To kick off 2012 I’m doing a series of Studio Visits, meeting established and up-and-coming designers. Starting things off in style, I met up with with London duo Teatum Jones who were recently picked up by Liberty and will be coming into their fourth season.
Catherine Teatum and Rob Jones take a wonderfully meticulous approach to their work, everything from the drinks served at their presentations to detailing on clothes is infused with their conceptual vision and it was a real treat to be given some insight into their creative world.
To help you get into the Teatum Jones world I’ve pasted the beautiful podcast from their SS12 presentation, just press play and we can begin…
How do you approach each season’s theme?
Catherine: Rob will start to develop the playlist, it’s the score to the film, the show, the story we tell. It’s a very filmic approach. I’ll write a treatment and do a semi-script of who the woman is, that is the concept.
Rob: We have a conversation, we start talking about, like last season was about 1950s women and being repressed. That was a turning point which led us to Revolutionary Road, the Richard Yates’ book and then we obviously watched the film. That was the initial starting point, then I started to find all this doo-wop music that had this rock n roll, uplifting feel to it but when I started looking at the lyrics of the songs they were really melancholy. Because they were sung in a very 50s candyfloss kind of way when we played it to friends they said ‘oh it reminds me of jukeboxes and diners’ then when we showed them the lyrics they would say ‘that’s really heartwrenching’.
C: I think that’s something that’s almost a signature to what we do. Our signature approach to design to the collection and to the brand, we often deal with subjects that may on face value be uncomfortable and it may look dark but we always represent it in a polished way.
C: The criteria is that it has to be chic, it has to be grab-able, desireable, it has to be wonderful, but if you want to buy into the story there’s so much concept behind it. We can go on for days talking to people about the Revolutionary Road and that side of it, but what we’re also understanding is that that woman wants a stunning dress, she wants that dress to be on it’s own credits.
R: We try to start with this concept and story but in the fittings and toile-ing stage things really move on. You can have these ideas and you go there, but once it’s in 3D we start to pull back and refine things.
C: Everything has to filtrate into every piece, that’s daywear, show pieces, the more selling pieces.
R: For us it’s a subtlety thing, we quite like to be cryptic. The Autumn Winter print from last year was kind of like a floral, a powerful print but it was warheads. If you want to see it from a distance and you want to buy it because you like the colour, that’s great for us. If you’re interested in the story it’s there as well. What we’ve found is that so many people do ask…
C: People have said ‘I really love it, but there’s something there’, they didn’t know and it’s great for them to get that sense of something else.
R: When someone questions something, like ‘why is that pocket just out of reach of my hand?’ There’s two sides to it, when the fitting girl her fingers were in it and she was playing with it but then also the reason was that it’s a mens’ style jacket and things being just out of reach.
What sort of work goes into your presentations?
C: We spent half a day deciding the gels and the lighting, to get the right atmosphere. It had to be a hazy afternoon, it couldn’t be a cold morning light, we had to source the correct gel colour, and things like that are equally important.
R: Even thought the collection was ready a month before, we spent a month with our music guy and getting the cocktail right. It wasn’t just a cocktail, we searched and got Justin Bowles a top mixologist, we were thinking ‘how do we go about recreating that period?’
C: It was strong!
R: To blur out what they were going through you could be a socially acceptable alcoholic, not drunk, but this I’m not happy in this lifestyle.
C: That being such a glamourised thing but it was really sad, they were really depressed. It is still glamourised, there is something twisted in that how we still do that. We very much love the idea that that woman, whatever she was going through at that time, if she was having an argument with her husband, if she was baking, she would kind of look in the mirror and coif herself. It suited the print and the whole feel of the presentation. We wanted everything to have this serene, glazed feeling.
Your clothes aren’t completely concept-driven though, there’s also obvious craftsmanship
C: We make with the same people who make for Victoria Beckham and Roland Mouret, our tailoring is made by the same people as Hardy Amies, it’s old school Savile Row. We’ve got such a passion that finishing and detailing and it’s the luxury level inside of garments, little details.
R: When we were doing menswear for so long, we said to her our tailored pieces are quite masculine, with menswear you always get such amazing finishing details, you have this tiny stitch that protects a vent, you wouldn’t even notice but it’s those things that men notice.
C: They give us as much knowledge as we give them, it’s a joy to go and sit with them. Last week we brought them all the new stuff and took them through everything and within that meeting we came up with different ways of finishing things because they’re coming to you with god knows how many decades of doing traditional Savile Row tailoring, it’s brilliant. It gives us that balance of telling a story but respecting the craft and having the vision to want to create collections that will be able to hang on a hanger and be stunning pieces of clothing.
Do you get drawn into these worlds you’ve created each season?
C: We would be really good method actors! For AW11 we were looking at the WWI era, there were these two women in particular and their experiences of working on the frotnline and the only clothing that was available to them was menswear because they didn’t really produce military wear for women. They had to wear the mens’ military clothes, the oversized coats, wearing them with long leather belts. I was wearing at that time something similar and Kate our stylist said ‘you’re doing the look, without even realising it you’re picking it up’.
Would you say that you are both daydreamers or like to inhabit an imaginary world?
C: I would say so but we are also realists, we’re practical people. If we were too much that [daydreamers] we would get lost in it. We’re very organised, we keep everything on time, because you can have all these dreams and stories but if you’re not organised with it, it’s not going to happen. The only shame, the only thing I feel is frustrating — and I may as well get over it because it’s only going to get worse — is the time. If we could have, just even an extra 3-4 weeks to…
R: finish one thing and go on to the next
C: almost remove yourself, just remove yourself from situation, gain perspective of what you’ve achieved that season and think about the next one. You feel a anticlimax after you’ve presented the collection and I’m sure every designer would say that. You need just to shake up and move on to next one but you’re still dealing with the last one because you have to produce the orders.
R: You can’t actually let it go, it is like an ex thing you can’t say goodbye to it, even though it’s not part of your world anymore it’s still there hanging around. When you let go of it, you let go of the creativity but you are managing and keeping control of it.
You met at John Richmond in Italy, what brought you together?
R: I think sometimes in those companies where there a lot of people working, the pressure comes down and everyone’s running around and completely stressed. We always laughed through it, sometimes we would annoy people! I think they were sometimes like ‘why aren’t you stressed?’ and they would even throw more stuff at us.
Why London?
R: We both tried the menswear thing, but there was that desire to get back to womenswear properly and to the level and detail that we wanted it to be.
C: Staying very true to our own aesthetic and we either go — and really we’d have to move to Paris — or we do our own thing.
R: We both have quite big families with kids, and it’s amazing what you miss in a year and also because we love London.
C: London’s where we’re both from, I’m from West London and Rob is from South London.
R: We took lots of work on and we just saved, for about a year and a half. Lived off nothing, saved everything, enough to get a studio.
Teatum Jones are showing at London Fashion Week in February
