About
A brief introduction
I was born in Bingley, West Yorkshire, a few miles from many of the great English woollen mills, most notably Abraham Moon in Guiseley. It is a lovely part of the north of England, with rolling hills, an abundance of winding stone walls, and meandering rivers popular with fly fishing.
From an early age, I was very interested in drawing and painting, and generally ‘making things’ be it wooden models in my Dad’s garage, or learning to sew on my Mum’s sewing machine. Around the age of 13, I was surprisingly focused on wanting to pursue a career in fashion, and after a foundational year’s studying at Bradford College of Art, I applied for the four year Men’s Fashion course at the University of Northumbria. During this period, I spent a year designing for Nigel Cabourn and after graduating, decided to continue at the Royal College of Art in London, having been accepted on the Men’s MA Fashion course.
Having graduated from the RCA, I spent about four years designing in London for several companies (Baird / Dewhirst / Alexandre on Savile Row) before leaving for the United States in 2004 to join Abercrombie and Fitch as an Outerwear designer. After 7 years in Columbus, Ohio, I was eager to go to New York to pursue my dream of joining Ralph Lauren, and was very lucky to be offered a design director role for their “Rugby” brand.
After Ralph Lauren, I moved out to Portland, Oregon having been hired by Nike, and during my tenure, worked on some very exciting projects - the ‘rebirth’ of ACG in 2014 in collaboration with Errolson Hugh (Acronym) and the Olympics 2016 medal stand uniform. Both projects I loved, as they focused on Outerwear which without doubt, is my favorite category to design into. For ACG, we collaborated both in Portland and Berlin, and then I’d travel to Vietnam on several occasions to develop the product. For the Olympics project, the ‘mixed-media’, color reveal knitted track top and knit pants was developed and produced at a family-owned factory just outside Milan. I also worked on the Stone Island / Nike collaborations and was very lucky to work with Carlo Rivetti and family at his design studio.
After Nike I returned to NYC having been offered the Head of Men’s Design with Club Monaco, and in 2017 moved to Calvin Klein to oversee Men’s Sportswear under the creative direction of Raf Simons and Pieter Mulier.
Following Calvin Klein and the complications surrounding the Covid pandemic, I joined Express as SVP of Men’s Design and to this day am now over all total design for Men’s and Women’s categories.