Liverpool and Manchester
Published by SEVENSTORE
Author: Millie Throp
Where one’s “Scally” is another’s “Perry Boy”; and one’s “bobby dazzler” is another’s lace-up pair of sparkling “trabs” – just a few of the terms uttered during this year’s Locating Menswear Forum – Manchester and Liverpool’s rooting in subversive style codes evidently runs beyond the Football Casuals of the 1980s alone. Whereby such sartorial pace-making is continued by Northern wardrobes today, these cities provide an apt housing for conversations on the nation’s rich menswear history.
Started in 2022, whilst hosted formerly in London and Italy, this year’s Locating Menswear Forum was situated outside of the spotlighted capital, not only seeking to include the Northwest in such conversations but shedding a light on menswear itself – an area “with little academic research”, says the workshop’s Lead Researcher, Dr Andrew Groves. Led also by Dr Jo Jenkinson of Manchester Fashion Institute, defining the project’s mission as “creating a community for anyone interested in addressing the gaps in menswear knowledge”, inviting conversations of culture, curation, and craft with academics, industry partners, and the public, these workshops arise first-hand research and priorly untouched debate.
Meeting in the more sociable hours of a wet July morning, the forum’s initial day took place in Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Sport, where sessions were held between the newbuild’s adjacent tutorial rooms. With one ‘track’ approaching “Menswear and the Obsession with Function” through the guise of science-led outfitters like Massimo Osti’s C.P. Company, the latter dissected “Biographical Menswear”. Presenting the room with the story of Glaswegian fine artist Steven Campbell, who’s style during the 80s was the subject of her exhibition, Dressing Above Your Station by Mairi Mackenzie and Beca Lipscombe, already were menswear’s prejudices being floundered by Campbell’s wearing Comme des Garçons. With the relationship between fashion and art risen, a perception of the time was also upended: that a man’s work should be less of a spectacle than his wardrobe.
In closing out the session on a fellow story of ascension, Ian R Webb, fashion editor of the British style publication BLITZ – around for a stint during the same decade as Campbell’s decadent dressing – explored his customisation methods: a more literal dismantling of fashion. Rising with London’s ‘club kid’ scene, his DIY methods followed his mother’s necessity sewing projects, but harnessed an attitude of sedition and resourcefulness that remains relevant today. With Webb stemming from humble beginnings, “first in his class, and last in the dole queue”, the tale thus felt fitting amidst its backdrop in a working-class, ‘second’ city, bridging high fashion with accessibility through slashed nightshirts, begging questions like “…is that Margiela?”
After lunch, Umbro’s Head of Global Marketing, Helene Hope, set a further theme of fashion underdogs – with menswear an arguable underdog itself – upon celebrating 100 years of the Wilmslow brand by remembering moments like its collaboration with designer Kim Jones in 2003, impacting the high-fashion-sportswear interspersions seen on the runway today. Whilst in the next discussion, albeit lesser known, the tales of Hull’s trawlerman throughout the mid-twentieth century were presented by Dr Clare Day of Coventry University; high-dressing Yorkshire fisherman donning distinctive pastel “shore suits”. Then followed by a performed “eulogy to Blackness” from the V&A Museum’s Senior Curator, Christine Checinska, dispersing the migrations of Caribbean families to England in the 1950s, a familiar narrative played out; their fathers’ styles overlooked despite the sharpness of their now iconic, pinstriped, dove-grey suits and “pork pie hats”.
In the final hours of the forum’s first day, closing out its conversations of meticulous technique, besides invisible protagonists dressing to be seen, it was proven that with sartorial badges of belonging – like Fred Perry’s polos dressing skinheads and hard-mods in 1960s England – comes baggage not as easily overlooked. When such uniforms border violence; insignia for a darker side of fashion, Paul Sweetman, who spoke of the brand’s subcultural ties during his session, noted that where menswear stories are sparce, we cannot afford to discredit those that are damaging. “I think these associations are important, all of which lend the brand credibility and a form of authenticity”.
