I’m speaking to Martine Rose via Zoom. The British-Jamaican designer is in her London home, it’s some three weeks before the FIFA Women's World Cup kicks off in Australia and New Zealand, and not long after the release of her tailored collection with Nike — one of Rose’s most experimental collaborations to date, as well as a first in the world of tailoring for the latter brand.
And Rose has just informed me that she knows next to nothing about women’s football. I’m sitting here, frozen, staring at my notes, where a slew of questions on the state of women’s football are suddenly looking pretty useless.
Thankfully, Rose is an outstanding interviewee. She’s laid back and easygoing, despite her exalted stature in the fashion industry, where she’s been a staple since her eponymous brand launched in 2007 and collections referencing everything from rave to hip-hop to punk have garnered her many awards.
Our conversation slips effortlessly into a chinwag about the intersection of fashion and culture (of which football is inextricable), and how Rose’s collaboration with Nike is designed not only to look good, but to help “dissolve boundaries” and “level equity” between men’s and women’s football.
How? Why? I’ll let Rose do the rest of the talking. Despite what she told me, her knowledge on all the above proved unparalleled, and by the end of our chat I'd forgotten all about my original questions.
How did this collaboration come about?
When I first started with Nike, I didn't know much about women's football. But what we uncovered was really shocking and inspiring in equal measure: shocking because of the disparities between men and women's football, and inspiring because, in spite of this, women have continued to blaze a trail and hurdle all obstacles that have been in their way. It's been an incredible personal and creative journey.
What was the inspiration behind the collection?
We did this huge body of research with one of my teams, and one of the things that was really striking was the disparity between men and women's football. There were these classic images of the men's football teams stepping off their private jets with whichever designer was dressing them that year. They would be immaculately dressed with their Gucci shoes and Gucci tailored suits, looking amazing. Then in stark contrast to that, you'd see the women's teams in their trackies, posing outside a coach. It highlighted, in one image, the difference between men's and women's football. Our aim with this collection was to have a conversation about why it's even gendered.
At some time, hopefully we won't even be speaking about gender in football and that we wanted to highlight the contrast; to make the women look and feel amazing, like the men's [team], but further the conversation, to clothes are clothes. I'm less keen on this idea of gender free. I think that clothes are clothes,and both boys and girls can wear clothes, and that's it.
It’s noted that the collection has been designed to “dissolve boundaries” and “level equity.” How do the clothes themselves do this?
Because it's a tailored suit, it works for both men and women. Obviously we wanted to use a moment in women's football to tell the story of women's football, and to highlight that essentially a suit is a suit; it's a button down shirt, it's a trench coat. There's nothing inherently gendered about any of those things.
How has football changed since you’ve been working with Nike?
I knew very little about specifically women's football when I embarked on the whole project about two and a half years ago. Of course, I know a lot more now, and I've met a lot more women [footballers]. I've seen it become a mainstream conversation almost as much as men's, and that's just amazing.
I don't actually watch the game. People find it really surprising. They think I'm a mad football fanatic. I'm like, "No, not really."
If there wasn't that love for football beforehand, and a desire to push the game, what was it that drove you to football initially?
Honestly, I've always been drawn to football, not because of the game or the sport itself, but because of the culture. I'm fascinated with it. My experience was that over the course of the second Summer of Love, which was 1989, football hooliganism almost dropped off the map. And that was because instead of fighting in the terrace spheres, young people were dancing together in clubs on a Saturday night.
It refocused the energy into dance spaces, and on something else rather than fighting. I find that really compelling. I mean, I was nine-years-old at the time, and I remember it just literally shifting overnight. All of a sudden, seeing them dancing on commons with ravers and just really noticing that as a visual change. Football culture is culture. It's as much as fashion and artIt has that power. I find it amazing, the power that music has to completely change the conversation.
Nowadays loads of people are wearing football kits of different teams even though they wouldn't be able to tell you anything about them.
Exactly. But it has currency, it has power. There's something about wearing a football shirt of your team, or a team that you don't know. There's something to it. There's a weight to it.
Did you grow up around football?
My main experience of football growing up was, across the road if you see a gang of boys, particularly with football shirts on, it was an indication of something unsettling. It's just you didn’t don't know if it was going to kick off across the road. And then literally that year [1989], the conversation around the hooligans and everything in the UK changed.
