APRIL | COVER FEATURE
Access has
been lucky
enough...
to attend two of designer Richard Quinn’s
fashion shows, the latest being his London
Fashion Week SS20 event at Royal Horticultural
Halls’ Lawrence Hall, which became known as
the ‘House of Quinn’ in testament to its overhaul
in a vision led by the South East Londoner,
production company Family Ltd, and his creative
team’s genius.
The ascent of Quinn’s career led to a palpable
tension in the vast 1,600sqm hall as stylishly clad
buyers and fashionistas awaited their up-close-
and-personal glimpse at Quinn’s SS20 range. The
spectacle did not disappoint.
Guests were treated to a parade that embraced
beauty and darkness in equal measure. The
models’ perfectly clipped attire embraced Quinn’s
now famous bent for floral flourishes, juxtaposed
with his macabre taste for dark, anarchic
aesthetics.
Sequined, spiked, studded and feathered
masked figures strutted past transfixed
onlookers as kinky leather ensembles were
contrasted with more playful houndstooth
garments and larger than life bubble skirts.
So effectively marrying tonal contrasts is part
of the secret to Quinn’s much deserved hype,
but the audiovisuals, the cavernous venue, the
flower-lined decoration, the timing and the sense
of theatre that make up the event is as much
down to Quinn as the fashion.
“The clothes wouldn’t make sense without the
theatre,” Quinn told Access backstage after the
event. “The clothes wouldn’t make sense with
just a traditional up and down runway and a
30
blank space venue. We are creating something
that is a 360 degree representation, and that only
happens through a curated event space,” he adds
as a flurry of creatives and media types busied
themselves with the numerous tasks that such
an undertaking necessitates.
Quinn is keen to draw attention to the
collaborative process that goes into achieving his
life’s work, for which he has the active input of
his family members. “We work with set designer
Derek Martin, who’s amazing. And my brother
and my sister are now on board doing lots of
production, so it’s a family affair.”
Quinn adds: “My desk is my design team’s
desk, so it’s more a case of coming up with
ideas collaboratively. The conversations are
collaborative, like ‘wouldn’t it be amazing if we
did a 'pearly kings and queens’ theme, and then
there follows a discussion about how we should
make them into 'dolls’.
"We get inspired by new ideas each season,
but we also gain a better sense of
what we can achieve with event
production and who can do what to
achieve our vision. Once you’ve done
a few rodeos you get a better idea of
what’s possible.”
Quinn remains something of
an outsider in the fashion world,
appearing in unassuming attire at
his events.
When Access met the designer, he
was passionate, but affable, wearing
a baseball cap, a casual jacket and
jeans, a look similar to the attire
he wore when he met our reigning
monarch to receive the inaugural
Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design,
a royal stamp of approval the Peckham-based
designer found out he was receiving just weeks
before his Autumn/Winter 2018 show.
Did meeting the Queen change him? “I think
I’m pretty much the same,” he tells Access, with
a smile.
Quinn drew much of his inspiration from
"The clothes
wouldn’t make
sense without
the theatre"