]VEXED GENERATION IN CONVERSATION With Not For Archiving™

As originators of Supermodern clothing, with a wealth of promethean technical releases, under and over the social radar- visionaries Vexed Generation haunt the dreams of technical apparel lovers. More of an experimental studio than a brand, Vexed, despite being largely under wraps, is some of the most influential design of modern times.

Launched in 1994, Vexed Generation produced a range of garments built to aid urban cultures, as well as environmental and social issues: air pollution, surveillance, and civil liberties. Using a range of military-grade materials, including knife-proof and bullet-proof fabrics, Vexed set the premise for what we know today as technical fashion.

Having consulted for Louis Vuitton, Yeezy, Puma, Adidas and more, Vexed Generation have become masters in their craft, creating some of the most coveted archive jackets ever made. Known for their face-obscuring ninja hoodies and anti-CCTV views, founders Joe and Adam's ideas resonate as much with us today in 2023 as they did during Vexed's emergence in the 90s. 

As a brand with such prestige, we have great pleasure in sharing a new level of insight into Vexed Generation's world. Here, in an exclusive conversation between friend and contributor Bonnie Carr, founder of Not For Archiving™ and Adam and Joe themselves; the three discuss design methods, technical materials, the Vexed logo and Louis Vuitton bootlegs. 

Not For Archiving™ is a technical clothing platform based in London, documenting some of the best archival pieces the industry has, or had, to offer. Bonnie is currently researching Regenerative Design and future clothing systems at CSM after championing the clothing repairs industry, so we can’t think of a better person to dive into the minds of these greats. Let’s go.

---

Adam, Joe, lovely to talk. Let’s jump in. Coming from Graphics and Microbiology backgrounds with little interest in the study of Fashion, why clothing to showcase your thinking?

(JOE) The main reason was to bring forth the issues that we thought were important to be discussed. That’s why we chose the channel of garment design or clothing design or fashion, whatever you want to call it. What’s the best way to communicate? Ok hmm, everyone wears clothes, so let’s use that. It was a tool like any other design tool, to create and discuss socially responsive design. We’ve never called ourselves fashion designers, ever.

(ADAM) Yeah, similar to what Joe was saying. Academic qualifications were only one part of the background and didn't have too much to do with where I wanted to go and what I was interested in. I was into genetics and all of that, but realised it was more commitment at that time, than I was prepared to give. But messing about at uni, going clubbing quite a lot, that was a bit of an eye opener at 18-19. It made me realise you can make money out of clothes, films, ideas, which I wasn't aware of before. No one in my family or community was really tuned into that when I was growing up, so I wasn't aware this was a possibility.

So a big part was going out and finding those cultural references or a way to be creative. You were clubbing a lot, you guys have records, don’t you? There are a couple of 12” releases floating about.

(ADAM) Yeah, it was going out and messing about and then I met this girl that I ended up hanging out with, and it was through her that I met Joe. I was working for a record distribution company called Great Asset, down on Grays Inn Road (Kings Cross, London). Pre-internet days when you’d have the warehouse full of records, out the back. You'd have a van ready to deliver them all. Then ten people sitting with turntables in the morning, playing records down the phones to the shops, to see which ones they'd take. And I got lucky to work with a bloke called Andy Godzilla Higgins. He was into his Techno and his Japanese monsters, ha. He gave me a job helping with the P&D side of it, production and distribution.

So people came in with their cassette tapes and played their music. Andy would decide if it was any good or not. He was like ‘Adam what'd you reckon to this?’ It was good fun. I’d work getting test pressings done, with people on the label artwork for the bit that goes in the middle of the 12” vinyl, that sort of stuff. When that place started closing he told me ‘Look Ad you've gotta get out of here mate, if I were you, I’d jump with this lot’. And he introduced me to the founders of Sound Of The Underground Records (mid-90s London DJ-only label) round in Eagle Wharf Road (Hoxton, London) back in the day.

And how did you get all the way to the Shy FX stuff?

(ADAM) Well, Shy FX signed with Sound (of the Underground). So knocking around with Sound, that’s how we got to know some of the Jungle lot. Then, later on, we were always around music anyway. A guy called Chris, one of our mates who used to play in bands when we were kids, got us an opportunity in the studio. A bloke called Alex, a music business accountant, supporting labels like Hooj Tunes and Felix da Housecat, Temple Records. He ended up giving Chris some money to go into the studio and that was where that story went. So we were messing around doing our thing and thought it would be good to get Shy FX to do a remix. We asked him and he said he would.

Vexed Generation Feat. Skeleton – Pistols At Dawn (Shy FX Mix) ℗ 1995

So why do you work with technical fabrics? And was this an issue to scale? It’s still holding people back, as they’re so costly to develop properly.

(ADAM) I think that part of it has to do with what Joe and I have both been interested in, you know. We came together as a business because he let me have a go on his scooter once, which I knew he loved, haha. That was one of the first points we met. It's like ‘Oh actually he's alright’, that’s a nice thing to do, ha.

(JOE) ‘Actually’ (laughter).

(ADAM) What I'm getting at is, that there's this appreciation of technical things, the number of bikes we used to strip down and look at and understand. That ability, to be able to appreciate and talk about technical stuff, we were quite interested in bringing blokes into fashion that way. Maybe it's not gender so much, but we wanted to have a conversation about clothes in the same way you can have a conversation about bikes, or something like that. So we're interested in how things look but we're also interested in what a thing can do.

In just understanding more and learning more and thinking about you know, what can this fabric do, can it really be as waterproof as a leaf? As breathable as a leaf? As protective as a stone? We wanted to understand all of these things. And we quite liked, or I personally quite liked the sort of endothermic, exothermic stuff. Like oh at last haha, a use for some of that stuff we were learning at college (exothermic processes release heat, causing the temperature of the immediate surroundings to rise, endothermic processes absorb heat, cooling the immediate area). So part of the thing about technical fabrics was that we were interested in what garments can do, as well as how they look. Interested in talking about it, in understanding, learning again from people, learning about all the construction and stuff, that was a real journey. Learning what these fabrics can bring to it all. Joe had been ahead of me on that, he’d had a clothing label before.

Reversely then, how do you feel about fabric not having a potential dual-usage? Let’s say you’re about to do another collaboration. If they said, we just want to use a natural lightweight linen, nothing treated, would that frustrate you?

(JOE) That's a good question Bonnie, and one that doesn't get asked very often. Just to go back and address the idea of these technical fabrics- they suited our lifestyle, we were riding Vespas and bicycles, we needed stuff to move about in that didn’t leak and didn't make you feel uncomfortable for a couple of hours if you got rained on, then went to the pub. So you know during our period of investigation, every year we were looking at fabrics, what new tech was coming out or speaking to textile mills. They would ask what we wanted.

We'd speak between each other- we wanted to do this, we wanted to do that, we want it to be light or to have a bit more structure to it, or whatever. So we would trawl Premiere Vision, for example. We would ask more questions than anybody else, that's how we learned about what the fabrics could do. And then we'd decide if the fabrics were appropriate for us or not. We'd have to settle for the best that was out there, but it wasn't quite up to spec, compared to what we wanted. But then when it comes to natural fibres, we were sick and tired of rustling like a bloke in a shell suit, you know?