Women's football wasn’t even on the map growing up. I had loads of boys in my family and a couple of girls. A couple of my girl cousins did grow up playing football. But the boys were into it.
How about fashion? What were your experiences of fashion growing up?
I wasn't looking at fashion magazines. My sister had hundreds of Vogue, and she would rip out pages and tape them to her clothes. She had a dressmaker called Phyllis in Wimbledon and she would copy some of the stars, but put a twist on it.
I wasn’t looking at what the big brands were doing. It just didn't feel relevant. What I was looking at was what my siblings and my cousins and what everyone was wearing to go out. That's what I was interested in. I was interested in these tribes. I was interested in what people I knew were wearing. There were a couple of these big brands that filtered down because they had diffusion lines that made sense in clubs.
There was Dossier; filtered down Versace. It was reinterpreted in street culture and club culture and it was worn in a different way, but then suddenly it became relevant to me. That's how I was introduced to those brands. But it was style that was way more important to me, and I love clothes; it's how people use clothes to reflect who they were rather than this very high-end catwalk thing that felt very remote.
I didn't grow up poring over both magazines and what models wore. It was a very direct link to clothes and expression that made me interested in fashion. It was just clothing. It was this form of expression.
You’ve kinda answered my next question, but here goes: what does personal style mean to you?
Growing up in a Jamaican household, style was really important. It's not a display of how much money you have — I mean sometimes it can be flexing — but it's whether you put your collar up, it's how you tilt your hat; it's what socks you choose to wear. These small codes that can change everything. It's an expression, it's a real expression. I find that really beautiful and endlessly fascinating.
Does your personal style influence your work?
I don't really think, "What would I like to have in my wardrobe?"; "What would I like to wear?” or “What would I look good in?" I'm much more into people. I'm looking outwards. It’s people I know that are a much more stimulating source of inspiration than myself. Once you start thinking about yourself like that, it becomes too much. I like the nuance of the storytelling and these characters that I imagine, or I know. I like thinking about them. I don't really turn it inward.
With this Nike collaboration specifically can you talk us through the designs?
We wanted it to feel strong. We wanted classic images of '80s power suits, and this very dramatic silhouette that it's become. We wanted it to be a very real proposition. We wanted it to be a real suit that felt clean and strong; sharp and striking in its simplicity. It's really simple. There's not much distraction.
There's this beautiful jacquard that is my logo flipped, which is woven into the fabric. It’s really beautiful. It's very neat. It's super clean. I didn't feel like it needed to have bells and whistles because the bells and whistles are the person wearing it.. It was this singular message of this lovely thing, hopefully.
What about the Shox Mules. What’s the thinking behind them?
We were looking at a lot of goalie gloves, actually. A lot of the ombre color, some of the colorways and some of the designs and patterns.It was just a playful take on that.
With the Shox themselves,it came from a smart shoe. We wanted to take this super smart shoe, which I obviously do in my brand often, and see how far we could push that into the trainer arena. We went really hard on getting it very chiseled, narrow, not sporty. We wanted to push against the sportiness. And then of course I wanted to jack it up.
Historically, “sneakerheads” don’t tend to like change. With that in mind, were you at all apprehensive about releasing them?
No, I think if you design with a very specific audience in mind, you dilute yourself too much. You know what I mean? And you find yourself doing it sometimes, definitely. It's natural; you're with that person like this, or with this group of people like that, and you start to edit, edit, edit, edit. And then actually what you end up delivering is something that already exists.
Is that the ethos you have with everything you do?
Yeah. When I first started my business everyone was like, "Who's your target market? Who's your target market?" and I couldn't design with that in mind, 'cause I found that I was editing. I was editing to this imagined group. I really like existing in my space, because I feel that is when I know that I'm doing something new.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work, but I have to put myself in a place where I'm just not sure, or it's just on the edge of being all right. I have to be uncomfortable., f I'm uncomfortable, then I know it's weird enough.
What’s the aim with this collection on the whole?
In terms of women's football, I don't know. Like I said, it is coming more into the public domain, and I'm unbelievably proud to have been like a dot in that conversation. I hope it goes beyond women's football and that the collection is received as a first for Nike. I hope that this collaboration, and everything that surrounds it, can contribute towards that overdue conversation a little bit more.
I hope people find it exciting. If this collaboration can further this conversation a fraction more, then I'm delighted.
