As a kid, I was always drawing. I was about thirteen when I realized being a designer was a career. I started interning the next summer and have been pretty committed to it since then.

Yes, I did. Having grown up in London, the idea of studying abroad interested me – I’m also a duel citizen of the United Kingdom / United States, so that made it easier. In a practical sense, it’s where I learnt pattern cutting, sewing and the practice of having a more intellectual approach to design development, but it was also while I was there that I became interested in the performative aspects of national identity, which is a theme that is central to the work that I do now.

It was definitely something that I thought about a lot, and I’m sure I will go back to the United States at some point. But I think that what’s really incredible about London is the infrastructure in place that is so supportive of young designers.

SOS are my initials, which I always thought was a bit weird growing up, but I've always liked wordplay and bad puns. I think there's a lot of different ways to read into it, which is what I like about it, so I wouldn't want to spoil that!

I think the practice of historicism has been a big part of fashion in the United Kingdom for a long time; even if you look at Victorian dresses there are still references to Edwardian or Georgian eras clothing. The practice is more obvious in the work created by John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood in the ‘90s during the Blair/cool Britannia era. In that sense, I think my use of historicism falls into a tradition, rather than being something I learned. However, in my work I tend to use historical references in my conceptual development rather than have it inform actual silhouettes, which take more inspiration from contemporary dress.

I took the character of Britomart from an epic poem called Faerie Queens, which was written by Edmund Spencer for Queen Elizabeth I. Britomart is known as the ‘Knight of Britain’, and is meant to serve as a representation of English virtue and military power. I thought her title was pretty loaded, and had originally thought it would be interesting if she rebelled, but I ended up deciding that she should just resign.

For a female character written in 1590 I thought Spenser’s Britomart was refreshingly three-dimensional. On the one hand, she was very much a knight both in terms of virtue and combative skill, but she’s also emotional and complex, which made her an easy character to re-imagine.

We started hanging out when we were sixteen. She was actually the person I gave the first piece I ever designed and made at university. Lucy is a really important part of the process because she's the first person I run my concepts by, and the last person I sign images off with. Our relationship with the brand works because we're not afraid to tell one another when we don't like something.
I'm also always interested in the way she works with the clothes, and that ends up informing how I design them. Last season, for Fall/Winter 2017, she was pulling the shirts and playing with unconventional ways of buttoning them up. This season, although it also had conceptual grounds, the button up shirts with multiple plackets were my answer to what I could see she was trying to do with the clothes last season.

My Spring/Summer 2018 collection is called Mayday Mayday Mayday and it takes inspiration from the pagan mayday celebrations, as well as the distress call that feels so relevant in the modern political climate. For the collection and the set, we really wanted to put across this sort of golf-club-Tory village fete gone wrong, and so I used a lot of custom silk stripe fabrics, blazer-stripes and over-constructed elements of the clothing to make it almost too English.
I watched Robin Hardy’s Wicker Man early on in the process, and I was really interested in the cult themes and paranoia in that film, and how relevant that felt with political opinion being so polarized at the moment, not just in Britain, but everywhere else.

Although 2017 feels quite politically ominous in general I try to be optimistic about the future. I'm really interested in how tech can change the way things work in general, and I think moving with those changes will probably be the main challenge and opportunity for emerging brands. I think social media has really revolutionized the way that designers can interact with their customers in a positive way and I’m really interested in seeing how young brands can collaborate with one another as a community.