We didn't want to be heard coming down the corridor in the pub, ha. So we looked at linens and wools. We kind of went towards a Cordura® wool (Corwool®, high tenacity wool Cordura) or Linen Cordura® (50% linen with added durability from Cordura yarn) but the point was, that we were going away from completely synthetic fibres because we recognised the inherent performance values of natural fibres- wool is warmer when it's wet than when it's dry. Some fibres get stronger, I think linen gets stronger when it's slightly waterlogged.

(BONNIE) Highly absorbent yeah, gets denser, stronger.

(JOE) Yeah! There’s lots and lots of performance in natural stuff.

(ADAM) On that natural fibre thing, we've worked with Ventile® (highest grade, extra-long staple cotton fibres). They used to use double-layer Ventile in flight suits, so you’d be comfortable in the cockpit -then if you jettisoned over the jungle, the outer layer could get wet, swell up and keep the inner layer dry. It was always about what the fabric could do, so would we work in a natural, lightweight linen? Well, we'd work in natural linen if that was the answer for what we wanted the garment to do.

(BONNIE) So then that's probably saying that you're still expecting extra performance from it. I mean, we all put on t-shirts and we don't expect miracles. Maybe natural linen is a confusing example, it’s sometimes such a great product to use, but if it was a run-of-the-mill untreated top, do you feel like ‘Come on, we could use this fabric, this coating and it could have this usage and that function’? With your Crusader Twenty One gear and Urban Mobility stuff with Puma and Biomega, surely this is another example of always presenting, as a bare minimum, dual-purpose or multifunctionality?

(ADAM) I think Joe got it right when he was saying that sometimes you'll have a use for a standard fabric, but not very often. We’d always go to those places and people with a list of things that we wanted it (fabric) to do. And they'd say ‘Oh no, it doesn't do that’ and we'd have been reading New Scientist and hearing about new material developments. And then we'd turn up at Premier (Vision) or contact Majocchi (Majotech) and say, ‘Have you got this? Have you got that? Is this in production yet?’. And they're like ‘er, no’, haha. We didn't understand that bit yet- the supply chain and what the industry worked on, lagged behind what was technically possible. And that fabric like that, wouldn't be ready yet for anyone to use.

But what came from searching for fabric performance, were things like- Andrea (Terracini) from Majocchi ended up having us over, even though we brought next to nothing in terms of quantity. Because he wished to know what me and Joe wanted the fabric to do next. We ended up being able to get some of the minimums. Suppliers liked having those conversations with us, realising they couldn't give us what we wanted performance-wise yet. But I think they took inspiration from some of our chats and did us a favour in return by letting us have their sample lengths and minimums and just try stuff out.

(JOE) And then they'd go and sell several thousand metres to the big guys like Miu Miu® and Prada, those sorts of people.

  3-Layer Cordura® was developed by Majocchi for the 2000 Prada America Cup

(BONNIE) That's the thing. I own some Vexed and I can see, depending on when it came out, smaller runs from you guys with your own innovations. Then I can see huge fashion brands taking it and doing it at scale. That's still how it works, even more so now. We know this.

(JOE) It was quite strange actually, during the mid to late 90’s. There were a whole bunch of fashion labels that popped up that had a sports line. There was Prada Sport, Hugo Boss Sport. These labels gave themselves a sub-division which was sport-based. I think there were one or two reference points to some of our work, within that stuff. But they did it bigger, and sold much more of it, in a more commercial manner. So I think there was a degree of that going on, yes.

(ADAM) In response to what Bonnies saying there, about some of the challenges with minimums. If you want very specific performance but aren't able to achieve the minimums for that- remember that DigiTEX project, Joe? We used to get pulled into projects because we were always asking questions and up for doing something differently. And we got into this chat with a guy named Micheal Schäfer, a Dutch professor in sustainability and textiles. He set up this big EU project back in the day, called DigiTEX. And we were included as one of the little demonstrator groups.

DigiTEX was all about the micro-deposition of different performance characteristics. We would always be looking for something that was able to wick and be water-repellant. You can do it through chemical treatments and laminates, but not with treatments alone- because when you dip it in one thing, you then can't dip it into the next. We were really interested in this idea of micro-deposition, which was working with all these print companies involved in image printing. In the same way that you can put down a couple of coloured dots next to each other to get an image out of it, we were interested in how you could use micro-deposition of performance chemicals. So on a single bit of cloth, you could have multiple localised performance characteristics. We did quite a lot of research around that, and we're still waiting to see if that comes out.

(BONNIE) So in the pit, it might wick, on the top, it might focus on breathability or might have laminate cuffs, and be treated on the shoulder. Localised treatment for performance.

(ADAM) Exactly like that, and on a single piece of cloth. So, if you start thinking about micro-deposition and what the production line looks like on something like that, then you're starting to think about laser cutting garments, the digital design and placement of seams and placement of substance in terms of performance characteristics on substrate. Then you start to think about the fact you're doing that through printers. We were having conversations about mini makers' spaces, across the city. You asked just before Bonnie -was it an issue to scale due to costs and minimums, well the idea here was- that you could have a roll of cloth sitting there locally, that you could then put through these different printers and effectively, print hyper bespoke performance characteristics into the cloth. That was what we were working towards. In theory, it would bypass minimums.

(JOE) I think it is a doable concept, it's just about having a lay plan and understanding where your performance goes, then you program your inkjet head to move around between the two selvedges. It knows where the garment is going to be cut. You know it's all very doable, it's just having a slight rethink always, about how things are done.

(BONNIE) Aesthetically, I think of Jun’s (Takahashi) speaker grills, somehow. The homage to Dieter (Rams) at Braun. That’s probably a decade later though, in 2010. It wasn't of the functional value or performance complexity of what you guys are talking about, but it ties into positioning maybe. Laminates, laser-cutting, sealing, the treatment limits before it’s all compromised. Maybe accuracy is the link.

(JOE) There were lots of conversations about printing different treatments in various places on the fabric as well, yeah.

(ADAM) That was all happening when Joe, about 2000? Then there were a couple of other projects and conversations that were interesting. One of them was this lot called De La Rue. They were the people that used to print money, the largest banknote printer in Europe. They got hit badly when the euro came in (less variety of notes to print). What they were trying to do was diversify their protective ink technologies and all of this clever stuff that they can do to a piece of paper or substrate, so that it can't be copied. They were interested around 2002, in expanding their market to use these different inks and technologies in fibre and yarn, to stop people from knocking off garments, which they estimated to be worth 60 billion a year. And we were saying 'Yeah it's all well and good you lot protecting your profits and garments, but if you want to make it about brand protection, then you have to think about protecting your reputation.

And the way you protect your reputation is by protecting your workers’. So that's when we came up with the idea that they should have an ethical trademark. We were trying to combine those two things. You could have a garment that protects the profits of the company, as you could tell from production through to purchase whether it was authentic or not. And if we can track and trace from the moment the fabric is produced right through to the point of retail, then we can track and trace whether you're being ethical in your practices.