But on the contrary, as is with any name or silhouette, the Laurel Wreath has an alternative standing – one of Northern excellence. Founded in Stockport, a mere few miles from the university, the label boasts a background centred in the ensembles of terrace culture like Liverpool, but uniquely 90s Britpop. As Jenkinson describes of the city today, she sees “Manchester as a place that thrives on nostalgia. Its sport and nightlife have influenced how men have appropriated fashion”, backed by Sweetman, suggesting these brands “allow people to nod to their formative years”. Consequently, vintage garments and streetwear prevails in the province. Manchester therefore hones a style of its own; not merely a home for discussions of menswear, but at the very heart of it.
Separated by a trip down the M62, the following morning shed both sunlight and anticipation upon a meeting at Space Liverpool for Locating Menswear’s final day. And with a change in format came an introspective shift. Incorporating installations tables inlayed with knitted garments and flat lays by each researcher, sessions shifted their concerns from the iconoclasts of yesteryear to what fashion’s movements have meant to individuals, held in a city layered with personality and pride.
During the first and only sit-down talk of the day, “Exhibiting Menswear” continued the topic of locality in relation to curating culture, speaking with Liverpool John Moores’ Andrew Ibi on breaking “out of the museological space”, bringing the sound-system to Somerset House for his exhibition, The Missing Thread, in a celebration of previously underrepresented Black culture. Hence, with the borders blurred between fashion and art during the forum’s prior morning, it surfaced that art and emboldened menswear are often present in the streets, pulsing through the everyday.
Trailing along such lines of thought, Jo Jenkinson’s research project, Absent Youth, garnered qualitative studies with young people in the North, proving that to some, fashion is rather about a feeling. With this, leveraging dress as power, one interviewee in the Northeast shared their experience of “not [wanting] to be looked at”, but at the same “[they] do”. Complemented by portraits of each subject, the session reminded attendees of the roles of personal belonging and subjective experience in menswear, sitting comfortably with the mentions of patina and clothes passed down that followed. And in the final discussion before midday’s break, educator Jacqueline McAssey’s ‘Male Order’, 90s football magazines and mail order forms arose nostalgia in the room: sport an impactful yet grounded avenue into fashion and menswear.
Highlighting that even above academia and logical thought stands lived emotion, the penultimate speakers, Paul and Kayla Owen of the sneaker magazine, Sole-Zine, retold the undulate backstory of the Nike Air Max 95’s belonging to Liverpool. With many fans admittedly not knowing how the silhouette – “affectionately known as the 110” says Owen – cemented its credibility there, the anecdote brought with it an air of mystery, even in a space championing research and resource. But beyond this, as the couple put it, “just like buying a t-shirt, sneakers are an achievable gateway”. With stores like the locale’s Block P, a “sanctuary” committed solely to the sales of 95s – credited by the duo as “an archive within contemporary culture” – it can be inferred that sneaker collection is as valid in today’s landscape as any form of curation. Adding “not all fashion is high fashion”, the pair feel “these stories are important records of British fashion which should be introduced in academia”.
Riding the tailwind of these mentions, writer and fellow Merseyside native PJ Smith’s spoken word piece, Le Croc Monsieur, arose a standing ovation when closing out the forum with his narrated trip to Marseille, in search of the “world’s biggest Lacoste collector”. An amuse bouche for further mentions of Liverpool as a “fashion city” says Owen, the destination boasts an outright obsession for menswear.
Defining the locale, which marked the finale of his 18-month journey with Locating Menswear, Grove expressed how, in Liverpool, “men mix mass-market brands with designer and obscure labels, [embracing] trends while deliberately diverging from them”. With this, it should be remembered that – academia and theory aside – fashion has always begun at street level. Thus, in pioneering menswear research, Groves clarifies it was “important to ensure those who have lived and breathed menswear were part of our network”. Whilst previously left out of conversation yet ingrained in British menswear, these Northern cities thrive in the freedom that comes with underestimation – much like menswear itself – and are why Groves looks to the North for the future. “The most exciting developments occur not in Milan or London, but in the fringes, where new ways of dressing are being created”.