Lessons We Learned From Gareth Pugh at Dazed Fashion Forum

This weekend was the inaugral edition of Dazed Fashion Forum; an opportunity for young creatives to come together and listen to the advice of some of the industry's greats at Amazon's new Fashion Studios. From Nicola Formichetti talking to Isabella Burley and Alexander Fury in conversation with Zowie Broach, to Frederic Sanchez discussing his illustrious career with Tim Noakes, there were plenty of phenomenal soundbytes from the day. Here, we look back at some of the lessons we learnt from the conversation between long-term collaborators designer Gareth Pugh, AnOther Magazine fashion director Katie Shillingford and filmmaker Ruth Hogben...

1. Gareth Pugh's route to fashion was via the BBC Clothes Show...
Gareth Pugh: "I grew up in Sunderland, and it was kind of a prosaic reference that got me into fashion... On a Sunday afternoon, just before the Antiques Roadshow and just after my Sunday dinner, the Clothes Show with Caryn Franklin and Jeff Banks would be on TV. I recently found a really old episode on YouTube, and it was very hit-and-miss. They had a whole section of an episode on fleece. But it was a really interesting look into this whole other world that I didn’t know existed. And I guess the fact that I couldn’t really touch it or connect to it where I lived, made it more of a fantasy that I wanted to be a part of. So, I owe great debt to Jeff Banks and Caryn Franklin."

2. Katie Shillingford can turn a squat's locker room into a Margiela palace...
Gareth Pugh: "When you get a place at Central St Martins, they send you a page of the various halls of residence that the London institute has, and we obviously ticked the cheapest one, and it was in Tooting Broadway. I was there with a lot of Camberwell students, so I knew a lot of students that were on Katie’s course. Matthew Stone was there, and that’s how I met Katie – she came back one evening, quite late, and I was there with a cup of tea in my dressing gown with a cigarette. I was asked to do my first show with Fashion East very late on – it was only four weeks before the show, and I didn’t have anything prepared, no work space or anything. Matthew Stone had actually just had this huge squat in Peckham and I worked out of the gym space there. And Katie had made a bedroom in the boy’s locker rooms.

Katie Shillingford: "It sounds disgusting but it was actually very clean. It was bleached and painted white. It looked like a Margiela show room, actually."

3. Ruth Hogben isn't afraid to make Gareth laugh...
Ruth Hogben: "Because we’ve worked together for so long, all three of us get along so well creatively, I feel like there’s no inhibitions with our ideas. I don’t mind showing Gareth my mistakes on the computer. I don’t mind if I’ve made a mistake and if he laughs. I don’t mind showing because sometimes I get it right... It’s so boring if it’s just your own ideas. It’s not very exciting if you’re just on your own. Being able to collaborate and just push ideas forward is just really the most exciting thing about my job."

4. Katie learnt to eat and sleep fashion from Nicola Formichetti...
Katie Shillingford: "Assisting Nicola was completely amazing. I think that Gareth put me forward without even asking me. I remember turning up at Nicola’s house and I didn’t really know what a stylist was if I’m honest. That sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t really know. He said, 'can you start on Monday', and I was completely thrown in at the deep end. It was amazing. I didn't really understand how a job could be your life like that. Not in a negative way, but in a really positive way. You eat, sleep, and everything just becomes your work because you’re so passionate about it. It was amazing to learn from someone who was so optimistic and creative and fun. It was the complete opposite from of all the things that I had seen from my experience at St Martins when I met all the people that had wanted to do fashion. I was hooked from then."

5. Michele Lamy is Gareth's Fairy Godmother...
Gareth Pugh: "From my first show, Michelle was always very intrigued; helped me out with some money here and there, came to the shows... we started a business together, really. She always pushed me into things I didn’t think that I wanted to do. She’s got a huge amount of experience and she’s incredible. She’s a bit like my life coach. She's very intuitive. She always said that she’s like my fairy godmother. The most amazing advice that she gave me a couple of years ago was, don’t think like a poor person. Because regardless of what you actually have in your hands – tangible assets, money to do a show or whatever – it’s your ideas that are worth the money. So she said to me, ‘you’re rich’. She comes out with these one-liners. She should write a book."