So, when you get contractors saying ‘It wasn't us that got the kids to make it, it was the subcontractor, we didn't know’. Well, hang on a minute, if you can trace exactly where your fabrics have gone, then there's monitoring and accreditation of labour standards possible. This should be communicated at the point of sale as well. We did a lot of work around that, I mean 20 years ago, we were trying this already.

(BONNIE) How far did you manage to get with convincing people, back then?

(ADAM) Well, there was a guy called Heiko Haasler, who was part of De La Rue brand development. He gave us a small amount of money, big by our standards at the time, and commissioned us for a year to do a bunch of research and develop a proposition, which I've still got in a box somewhere. This proposition was around how this ethical tracing would work. Versions of this are now, as we know, in use. So we’ve always been interested in that side of things, ethical tracing and trademarks.

(BONNIE) Yeah, the traceable thing. FibreTrace® are doing really good work now with brands and suppliers, tracing and verifying textile fibres from source to sale, seed to shelf, however you want to term it. You guys were on it decades before others, as you described.

(JOE) On this, I seem to remember we got irritated at this event, right. We were invited to this dinner with these large design houses and we were these sort of minnows, sat there whilst everything was being recorded. There were microphones everywhere, they were taking the mickey from a privacy perspective. The conversation during dinner was all recorded and it was bang out of order. The manner in which they came across was all about protecting the big fashion brands. Well, this shouldn't be about protecting big brands as Adam just said, they don't need any protection, they're already multi-billion pound companies. But actually, the people who do need protection are the workers and the people who care about this world, whether it's the textile and fibre production or the human labour- that’s how the ethical trademark began its life.

(ADAM) I think that's the bit that underpins a lot of our work, we're interested in everything innovative, new everything. When something new comes into the mix and all the various multipliers this creates. You change one part of it and suddenly you see what's possible in all these different contexts and different permutations. We also ask the question of why innovation is at the service of profit. We're not against people making money but profit isn't what it's all about. If we’ve got these smarts, then we should be able to find smart ways of making money, looking after the planet and the people in the supply chain. We’re always on that one. How can we make this work for everyone? Democratising innovation is fine, but many fashion people use that to mean ‘Why don't you tell us all your innovative ideas and we'll take them for our own business and increase our profits’. So how can we make the benefits of innovation reward everybody? Not just the brands who can afford to put microphones in the flowers and keep the words they record afterwards.

(BONNIE) So when fast fashion brands say ‘We’re trying to be more sustainable, look at our new eco ranges’, which lowkey make up 2% of what we actually produce and allow us to greenwash the shit out of our usual manufacturing practices, how does that make you feel?

(JOE) I'm really sceptical about a lot of brands, whether they're in the fashion industry or not. The idea of greenwashing sickens me to the pit of my stomach. I cannot understand why, well I do, it's all about money. But burning excess stock or scrapping their own products so as not to devalue the brand, because it's not all sold? It's embarrassing, it just goes against everything that I believe.

(BONNIE) Well, that's the thing. There's no way to hold them accountable. They all huddle together when they're asked anything. Most brands never achieve their sustainability targets because they never intended to. So to counteract this, they simply consistently move the goalposts and the focus, to hide the fact they’re steamrolling through nature's resources and under-paying their supply chain.

(ADAM) The way to do that then, to hold them accountable, is practice, right? As in action. Any brand can say anything, but it's when you ask them to actually do it or make it and they try to stop you. That's when the invisible ceilings and walls become visible. And we've done that with people we've worked with. We've said 'Alright, so you're saying that you're sustainable this and social that. Well, this is the collection that we want to make with you and we want to make it like this.’ And then they come back and say ‘Well that’s all well and good, but this is your price point, this is your fabric cost, this is the business model and so what you're talking of just isn’t possible’.

The first thing to do is to out the bullshitters, the second thing to do is, put it into practice and see if they stop you or not. If they try to stop you, then you can see exactly who the greenwashing bullshitters are. One of the things at the beginning when Joe and I started doing stuff, we would always be knocking around the London markets. Joe would be down Portobello and I'd be over in Camden looking at clothes on the stalls. And in those days you'd go out clubbing and meet people, people that had a different look going on, they'd wear a velvet jacket or something like that. Then you'd turn up at the market stall and literally within a couple of weeks, that stall would be full of velvet jackets that they'd bought up secondhand.

Then you'd see someone like Diesel doing it a season later, some shitty version of a velvet jacket that would never last more than two years. There were two things that we always absolutely knew. Firstly, we knew we didn't want to compete and we could never make it cheaper. So, if someone else was already doing it, then we don't need to and don't want to. And if not cheaper, the only thing is to make it different and we'd only make it different if we thought it was needed or useful. Secondly, if we were going to make it, we would make it strong enough and well enough for it to go back onto the market stall in 25 years’ time.

Seeing the stuff that goes around now, when there are our garments from the 90s that people are still able to use and re-buy and enjoy, that's good. We've achieved something there, we've achieved part of our goal by making some stuff that was never in fashion for everybody, and as it turns out -never out of fashion for everybody either. And well made enough for someone to find a use for, to relate to that use and relate to that wear, and go on to use it again. So I think that's relevant to where we're from. We just wanted to make stuff that lasted.

(BONNIE) That's the obsession maybe, isn't it? For me, if the garment is going to outlive me, that’s the most exciting part. I mean I wear my Vexed, you've seen my work or whatever, I do hold other jackets, ha. But the clothes that I know are capable of outlasting me, I'm going to use them and wear them. I’m not going to hang them up for good. So that's super interesting on a circular level. Ties into the literal message of ‘not for archiving’ also, for wearing, for enjoying.

(ADAM) That story I just told, about how things need to be original and long-lasting, that bit us in the arse. What we didn't account for, for example with the Vexed bag, was when you make something original you're not in control of it. So every other bag maker in the world began making the Vexed bag but didn't make it out of good materials or labour and just contributed to a shit load of landfill. So we were very upset about that because we felt like we ended up as part of the problem rather than actively part of the solution.

(BONNIE) Could you have done anything differently?

(JOE) Well, we maybe could’ve got a little bit more informed about brand and product protection but it costs a lot of money to protect stuff, as I'm sure you're aware. These days it’s the likes of ACID (Anti Copying In Design), still quite a prevalent organisation. They help a lot of emerging designers as well as established, and they work based on volume of membership, that's how they maintain their clout, well that and amazing lawyers. We spent a lot of time thinking about it, getting frustrated about it, making phone calls and writing emails and ultimately we fought one case and they were forced to stop selling their product line, which was literally just down the road from us, three doors away on Berwick Street (Soho, London).

(ADAM) And we were like, you’re really taking the piss.

(JOE) YAK PAK were legit though, we worked with YAK PAK under licence. They were a good bunch of people.

(ADAM) Yeah we had a decent working relationship with them, they ran their own factories in South America, Salvador, but they did have a really solid audit trail and they did take responsibility for the people that were making it.

How did you feel when Kanye said who made this bag, I want this bag?

