Kit Neale

0:38 So hello guys so a bit of a brief introduction my name is kitnil as said I started a fashion brand about two years ago I run it with my partner caspar who's probably sat at the room recording sound bites to play back to me later and take the piss out of me I was asked to come here and talk to you about how we incorporate our influences of british life and british humor into our playful animated graphic prints which I'm obviously wearing so there's gonna be a load of images that play throughout my presentation and while I'm talking they don't necessarily reference to what I'm talking about but hopefully if you guys all look if you don't know me don't know about what the brand is if you look at the lookbooks that you've got with you on your chairs that you're hopefully able to start to build a picture build the puzzle and the connections between what I absorb and how I translate this into what we do in the clothing.

1:38 So they're going to change about I think it's about 100 images and they change by every five seconds with me talking it's a lot taking but hopefully it'll work.

1:47 So I'm gonna go I grew up in london I grew up in southeast london on the borders of east dallas peckham I always say peckham because no one knows what east college is and these knowledge isn't really cool to say then at 14 my parents decided to take me out of london and move me to a really town on the south east coast of london called gospel no one's ever heard of it it's a small little navy town full of about 50 000 people when I moved there there's a bit of commotion going on as the then labour government wanted to put in a asylum center which housed about 400 single men and women coming from peckham into an environment where.

2:33 There was majority white community all in uproar that a load of asylum seekers that were described as swan eating terrorists I was completely baffled and all of a sudden I realized that my bubble was burst and my protection about what I knew about the world what I knew about england had all changed all of a sudden I started to see things see people in different lights I was getting chased home and having to get police escorts home because I would attend a protest march where the b b would be sort of blaring all about things I'll be like wow you're doing it shush turns out not to be a good idea to do that at the age of 14.

3:11 So I started to sort of see lots of different sides of what was around me. And I think at that age it's quite a crucial point because you start to sort of look into yourself and build your own identity so for me in that environment wanting to sort of bring my london back with me. And sort of looking at magazines like the face and id and being like wow they can dress like that I could dress like that so one week I would be like pretending that I was the third member of chris course wearing my jeans back to front and being all hip-hop and then the next time I'll be like wearing a skirt to my school prom or something ridiculous like that and five inch heels at the time I remember the pictures I thought I would be really unique and then I realized actually I was just being typically british because I think britain is full of eccentrics I think we have a history of it from the vikings through to anyone that dresses in the flamboyant way anything. That's celebratory if you look at sort of a lot of the images that you'll see they might be sort of from folk traditions and they might be morris dancers or my favorite which is rapid dancing where there's a load of guys dancing in a small little pub with a load of swords and then a drag queen would run all the way through bizarre but we sort of create this world where we're really. Actually quite creative and I find it quite fascinating how we are quite creative you look at like guys forks night and which I find bizarre because we're celebrating the murder and execution of a man but weird but hey but people are really creative imaginative on how they create their guy forks and there's a load of images somewhere in there off a load of guy forks that are stacked up ready to be burnt then there's the hen parties and the dudes lots of people.

5:10 Actually dismiss them I find them quite amazing and find them quite fascinating because they're so creative and flamboyant and I think they carry carry a lot of the character characteristics of being british there's our normal everyday lives such as my dad's allotment which was my first collection back in 2000 and I think 12 autumn 2012 which was about my dad's allotment and his fascination with elvis so we did a video where all the models were sort of doing karaoke too at the hound dog tune so it's you know there's this world of what we are as being british and I think for me I was like right how can I incorporate that and muddle it all up and put it into a brand the thing is though I started to realize that. Actually we dress for occasions and in our everyday life we don't really dress up you dress up to go out for an evening to do something sort of fabulous but you don't necessarily dress up to go to work I think it was charlie who mentioned earlier about why would you wear a suit you know. And I find that quite a funny sort of weird thing I mentioned drag I'm sorry I mentioned them statues and I find it weird how it's acceptable that a guy can sort of dress up in drag and on a head night and in his crowd it's a way it's all cool yet for another guy to dress up in drag and walk down the street past that same bunch of men it might not be so acceptable equally with men we're known to be wearing not much color and not much print yet I did an internship about four years ago now with ducky brown and one of the designers is british and always sort of said to me yet men can wear colour when they're in the football ground they could wear pink and orange and purple and green and be really elaborate and fancy dress and it's all acceptable in that surrounding so we sort of try and explore these and try and put these into everyday life because I actually think you know what you can just be like that in your normal day I'm not designing clothes to be well in a factory I'm not designing clothes that are going to be worn in a hospital to save the world I'm designing clothes for people to dress up and look fabulous in and essentially that's what it's about it's about creating a product that might not be for everyone and that's fine the eddie slimane guy is going to wear his slim black suit. And that's cool but there are certain people that can go you know what share my sensibilities and put it into something that it's a bit more colourful in print however as you probably sort of say there's the mention of humor at the very beginning and I think you have to bring that humor back into it because for a guy to wear perhaps a printed pair of jeans or a printed shirt if he's going to go into a pub environment that maybe he's not used to wearing a printed shirt or printed jeans in he's going to kind of sort of have a story with it and be able to share a joke with it so one of our prints the pekka riviera which was referenced from a one of those childhood maps you'd have as a kid and you sort of play all your cars on. And we sort of casper did a lot of work on creating it into like a peckham version with the chicken shop and the hair salons and it gives a bit of a story. And it sets a light-hearted humor that can be translated and sort of had a laugh about in the pub environment because if he was just wearing a flamboyant perhaps this shirt it might be a bit weird so we sort of try and bring print back into it we try and bring humor back into it we sort of try and put across these british sensibilities very british and there are the they are the the guys ready to be burned on the stake it fascinates me how all of these points and all of these sort of british bits and I know I might sound like a raving bnp by talking about how proud we are of being british but it's quite amazing that we are british because we are so unique we are these mixtures of these amazing cultures that have sort of congregated in a tiny little island I think that's what transcended to be in something so fascinating something so special we've got this such rich history of this migration coming in and leaving and going through it and bringing different cultures into the mix it's like a sort of mad cocktail of all these different points of references and these prints and these amazing textures and these amazing colors in these amazing stories and scenes that all sort of like amalgamate into one thing a lot of my favorite artists who have sort of been briefly sort of put into this gilbert and george grace and perry one of my big big favorites is jeremy della they all sort of explore a similar theme they all explore how what it means to be british how it is that we are british what the ideas are being britain and british is love that I think that's one of my favorite images from the opening ceremony which sort of sums up how weird and bonkers the british fashion industry is and sarah lucas and again you know it took you know I get sort of comments walking down the street still as this I think actually.

11:07 This is quite sane maybe I'm quite maybe I'm a bit weird and that is this is insane my grandma certainly thinks I am a bit bonkers and thinks I should be locked up but hey yet we are allowed to do all of this we're allowed to be so sort of flamboyant in everything from the way we protest and the way we express ourselves yet we can't be flamboyant or creative or crazy or just sort of how we want to be in the way we sort of dress as a normal day and I guess that's ultimately everything captured into one that we want to try and achieve and what we're doing as a brand hopefully what's been said and what you've seen and what you can see in your lookbooks and on our website and as a brand as we grow you'll kind of be able to hopefully make sense of it I'll leave that for you guys to work out