You go into the city for a book or DVD, and you come home with a completely unnecessary but very beautiful piece of clothing. Sounds familiar? When I headed to the All Saints store on Heiligeweg yesterday afternoon to creative director interview Will Beedle, it could hardly go any other way than wrong. Especially when it turned out that Will is not only damn good at his job (the collection is highly desirable), but that he is also an incredibly nice and infectious man.
Today there are no battery of critical PR staff listening in, Will and I are comfortably sitting together on a pouf without extra ears. And that immediately says a lot about the brand. Will describes All Saints as “an effortless unstudied cool, a uniform without uniformity.” And the store, with large untreated rough walls and an industrial look, completely endorses that.
Will describes All Saints as “an effortless unstudied cool, a uniform without uniformity.”
What is on your mind while designing?
“The wardrobe I create must be suitable for you to ride a bike, go to a business meeting, meet your mother-in-law, and see your accountant. In short, it must be versatile and universal. The people who wear our clothes feel good in those clothes wherever they are, without approval from their surroundings. That approval comes from within themselves. That effect is what I always try to achieve during the design process.”
When you say All Saints, you say biker jacket. How is it that you manage to make such perfect leather jackets?
“There are a lot of factors that contribute to that, but they all add up to: attitude. That is the secret ingredient. The most important thing about a leather jacket is that you feel cool in it, and that makes it such a great piece of clothing, it delivers instant rock ’n roll in. Ours are just cool, and that’s exactly how you feel when you put it on.‘
“you know I just really really love my job.”
Do you personally ever suffer from the I-have-nothing-to-wear syndrome?
“Not really, because I always wear the same thing for a period. Sometimes that’s a week, or a month, it can also be a year, and then I literally pull the same thing out of the closet every morning. Not that I go through life unwashed, I have 100 copies of exactly the same piece of clothing. And sometimes something happens, something completely random, and then I decide to wear something radically different, until that lasts again.”
Why is your job so fun?
“Look, fashion is about understanding visual codes, and organizing those codes in a way that they form a collection. That’s what makes it so fun, those codes mean something different every time, a leather jacket has been around for generations and each time in a new way.”
Will is now almost bouncing off the couch with enthusiasm, “you know I just really really love my job.” And you can tell. After we say goodbye, I quickly peek between the racks of leather jackets, and thank goodness I manage to control my impulses, but the chance is high that I will give in soon. Maybe while shopping for a book. Or DVD. You never know.