(JOE) We didn't know about it really, we had quite a few messages. We were actually riding our bikes on the South Downs. I think my phone went off first. Someone said ‘Kanye West wants to speak to you’. ‘Ah for f**k’s sake, don't be stupid’ we said, but it seemed to all add up. Both of our phones were giving us the same message. So okay, something weird is going on here. We went back to Adam's house and spoke to Kanye that evening.

(BONNIE) He worked closely with the founders of a brand I helped out a few years ago. There were five of us, including my two bosses, who were Kanye’s Heads of Design in Paris. We’ve all got an opinion on people who are so culturally dominant I think, right?

(ADAM) Yeah, he's a very creative person. He's very honest, he wears his heart on his sleeve and he's respectful of other people's activity and ideas. The work that we started doing with him when we first met up in Chicago, he was very socially oriented. He wanted to do stuff for the folks in the area he grew up in.

(BONNIE) Yeah, he's in the position to effect huge change on that level.

(ADAM) We’ve always been around very talented and experienced people, you know. There’s a woman called Melanie (Sauze) who used to share a workshop with us. We only had 500 sq feet, we had our half, she had her half and it cost us £30 a week. Joe went to college with her. She used to make guards uniforms in Saville Row years ago and by the time I met her, she was making costumes for theatre and TV. She’d research all this stuff meticulously. Melanie knew how to do everything.

If it was 1870s vs 1830s, she knew the different cuts and lines on things. She was brilliant. She’d say ‘Oh no you're doing it wrong, do it like this’. And Joe and I were both so bloody-minded and uncompromising, we’d say we didn't care and do it our own way. But it meant we ended up in some different places. I often say to my students, that if you ask a different question, you'll get a different answer. If the question isn't what's the price point? What's the quickest way to make this? What's the easiest way to make this? If the question is instead, can you make this out of one piece of cloth? Can you avoid seams? If seams make things more permeable, can we lose them? How can we fold this piece of fabric to do this, that and the other? You know, if you ask yourself different questions, you'll end up with different answers.

(BONNIE) I think this thing about the uncompromising side of Vexed, I mean I hear it in the way you talk and from what I know of you guys over the years. But it does also come across in the fabric choice, in the way that the garments sit on the body. It's hard to verbalise but it's something that is so inherently you in each piece. You can take your Ballistic Parka, of course, it's a cultural reference point these days. But the more lowkey stuff, the Stretch Seam, the Tectonic, the denim, even in their simplicity, there’s the uncompromising aspect. So somehow it's translated into the garments, beyond your personalities or beyond function.

(ADAM) We did take a very long time to do everything. To make that first 7-part collection, took around 2 years.

(JOE) Yeah, I think it was slightly less than that. We started in 1994 and we opened our first shop, I might be wrong, but the first shop was towards the end of 1995.

(ADAM) I've got sketches around what we were doing with the date ’93 in the corner of it.

(JOE) As we became better known, because of the press and of the Japanese and Scandinavian buyers being really into the functions and explanations of Vexed pieces, we were put under pressure to do more stuff, more often. We were in a real dilemma about that. Adam, I remember, was pretty adamant that it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't going to work and it wasn't right with what we were trying to do.

(BONNIE) That's a fashion compromise, isn't it? An industry compromise. Speed up because we can sell it!

(JOE) Yeah, and we had the pressures of life too. Of paying our employees and also the pressure of moving forward, so where is that compromise actually going to happen? And we tried, we worked with some real fashion types, good people, well-meaning people, but ultimately they pushed us and pushed us and it didn't really work. Some of the pieces we did for them, they're not on anyone's radar. I don't even know where those pieces are. Some are only made sample stage because ultimately they weren't that Vexed. We were being asked to make stuff out of nylon and polyester because of the association with the performance side of what we did. But to make it cheaper and with no performance.

(ADAM) They would say ‘That price point is too high’. Well, it's not too high, it's just what it costs. We've got no margin on that, just paying people decently to make it down the road, because we want to create employment locally. Doing it like that, that's what the build costs, using that fabric, that's what the fabric costs. We can't get it cheaper, if you can, then happy days. They said to us ‘It’s a black jacket- a black jacket that says Gucci on it, people know what they're paying for’. What? A Gucci marketing campaign? haha. ‘Your stuff doesn't say Vexed on it and the performance is invisible’. So as far as most of the fashion buyers were concerned, it was a really expensive black jacket, made of material they hadn't f**king heard of, hah.

(JOE) The great thing was though, because this conversation was already had, we knew our stuff inside out. From fibre to laminate or coating to styling and primarily, why we had done it in the first place. So we spent a lot of time talking to buyers. If Harvey Nichols or Harrods came to our office in Hoxton, they knew they would be there for some time because we wanted to explain the stuff that Adam just described, the invisible. There was value in the words that we gave them. One of the problems of being a secondary retailer of Vexed Generation, was that the sales team didn't have all the knowledge that we’d given first hand to the buyer. So the department stores had to put a system in place to get the buyers to translate their intricate knowledge to the sellers, the people on the shop floor, because of how those businesses are built. Of course, it was okay with the smaller boutiques.

(ADAM) Yeah, the smaller boutiques buzzed on it didn't they? They wanted to tell those stories and wanted to have those conversations. It’s the people who are enthused over the garments that carry those stories forward still. Joe, remember when our mate got stopped in, where was it? Jamaica?

(JOE) Venezuela.

(ADAM) Our friend got off a flight back then and was making his way down the road in Venezuela when someone stopped him and said ‘Is that a Vexed bag’? It’s incredible, ha.

(JOE) Just to cap that off, about stories and intricate details. It was ridiculous how often we went from Hoxton into Soho to do a radio or TV interview or publication, it took up so much time- but that was part of the whole Vexed thing, it was about communication. The amount of times we must've said ‘This is designed to promote and provoke debate and to create conversations in the community’. That's why we did it. Part of our remit was, let's try and create an offering to the British public that isn't American Skate-wear. But the main reason was to bring forth and discuss the issues that we thought were important.

(ADAM) You've got this thing about the balance between pure function and finesse Bonnie, haven’t you? I just wanted to share this thing with you about our process. Joe, jump in but I think I'm speaking for both of us on this. We used to spend days and days, working through the night often, not even on a deadline- but because we were just trying to work out what was going on with something. And there might have been lots of reasons for why our heads were in that space but you really did feel like you were on a journey of discovery, like something was revealing itself to you. I was going to say lots of these things happen by accident, but they weren't accidents. Then I was going to say serendipity. But we were definitely looking for it. We knew it was there and the word for that is prospecting. When I think of our design process, I would use the word prospecting. It's almost like you know you can do it, you just don't know how, and so you keep digging and scratching around with your pattern paper and your specs on your garments. And part of that is probably because we weren't as skilled as we needed to be, so we took a long time. You're thinking about stuff and talking about stuff and all of it is this process of explanation, discovery, meaning and making.

(JOE) I mean let's face it, we’ve worked with some organisations where all the requirements ask is let's design a jacket, let’s think about some detail to go onto that jacket and that’s very often what fashion is. Fashion isn't that deep. What we've tried to do I think, is to satisfy a brief, and load it full of content that we think is important. It varies but often the brief is closely linked to utility, or privacy, or community, or labour, you know all the stuff we try to satisfy within one garment or one collection, it's quite a hard thing to achieve so I don't think it's about not being good enough, we set ourselves quite a tricky task in the first place.

