Interview with John Simons

Vice Style has an interesting interview with John Simons, one of the most influential men in UK menswear. We’re sure you’ve heard the story already, but it was him who gave the harrington jacket its name and he brought several US brands onto UK shores decades before anyone else. Vice speak to him on his history and how he got started. The whole thing’s worth a read, but we were intrigued by his answer to who his customers were in the beginning:

“We started up to sell to young executives, but funny things went on… We did sell to the ones who wanted to look like Chet Baker or Cary Grant, but gradually it became pared down and we were selling to the suedeheads with their shortish hair and very neat partings. This was a slight move away from the Ivy look that first inspired us. That then mutated into the skinheads, who we never really catered to, but I think that’s how they came about. That masculine look that we promoted gradually became distorted to this hard look which ours was never intended to be. From that, you had the Brutus shirts coming out that we never sold—very tight, very tough-looking—almost like a play on their name. Never sold them, never wore one. This lad from Brighton, Ben Sherman, used to come in on a Saturday and buy our American shirts, and of course, later used them as the inspiration for the shirts he used to make.”

Read the full interview over at John Simons.