that one on as well to the to the brands and and another one that we did was illustrations of the big fashion people you know people like Karl Lagerfeld Lagerfeld we did kind of like a metamorphosis of them turning into their product and I had a meeting with burberry at the time and showed them this and they talked to me about his hairdo for about half an hour they said it wasn't spiky anymore and it was a little bit more calm down and they sent me five or six pictures thinking that I would change it I just ignored them. And so yeah we kind of did that which was quite fun another thing that we do in the magazine is we feature sorry ketchup lots of amazing women old and young and in the issue that's currently out at the moment and we've kind of just looked back and kind of just remembered who those women are because five years has gone by very quickly so the first issue we had a Freya Bay Erickson who's one of the biggest like top five models in the world which was pretty good start.

10:32 And we've also had the Velveteen who's one of Hedi Slimane's favorites she was a good guitarist in the band called the splits back in the day she's very cool and then we've also had Marsha row who did the original feminist magazine called sparerib gia Coppola Kate tempest who's an amazing young kind of poet spoken word artist who did an amazing event for us with Nike and she could have just made up these words on the spot with an orchestra there she's kind of something that I created with her which was amazing and mind-blowing at the time and great women who are knocking on a bit now sue davis 81 who started the photographers gallery and Kathleen Hanna from the original original Wyatt girls I'm going to fastener Grimes just a cool musician and cush jumbo who did the all female version of Julius Caesar Cynthia McAdams a photographer again older but photographed all the big names from back in the day so we could have sometimes hunt down these people we don't know where they are we've heard about them we've read a little something about them. And we find them. And we feature them and hopefully get them to do something with us. And so this leads me to a collaboration that Danielle Levitt is a photographer that I've worked with quite a few times in the past we brainstorm some ideas and we talked about doing a modern-day Paris is burning and so I think I've got a little trailer here of something that we discussed doing with them which I'll try and play it so you could do it alone and it's all cool too but when you're with the homies and you're all and like an effect like you're all given the visuals it's just like it's like that no one can with you every time I come to New York and I walk through our lum like I get the most love of anywhere I've ever been they recognize real recognize real when me and Mel were young kids missing we were like the ratchet kid that nobody wanted around it was just me and him yeah just me and her against like the world I'm gonna talk about OC and I'm not gonna and people like us I think we ratchet if they think we're cool I don't give a so yeah that was a little clip that the actual film that she produced was much longer and very interesting and the great thing about Danielle is how she really gets into the skin of these people and gets to know them and you know becomes best best friends with them but you know we discussed this and obviously Paris is burning is one of both of our favorite films but instead of New York City ballroom which Paris is burning as well we decided to go to the streets of Harlem and kind of find these people some of them have gone on to become quite famous people there's a girl and they're called Brooke candy who's now sort of been in all the diesel campaigns with nicola formichetti and they just came out with great quotes and here which are quite fun really and the rest of the shoot if I can get to it it going to keep going and then a temporary bushnell slingback so forever happiness is money and weed I believe in aliens bad girls club cure and myself I have no idea who cures but it's good quote and the last one I thought was pretty good as this generation is but I'm having mad fun and that's it really so and we're on all the social media bit so please follow us or look us up thank you very much