(BONNIE) Do you think because of that process, you were quite tenacious with it, working through the night or the uncompromising element again, do you think it is that you two are good examples of designers that do it to such a level?

(ADAM) I think part of it is that we don't actually find it very easy. It takes us a long time, but we really care. Another part of it is about meaning, all of us want our lives to be meaningful, and we want the things we do each day to have meaning. It's like you're trying to find this by prospecting, by looking for meaning and shape and solution. Yeah, it's just got to be meaningful. As Joe described, we're not interested in just making another jacket.

(BONNIE) I mean, what’s the point these days.

(ADAM) Exactly Bonnie, and it's never been about the money. So if it's not about the money, then what's it about? It's got to be about something else, it's got to be about meaning.

(BONNIE) And if you take that approach of substance, values, intention, then of course you're going to make it harder for yourself, no? That's the grandest scale you can design from.

(JOE) Yeah! Which is sometimes why it isn't so much a commercial piece. When you're in business there has to be a degree of commercialism about how you operate, just so you can survive initially. You have to be able to make something and sell it, if you can't do that then you can't continue. We used to come up with an idea or want to create a solution or find a new way of ventilating or expanding. In the earlier pieces, it was very much bolting it all together and trying to satisfy our own ambition in our own particular way. We spent a lot of time feeling our way through the processes and building our own semi self-taught skill set. I remember fighting with patterns and fabrics to see how they'd work together. We had a bit of an inkling, we had some experience and obviously, we had our own particular angles of aesthetic from what others had done in the past. We made it a kind of rule within our own brains to not take any notice of what anyone else was doing or had done. Which made it so our own ideas weren't necessarily corrupted or influenced too much. I guess in many ways it gave us a strange sort of naive advantage, that we were working things through in our own particular way and coming up with stuff that looked quite different to what others had done. What do you think, Adam?

(ADAM) If we accepted the way that other people started doing it, then maybe we wouldn't have been inspired as much to continue to explore it, you know. I think that thing of challenging yourself is important. Because we made a huge amount of mistakes, a lot of what we did was patched on, bolted together and wasn't very sophisticated at the beginning. But we always had these ambitions for what it could be. Yeah, over the years, we've learnt to know what we're doing a bit more.

(BONNIE) Feels a bit Frankenstein at first, like the wills there.

(ADAM) Yeah, that first Ballistic Parka was a crazy amount of pattern pieces, wasn't it?

(BONNIE) I f**king bet it was (laughter).

(JOE) Hah, it was a real pain in the arse to put together. I seem to remember we made quite a lot of those early samples in denim. You know, I think we chose that because it was a sort of readily available, kind of utilitarian fabric with a bit of weight to it. But what we didn't necessarily appreciate was putting those chest pockets on the parka, going around those corners and sewing the zip almost inside out. The amount of times we'd have to unpick it because it had stretched. I seem to remember quite a lot of frustration, as well as quite a lot of joy from some of the results in the very early days. Thinking about some of the other stuff we've made, you know, the later pieces ’98, ’99, 2000, there were a lot of smart ideas, quite a lot of well cut things.

Actually, after talking with other designers and curators, some of us see you as tailors, post '98. Your jackets do feel like suit jackets, and empower you as a suit does. The silhouette, the shape. Whatever you do, that makes it yours, it gives the same assurance as putting on a well-fitting suit.

(JOE) Well, that's very kind.

(ADAM) Around that, we owe a lot to a tailor we both met, Alex. We went to him with all these patterns we’d made and he would advise us on the tailoring, you know, like the shoulders are too wide etc. So that's where the smarter jacket came from. We had one with the zip up the front and one with zips up the side. So we had double-breasted and single-breasted shapes. Then we had the pleated shoulder seam where we were trying to work out ways to get expansion. Then the Stretch Seam is the sort of dispensation of the Tectonic Jacket and the Tectonic was basically, how can you use a non-stretch fabric and get a close fit to the body and still be flexible? Tectonic protective plates, on a stretch framework.

On that tectonic thing. Levi’s® around the time, began their Engineered line. That evolved into stuff that looked a lot like Vexed. I actually wear your Stretch Seam the most. It's like couture. But in a technical sense, you know? It fits very close to the body, but still expands and moves with you.

(ADAM) Yeah, it’s cut so nicely that it works. And that was the whole point. A lot of those fabrics, you can't cut super close to the body because they're non-stretch, or they weren't able to have every performance characteristic you were after. That's why you end up with things like stretch seams, so you could go close and still have mobility and freedom of movement in an uncompromising ballistic nylon. Have you ever seen the one where it's a pleated shoulder, Bonnie?

(BONNIE) Didn't you do it in like a cool Blu-Tack blue colour? They had this concertina-type shoulder and arm.

(ADAM) Ah, that's the Fan Pleat. A different way of doing flexibility.

(JOE) Yeah, there was a jacket, skirt and trousers. They were nice. When you started to pleat it out, you got this little natural rise which shortens as it comes in.

(BONNIE) That was like a fishtail, kind of. Super cool to see in technical fabrics.

(JOE) Majocchi ballistic, that was.

(ADAM) Before that, we had Wrap Liberation. Which was basically a waistcoat. We did men's and women's, with sleeves and without, in some different fabrics. It's about taking something around incarceration and making it about emancipation. So we had a kind of straight jacket that had these zips that ran down the outside. Part of it was about mental health. And part of it was about the idea that you can't entirely dispose of stuff. So the straight jacket becomes this thing that is actually utilitarian. The pattern cutting on that was fun. You could store things in it, a zip down the back opened up into an A4 document pocket. The sides allowed for smaller items, wallets, back then, early mobile phone models. That was a journey. We did a reverse armscye. So it's a really nice pleat over the shoulder, especially on the women's one. It was a bit like a stingray when it was laid flat.

(JOE) Yeah, we made some films around the wrap too, and had a little viewing.

  Wrap Liberation from Westminster Menswear Archive

(ADAM) Did you ever come across Dior’s ‘Normandie’, Bonnie? We came across this jacket, it was in Modern Review (90s disruptive magazine). They used to do a fashion feature now and then. And they had this page where they were talking about the Normandie. And it was really fascinating. So, Christian Dior designed it in Normandy. The Normandie was a jacket that was absolutely tailored, but it had no arms. And there are two arguments about it. Because Dior, he retreated during the German occupation of France and fled to Normandy. That was where his family holiday home was and part of the arguments around the Normandie jacket is that the reason it had no arms was because it was talking about the constraints of occupation. Then there's another argument from the time, that the reason it had no arms was because it was so immaculately coutured in every other sense. It was actually about the utmost in luxury, where you could do nothing for yourself, others would do it for you. You didn't need your arms. So there are these two different arguments which resonate around it. He never put the Normandie down the catwalk until his very last show. But yeah, Christian Dior was a social scientist, wasn't he, before he was a designer.

(BONNIE) Dior huh, very interesting. Garment design through a socio-scientific lens. Maybe fashion itself is incarceration and emancipation but looped, ha. So what were the different fabrics for Wrap Liberation?

