On the eve of his Spring/Summer 2013 event, Jimmy D’s designer James Dobson talks about the evolution of his label and his new collection…
James Dobson
(photo: Guy Coombes)
“Jimmy D started in 2004. I had been working in women’s retail for years prior, when I was at university studying photography. I worked at Unity in Wellington…I was surrounded by all these New Zealand labels and that’s definitely what started my interest in fashion.
A guy working in women’s retail was relatively new at that point. It was a great experience being surrounded by the best of New Zealand fashion and learning what level my own label would need to be at, in order to sit alongside it. And at the same time New Zealand fashion was being taken seriously internationally – the New Zealand Four showing in London was really inspiring.
All these factors combined and I realised at the end of my degree that I wasn’t interested in being a photographer – though I still love photography and I don’t regret having done it for four years.
I lived in London for a year and worked in high end men’s retail there at ‘The Library.’ It stocked labels like Comme des Garcons, Margiela, and Raf Simons and we had lots of footballers and pop stars come to the store – it was a fun chapter! Seal is a really nice guy; we had Mick Jagger, and Gwyneth Paltrow shopped there for Maharishi. It was a pretty surreal time.
The Library
(image: farfetch.com)
After a year I needed to figure out what to do with my life. I knew I wanted to be a stylist or a designer but the idea of doing it in London was overwhelming because there are so many people vying for the roles. I got an offer to manage the Auckland Unity store so I came back and long story short got a kick up the ass from my Mum to take the little bit of tax money that I got back from the UK and “do something important with it, do something good with it. “ My Mum and Dad knew that I am a creative person and much as I loved working in retail, I needed to do some thing more – and my Mum was getting my UK bank statements to her address and she could see the money was slowly draining away!
So the next day I phoned a patternmaker and started Jimmy D. I used to shut the Unity store and roll fabric the entire length of the floor and cut until midnight. My label slotted straight in to Unity alongside some really good labels and grew from there. I won the Mercedes Star-Up with my first collection and got to show in Sydney at Mercedes Fashion Week in the New Generation with my next season.
I did my first solo show at New Zealand Fashion Week in 2006. Any time you show is a highlight – it’s great to be able to finally get this whole world that you’ve created in your head, out there.
There have been a few publications in which it’s really amazing to be included, like the Te Papa book on New Zealand Fashion (Angela Lassig) and Thames & Hudson’s Mitchell Oakley-Smith book on fashion in Australia and New Zealand. Te Papa bought an entire outfit from my 2010 show (one of the digital print Andrew McLeod dresses).
Jimmy D SS 12/13 The End dress – from the look-book by photographer Oliver Rose
It’s little moments like that where you take a moment out of what you are doing and go “wow, that’s pretty amazing, that makes it all worth it.”
I’ve always retailed and designed concurrently. I love all the interactions with customers: ever since I’ve had a label I’ve sold it, as well. Initially it was kinda terrifying having your clothes on a rack and seeing whether people would flick past them or pull them out, but now you get great feedback on your own collection.
I love buying, I love going through collections and editing them down and thinking of my customer and what they need.
Vicky Chan is my business partner in Children of Vision. We go to Paris every season to buy for the store – sometimes we both travel, sometimes it’s just her or it’s just me. It’s less glamorous than it sounds (in a good way) – it’s mentally draining, looking at lots of collections, juggling budgets, thinking of customers, dissecting a collection into what you love and what you think will sell – at the end of the day you are pretty wiped out.”
Rising Sun, Melting Moon
“The starting point for the Spring/Summer 2013 collection was Tokyo in the broadest sense. There’s a film called “Enter the Void” that I watched. You see the cutesy bright neon lights but also that really seedy underbelly to Tokyo. I’m always drawn to contrasts and Tokyo has some of the most amazing contrasts – the ‘Hello Kitty” side and the sordid, dark side – it was good fodder for a collection.
Enter the Void poster (image: Filmous.com)
One of my favourite photographers (‘cause photography is still really huge for me) is a Japanese photographer called Nobuyoshi Araki. He takes a lot of images of Japanese rope bondage and things like that. When I started thinking about him I also started thinking about one of my favourite directors Gregg Araki who does these ‘90s LA films… these two Arakis and how they both have elements that I’m really drawn to, that dark side and that really plastic-y side.
I don’t use a mood board, it’s all in my head and it’s really only towards the end of the collection that I formalise it. I used to get really stressed out, thinking “this doesn’t make any sense, because I started here and I ended up here,” but now I trust that it will all kind of hang together in the end.
There are elements of American sportswear, a bit of knotting and tying, neon highlighter pink (a colour of Tokyo nightlife), a real midnight blue – the colour you get in the sky when the sun is going down or coming back up again, and inspirations from a Japanese blogger Eriko Nakao, who became a bit of a muse for the collection.
Erika Nakao (image: SugarGeurilla)
I’m doing Rising Sun, Melting Moon as an installation. It’s a really good way for us to draw out the show experience – you get to have a really good look at the clothes and get the vibe and energy of what the collection is about. We are using 5-6 models instead of the 13 we would use for a show – which means we can go a little heavier with the styling and because the models are static you get to have a nice long look at the outfits instead of a fleeting moment with a look wafting past. Internationally installations are growing in popularity and a lot of the designers we deal with at Children of Vision choose to present their collections this way. It also means we get to work with ongoing sponsor MAC cosmetics and our new sponsor Structure Hair Products – we’ve really enjoyed working with Nic Apaapa on creating some really dynamic hair looks and the incredible Amber D on some rockin’ makeup.
I did aspects of my collection on boys last season for the first time and I’m really enjoying that side. For summer there are more menswear looks than ever and we’ve shot them on a boy again. I don’t like to dictate what is and isn’t menswear, I enjoy having pieces that can go either way. I do an entire women’s collection and then I think about what I would like to wear from it and I tweak them.
In the future I’d love to have more Children of Vision stores. My dream would be to have one in Wellington – I love Wellington as a city and I’m from there originally. Melbourne or further afield would be great at some point. Retail and designing are inextricably linked to me – where the store goes, Jimmy D goes.”
-As told to JULIE ROULSTON