(ADAM) We made them in Corwool®, which was Majocchi. And we did them in that weird velvety stuff. With a kind of neoprene. Was it like a velvet neoprene, Joe?

(JOE) Yeah, we've still got a few pieces made from that, but it doesn't like time.

(BONNIE) Who does?

(JOE) Ballistic doesn't mind time. I've got my old parka that was at the bottom of a box that got wet, at our last storage unit. Even though most of it was plastic, its zip still managed to seize up. But the ballistic didn't show any signs of being in a mouldy box. Nothing at all.

(BONNIE) That's impressive, no? The fascination with durability continues. I'm so in awe of material that can protect and outlast me and my outer shell, ha.

(JOE) Yeah, a lot of it has been around protective capabilities. Whether it was against the weather or against uncivil civilians, or police or whatever. It was our way of dealing with sustainability really, to make it last as long as you possibly can, out of the best materials that you can find. I was working in the recycling game at the time. And it was a quandary but there weren't obvious solutions, apart from this attitude of longevity. It's not like it is today where you can go out and buy a fibre, a beautiful piece of fabric made from an old pineapple you know, it's just phenomenal. It’s the future.

(BONNIE) Yeah, look at Bolt Threads, Orange Fiber, Spiber’s Brewed Protein™, MycoTEX. But its access to these early regenerative fibres and materials still. I agree it's the future, well this or no new products.

(JOE) I think sustainability is essentially dead and the future is regenerative, no? I mean, scientists, academics, reputable minds in the industry seem to echo this thought. That’s part of the challenge of designing, isn’t it? Because we've said to ourselves we don't really want to put any more stuff out there, until we've got a suitable philosophy that is everlasting, as best we can at this point in humanity.

(ADAM) Just thinking about what you're saying there Bonnie, about not buying new stuff.

(BONNIE) Yeah, moving towards a no new products system or designing only for lifetime use.

(ADAM) It is about repairing. We’ve done some damage and we’ve got to put it right now. It’s like Jonathan Chapman. The idea of things having different sorts of value that means you want to hold on to them, not replace them. So I guess not buying new, has a relationship to the emotional durability stuff he's spoken about for years. But then, what does that look like when it's not just words on a page? I think it's gone from personal, objective, emotional durability to almost a cultural durability. Some of what people like yourself and ourselves are very interested in, in terms of how products are able to last and move through time. So, where there is a physical durability, that supports cultural durability. And it can be used, touched and appreciated over time.

(BONNIE) Or at least the potential for cultural durability is greater, the longer a garment or object lasts. Moving through time, that's a cool way to visualise it.

Ok, Vexed Generation clothing labels. ‘Made in England’. It couldn't possibly be patriotism in the way people would usually decode a ‘Made in England’ message, could it?

(ADAM) It’s localism, not nationalism. So made locally, can you develop skills or provide employment on your doorstep? Can you keep an eye on wages and conditions? So the people that are making the clothes could afford to buy them? I mean, I'm not sure if we have achieved any of that, but that was the thinking around making it locally in England. That we would know the people who made it and visit them and make sure they were paid a good wage. Also to check the stuff we were making wasn't too expensive. We never really knew how to price things when they originally came out. We didn't have a pricing model. It was like ok, we can make this margin and this is what it costs us to make it in hours. So how much do you charge for that? We never had any money or investment. But the idea was that people who were making it might be able to afford to buy it. And we liked that idea.

Did you have a benchmark with other people doing more conscious things, around the same time? Beyond- it cost us X amount of fabric, it cost us X amount of manpower. Was there anything new in this way yet?

(ADAM) Not really, I think people just thought we were a bit slow. They thought we were wilfully bad at business. We had people from France coming and saying ‘Oh why don't we do a deal with you where we take your designs and we’ll deal with manufacture’. And then, ‘well we’re in Japan’ saying the same thing, Italy saying the same thing. It’s very generous of them and quite flattering. But at the same time, no, that’s not what we were about. It's another thing though, if we could make original designs that people wanted and that gave the opportunity to create our own little part of the ecosystem, that ran how we wanted it to, locally.

(BONNIE) It is flattering for sure. There are lots of brands nowadays, where flattery would compromise their ethics. So I still think it's great that you guys held on to, as you describe it, your little corner, your own ecosystem that's working for you and those involved. It's quite rare still, especially in the 2020s, where you need to collaborate with larger, less ethical brands to scale, maybe.

(JOE) You know that word that Adam used earlier on, us being bloody-minded. It feels as though we worked incredibly hard. I mean, it's kind of difficult to recall 25 years ago, you can't quite imagine how you had all of that energy and health all the time, to put into what you were doing. When you look at all the various bits and pieces, it was really hard work. It was really good fun too. It was experimental, and a bit of a design evolution stroke education to a degree, you know. We were learning so much all the time, how patterns worked or whether it was all working, talking to fabric mills slightly later on. And ultimately, in the end, it was a real compliment that some of the mills actually turned around to us and said, well, what do you want? Which was amazing. The sheer bloody-mindedness, the fact that if you didn't read our philosophy on our website and just went straight to the online shop, you’d get kicked out for 24 hours, it’s commercial suicide. It's ludicrous. But actually, it's all part and parcel of the same train of thought. The same desire to promote what we thought was right.

It was 20-somethings, it was ‘this is what we think and this is what we're going to say until people hear us’. We were very lucky in the fact that we did things in a different way. And we surrounded ourselves with very talented people. Like-minded, to a degree, you know. But the amount that came on board, who were so skilled, who are still active in design these days. Without them, we couldn't have done it and they probably wouldn't be where they are now, too. We really rubbed along together and we all worked our arses off. We were keen to actually be heard. What we did was based around social facts at the time, you know? It was right in front of us. We were in the middle of it.

Vexed Generation website message, from Joe’s personal collection

(BONNIE) We could talk for hours solely on Vexed retail spaces and your approach to brand loyalty through a kind of set of social requisites. The detail in the architecture of your stores was crazy and so customer-collaborative, right? The ‘slow graffiti’ name tags, the individual pennies proving anti-theft via safety in numbers. The physical impressions taken from the feet of shoppers as a kind of rudimentary database. When people talk about your ethics and motivation as a brand, a lot comes back to the CJA (Criminal Justice Act) and CCTV surveillance links, the things that you are prominently attached to still. In 2023, we live life on camera.

So, is wearing Vexed Generation activism?

(ADAM) Well, in recent years, based on stuff we've read since. There are different ways of talking about design that seem to fit Vexed, as a way of describing what it was we were doing and are doing now. It’s about the idea that you can shift from markets and products to ‘publics’ and ‘things’. There's John Dewey right, in 1927 he said there's no such thing as the general public. There is only the public snapping into being, around issues of concern. That people assemble around issues of concern and problems. So then Bruno Latour, Thomas Binder and those guys talk about the idea of ‘things’ which, according to them- we design things, we talk about these things, a bit like the three of us right now, being a socio-material assembly. And they talk about the idea of the roundhouse, the Nordic sort of Viking roundhouse, where they say- it is the space itself, it's the table, it's where the chairs are.

It's also where you sit, who talks first and how you talk, not just the objects, the objects and the action. And to culturally entwine like this, the whole thing is bound up. And that’s a ‘socio-material assembly’. So it's an assembly of material things and social ways of interacting around them. It isn't about the product being static or transactional and sold. That it’s actually to do with the relationships that are around ‘things’. I mean, this must resonate with you Bonnie in all the work that you do for Not For Archiving™. These aren't just products. These aren't just material things. They are the material elements of this sort of assemblage that creates a focus and contributes to the social interaction around the object.

(BONNIE) This for me, is the most important part.

(ADAM) Yeah, of course, products become ‘things’ in this context. If you just buy it and sell it, it's a product. But if it’s not just about the buying and selling of products, then the market is not just a market anymore, it becomes a ‘public’. And these objects become ‘things’ because they're imbued in their relationship to culture and society. So basically the design of a garment becomes something more.

(BONNIE) The ‘thing’ being the magnet for society.

(ADAM) Yeah, I thought you’d be interested, as you’re into all that stuff.

(BONNIE) I'm so into it. Raison d’être.

(ADAM) The language is out there. You know, they’ve got these theories. We didn't know about them when we were doing our original thing. But it's interesting, you come across these ideas that describe a bit of what we were doing then, and are now. So I don't think it's a political act or activism as such, to wear Vexed, but our clothing is and was designed to enable people to do what they wanted to do.

Tell me about the Vexed Generation logo?

(ADAM) Okay, so the first thing that we did with Vexed Generation was that record, the vinyl. We were doing the clothing in parallel to that. The bag and what have you. But yeah, it really was as simple as taking the Star Trek logo, the original one, and moving it upside down. Next Generation. Vexed Generation. We knew we wanted to be Vexed Generation, then we thought it'd be amusing to take the shield thing, putting it the other way around. Later on, Joe and I did a different variation on the Vexed logo, after working with Graphic Designer, Keith Gray (Nike, Umbro, Berghaus, Speedo). That was the V in the circle.

Original Logo

New Logo

(BONNIE) Remember the tags where there are all the colour references to the stealth stuff? It’s like a system for Vexed Generation, that has all these circles of colours, presented a bit like Pantone references. That was Keith I think?

(ADAM) Yeah, that might be the swing tags, Joe? When we did the Stealth Utility stuff. I mean, that was a sort of tagging system that stated what the functionality was. It’s like, we’ve made some tech stuff. It's more aspirational, haha. We’ve got it 75% of the way there, hah. It was really, really good as it was. Along the way, no one else was even having a go at that time so, you know.

(BONNIE) Yeah, of course. 75% technically advanced is better than 0%. That's great.

Keith Gray’s design work for Vexed Generation

(ADAM) More recently, the Vexed logo- the angle of the V, that's the rotational axis of the Earth. So you could imagine it being on the side of a spaceship, having some fundamental language to it.

(BONNIE) It's become one of the most covetable labels inside a jacket, perhaps.

(ADAM) Originally that logo was just for record labels. So it's just stuck in the middle of a bit of vinyl. It was for merchandising, so the first thing me and Joe did was, we did those panelled t-shirts Joe, didn’t we?

(JOE) Have you seen those panelled T-shirts, Bonnie?

(ADAM) We vacuum-packed them, didn’t we? A bit like Star Trek t-shirts. One is all black, and another, white and black.

(JOE) And then we had one with white ripstop nylon translate to semi-transparent nylon. I don't think there are many left. I think they were what you might call, quite well-fitted, and they tended to split, ha.

(ADAM) I love that, Joe. Saying they were ‘quite well-fitted’. Is that the terminology for when it bursts at the seams? (laughter).

(JOE) They were tight, alright? Haha. A friend had one in its bag, but he lent it to some journalist, who then apparently lost it, whatever that word lost actually means. Apart from that, there’s barely any. It was for the V&A originally.

(ADAM) So basically that was the first product that we did for Vexed wasn't it? We had the music stuff and then this first product was vacuum-packed in a foil bag with a Vexed manifesto. Which had the single phrase ‘protect and survive’ on it. It listed CCTV, air quality and civil liberties and pulled out a few of the stats on it. And that was the start of it. We did that catwalk. Joe, do you remember, in Spitalfields Market? It was part of London’s Sustainable Fashion Week thing when we were just finding our feet. We got people off the street to come in and wear the pieces. We made all these little placards that people marched up and down with. We had lyric sheets for Self-Preservation Society (The Italian Job, 1969). You remember, Joe? We did a singalong which was the soundtrack to our impromptu demonstration, haha.

(BONNIE) It's impossible not to whistle it, ha.

(JOE) People did have a little singalong.

(ADAM) We did! We were like come on sing up, sing up!

(BONNIE) Any footage of that? Have you had anything that you've got, digitised or archived properly?

(JOE) Unfortunately no footage. 99% of our records are pre-digital. Anything we have is knackered or lost. I mean, we’ve got a whole bunch of press. We've got DVDs of some of the video stuff. We’ve moved a few times. A lot of chaos. Filing cabinets full of stuff. But it all got kind of raided. We didn't really have a mindset to look after very much.

Film images of the Vexed shop, from Joe’s personal collection

(ADAM) You know, we did a collection once called Broke, Bitter and Twisted which let us create a bunch of Situationist stuff that somehow wasn't as easy to do through Vexed, because of a different sort of narrative around it. So Joe, our friend Nicky Two Pints (Nic Jones, Co-founder of Surface to Air) and me, put together Broke, Bitter and Twisted. We’d literally read the papers in the morning and smash out t-shirts in the afternoon. That was a lot of fun. My favourite one we did, this is where it links to The Situationists, we had one embroidered. Do you remember those kiddie magnets? With the rounded typeface that you’d have on the fridge or at school? It was embroidered on the front of the t-shirt- ‘these tiny stitches are sewn by tiny hands’. And we actually sold them through Urban Outfitters, haha. It was there on the hanger, alongside all the other t-shirts (laughter).

(BONNIE) F**king hell, haha.

(ADAM) Yeah, that was a proper coup that one, haha.

(BONNIE) This stuff is gold. Are you still working with these types of ideas?

(JOE) Well, I do think it causes a bit of amusement when you try and describe where an idea comes from. I was reading a presentation that we put together for Louis Vuitton, back in 2009. There were reference points on there that had nothing to do with clothes or bags or anything close to fashion. There was a picture of the sliding mechanism that you get on a kitchen drawer or a soft-top closing bin. Using them as reference points in your own head, but then using them to try and get somebody else to understand what you want to achieve. It's about the ethos of the idea rather than, oh let's make a bag that looks like a bin.

(ADAM) You're saying we made the LV thing look like a bin, ha?

(JOE) No, haha.

(BONNIE) I get it. I was trying to describe this pocket idea. A pocket that could hold quite a lot of volume but can deconstruct flat against the body. Not completely flush, but it packs down. It had this ‘lid’ in my mind. I was on a call, trying to show how this ‘lid' would fasten. It's all from the top of a Smarties tube. When Smarties ditched plastic lids, they used a cardboard mechanism on the packet that never failed. I was trying to show the correlation. I got a few smiles. It’s nice to talk about this stuff, ha.

(ADAM) Yeah, we had a whole list of principles for Louis. I think the one that Joe is referring to ended up being assistive and affirmative. And that's what the fixings had to be. So basically, assistive- in the same way that those kitchen drawers assist when you push them in, they open themselves. So that translated back then, as those magnetic fastenings. As you twist them, they push themselves apart.

(BONNIE) Because of the force. Gives you that little assist.

(ADAM) Exactly. And the affirmative was that when you twist it in, it’s like CHHHCK. So for every element, we ended up coming up with these principles that had to underpin the whole design of it. That was with Cuben actually, Dyneema®. Back then, when we found it, it was not cheap.

(BONNIE) It was Cuben Fiber® then, yeah. It’s still pretty expensive.

(ADAM) Yeah, Cuben was the brand name then, it was cool. And we first found that being used on an early website, built for people who walk the Appalachian Trail. So there's not much water along that route. And any extra weight you carry wants to be water. And so these guys spend all of their time asking how can we get everything else to be as light as possible? So they weigh the contents of their backpacks. And they're like ‘Oh actually, the end of a balloon is the lightest thing to use’. They meant that just cutting off that little weld on the end of a balloon is better than carrying elastic bands by 0.001 of a gram. Then the fabric they would all go on about was this Cuben. And me and Joe were like ‘what’s Cuben, what’s this Cuben?’.

So we started digging around trying to find out what it was, ‘oooh, it's Dyneema’. And so we specced up Dyneema® for this Louis Vuitton bag. Then we were interested in how LV gets ripped off all over the place. If they don't work hard enough to make products that are difficult to do, then others will do it too. As long as you're going to make your money out of a piece of PVC with a print on it, then don't be surprised when everyones ripping you off, ha. So for LV, what we were saying was, what if we were able to lay-up fibres, just as printers, printing yacht sails in 3D do? What if we could have these ateliers, where you are hand-laying over formers with Dyneema®. Basically making your yacht sails, but at a bag’s scale. Then you could treat them, so they're solid in certain areas and flexible in others, with no seams. It was quite nice, the bag design, we had all the runoff sorted. We had a type of backpack and a shoulder bag. It was pretty cool.

(BONNIE) How come it didn't happen?

(ADAM) We fell out, didn’t we? We always fall out, ha.

(JOE) No, we didn’t fall out with them, they fell out with each other - or at least the people we were working with moved around and it lost momentum.

(ADAM) That happens more than you’d like - good work never leaving the studio. They come along and they give you a name for a concept they’ve got but not worked out yet, like I don’t know, Supermodern Nomad. So we’d go away and research to try and understand what that might become. Then we try to characterise their concept into, let's say, a backpack and do a great job where you’re inventing materials and a whole new paradigm for how the backpack will work. And as a result, they can describe the concept as a backpack. If they can understand the concept as a backpack, then they can realise it through any number of products in a range. So they give you X amount of money to work out a backpack and inadvertently you do the whole concept development thing. And obviously, a normal sensible person gives the client X amount of money’s worth of work. But Joe and I can’t help ourselves.

As soon as we get the opportunity to use big brand names to open doors and that then, everybody in the world will give us a go on their fabric, or let us think up the craziest stuff we can envisage- all under their IP, we just gave way too much. So when these guys said ‘We really like it, so you guys make it for us’. Er, ‘we can, but it's a lot of work. Isn’t it up to you to make it?’. ‘Well, it’s in the contract that you have to make it, if we say so’. We just thought that was rude. It's like mate, you’ve had your money's worth. We’re not going to run around for 6 months making it all for you, on top of over-delivering. Yeah, we're not doing that. And by the time we’d had those discussions, the people we were working with had moved on. So in this case, we never got beyond the LV prototype we made in the Vexed studio, though we’d like to make the real thing as originally intended, one day.

(BONNIE) I hope you get to make it with Louis, too. As much as I wished Vexed Generation had more output or was more obtainable, at least more people have learnt about you because of its rarity.

(ADAM) Yeah, well we're actually going to be reissuing the Vexed Ninja through Public Atelier.

Vexed Ninja, 1994

(BONNIE) That’s ace! So more people can have access to it? Public Atelier? Using lots of makers?

(ADAM) Yes. If we can find the right local makers around the globe. And to spin the wheels of Public Atelier. Which isn't that dissimilar to your seamstress platform, Bonnie. Do you know Fab City? That’s like the stuff that you were doing. Basically, the materials stay in your city and go round and round. So the idea is you have these circular cities where materials and physical stuff are local and circular, and you shift only the knowledge and designs around globally. The narrative around the Fab City model is ‘move bits, not atoms’. So we shift the knowledge and designs around digitally. But the physical stuff is circular and remains local. Then you don't have to be moving stuff from one side of the planet to the other. But you can use knowledge and designs from the rest of the world. We're playing with that, with local garment manufacturing.

(JOE) Yeah, we're interested in the convenience of digital platforms, and what digital platforms can contribute. We know that digital typically is used for transactional, so we're interested in how you can use digital for relational and not just virtual relational but real life relational. The vision is that you can connect people to others up the road from them, that can make the thing they need.

(BONNIE) Yeah, I was building something similar for a few years. The clothing repair platform partners expert seamstresses with brands wanting to bolt on a repair service for customers and then also individuals wanting to repair and alter their clothes. Before that, a similar platform matching those in need of work and income, to local skills demand. I’ve always tried to be the connector I think, scaling circular platforms.

(ADAM) Exactly yeah, we call it Public Atelier.

(BONNIE) System-changing propositions at scale, it’s all about systemic change. Well, I can’t wait to see how it all grows. Let's chat again when it’s underway. And for now guys, thank you so much for everything. I can’t tell you how much I’ve loved talking with you like this and hope people will enjoy reading this kinda podcast-paced piece.

---

Finishing Words from Bonnie

Firstly, a huge thanks to fashion creative Joe Barrowclift. For all the support with transcribing and trawling through hours of audio, late at night, which AI could not fathom. Thank you, Joe. Look forward to seeing your work grow. Follow Joe here @joebarrowclift.

Hunter is course leader in Fashion Foundation at the University of East London, focusing on the environment, social issues and how we communicate through design. He also runs JVXD as his outlet for further social commentary. He and Adam co-own Vexed Generation and have consulted for Puma, Adidas, Louis Vuitton, Yeezy and more. @jvxdprint

Thorpe is a professor of socially responsive design with Central Saint Martins, UAL. Where he leads the Public Collaboration Lab, a platform for knowledge exchange and research around participatory design for social innovation.

Not For Archiving™ is a clothing platform, focused on technical design and materials in emotional context, founded by Bonnie Carr. Carr is currently researching Regenerative Design and future clothing systems at Central Saint Martins, after championing the clothing repairs industry. @notforarchiving

Copyright B.Carr © 2023. All rights reserved.

Images courtesy of Joe Hunter, Adam Thorpe, Majotech, Luna Rossa Foundation Prada, Westminster Menswear Archive, Discogs and Wikimedia. Sincere thanks.