Indie Rocks: Article For Leeds Loves Shopping Guide

Last month I wrote an article for the Leeds Loves Shopping guidebook. For those of you who have not seen the piece, here it is: 

Leeds’ independent and vintage shopping scene is undergoing something of a resurgence at the moment and it all adds to the fantastic mix and variety this city has to offer.

I witnessed this first-hand during the ‘Leeds in Barcelona’ project earlier this year.

We invited some of the most influential bloggers, trend researchers and cool hunters from Barcelona to see Leeds and discover for themselves what the city has to offer. Despite being greatly impressed by Leeds’ high-profile attractions such as the Victoria Quarter and Harvey Nichols, our visitors focused more on the ‘underground’ aspect of Leeds including Kirkgate Market, our many vintage stores and our independent designers. Those that came under the spotlight included Blue Rinse, Best Vintage, American Vintage in the city centre and Vintage Wardrobe in Headingley.

That this focus came via some of Europe’s most prominent bloggers and trend hunters, sends a clear message that Leeds has an ‘underground’ that could attract international interest and admiration. We have some really interesting designers, stores and venues in the city and should be proud of them.

Nicole from Vintage Wardrobe said of the visit: “The Barcelona project gave independent shop owners, such as myself, amazing opportunities to network with like minded people from all over Europe. The project opened doors to a fascinating vibrant international vintage scene.

"Leeds is becoming renowned for its vintage scene due to the thriving student population. There are an abundance of excellent vintage shops in the city, each with their own unique style and character. This variety makes Leeds a haven for vintage lovers of all ages!"

During the ‘Leeds in Barcelona’ project we held photo-shoot featuring Leeds designers and models but styled and managed by our guests from Barcelona. We held the photo-shoot at the amazing Temple Works in Holbeck. This provided a cool setting to showcase Leeds talent and provided a totally different look and feel to our city’s international image.

Leeds designers Dom, Dick & Harry, Kelly Ewing and James Steward featured during the shoot. Steward, whose work has been seen on high profile celebrities such as Victoria Beckham and Kylie Minogue, certainly felt the international exposure is great for Leeds designers:

“It’s always an honour to be involved in these projects” said Steward “Leeds in Barcelona worked by generating a huge amount of interest in the James Steward brand, and in Leeds as a city both through individuals and the media. Next stop is Leeds in Vancouver, an amazing project which sees Lisa Jayne Dann and I show our S/S11 collections at Vancouver Fashion Week. The opportunity here is incredible; with international media and buyers attending the event, it’s the perfect way of showcasing the wealth of design talent here in the city – we couldn’t have done it without the support of Marketing Leeds.”

I speak regularly with people in the independent and vintage scene and there is certainly an undercurrent of excitement at the attention generated by projects like ‘Leeds in Barcelona’. By creating interesting international collaborations we can show the world some of the interesting things going on in Leeds and provide the city’s best talent a platform to showcase their work to a global audience.

Leeds Retail Therapy Awards

This past Sunday we attended the Retail Therapy Awards at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. The show is now in it's sixth year and this year attracted almost 32,000 votes from the public on who are their favorite retailers in Leeds. The night has an intimate atmosphere as most of the retailers seemed to know each other. It was nice to see that when an award was given to a shop, the other stores will cheer for them.

This bond is really visible between the independent retailers. Check out the video above of Rose & Co giving their speech about the independent scene in Leeds (Rose & Co won best womenswear)

See the winners here

Clash of The Titans: Rebecca Charles & James Steward Showcase

Last week we attended 'Clash of the Titans' at the Rebecca Charles salon in Leeds. James and Rebecca are two of the most respected creatives in Leeds and it was great to see the two of them team up on this project.

The evening was an intimate affair where we had a look at some of Jame's designs from his Autumn / Winter 2010 collection. After an introduction from Sam Ward, Rebecca provided commentary on the season's latest hair trends as the models made their way downstairs and showcased some of the amazing designs from James.

We always love intimate events like this, it always feels more personal and exclusive and the evening created even more excitement about the 'Leeds in Vancouver' project that we are all looking forward to.

Leeds Loves Shopping: Style House Thoughts

Friday, Day 1

The main highlight of the first day of the style house for us was the 'Vancouver Send Off' for Leeds designers heading out to showcase at Vancouver Fashion Week. Lee actually wrote a guest blog post for the Guardian Leeds about this here. From my point of view it was cool to see the room full of influential bloggers and fashion people in the city gathering to show support for the project.

Also earlier in the first day we have the SHE Magazine 'SHE DRESS-O-S'. During this show they gave us a few themes of this winter's look. They used high street brands to show how to re-create some of the catwalk trends we have seen for this season. This event is definitely for the public and everyone in the crowd seemed to enjoy it.

Saturday, Day 2

Saturday featured high street brands such as Harvey Nichols, GAP and Dr Martins.

Harvey Nichols used the event to showcase some of their more affordable brands and did so in an interesting way by using models of different sizes.

GAP put on an excellent show. Presented by their in-store staff, they showed ways to mix and match this winter for men, women and children. The presenters seemed to really know what they were talking about and spoke a lot about the way their clothes are made and the materials used, I found this interesting.

Before the event I had been looking forward to the Bobbi Brown show. It was a bit of a let-down. On stage we had two models being made up but they did not communicate very well how to apply the look yourself. This could of been a lot better.

Sunday, Day 3

On Sunday we stopped by the check out the How Bizaar show which focused on some of the brands and work coming out of Leeds Kirkgate Market. How Bizaar is an initiative set up to help and promote local design talent and give a platform for people to sell their work. The designers spoke about how shoppers can go into the market and be custom fitted and created together with the designer which is cool.

On a side note Lee and I spoke about the market a lot and from a fashion point of view, there are so many interesting things that could happen in there. If it focused on fabrics, buttons, and even some vintage it could begin to build a very interesting community and brand. We can see that there is the starting point for this, with some of the great fabric and haberdashery stalls already in the market, but there is even more potential to explore in this area.

Overall

The Style House was a good way for some of the brands and stores in Leeds to showcase to the public. It was nice to see people coming in from Briggate to see the shows. Looking around Leeds, lots of stores including Gap, Primark, Joy and others were displaying the Leeds Loves Shopping brand in the windows so in terms of visibility and interaction with the public this year was a good event.

Leeds City Centre Vision Conference 2010

Last Friday I attended the City Centre Vision Conference at Clarence Dock, Leeds. I had immediate thoughts and ideas in my mind on Friday, but wanted to wait and think about what I wanted to post. Usually I will either post my immediate reaction or not post at all on these kind of events, so as to avoid debates about things I can not effect, but here goes...

The day featured key speakers from various sectors and backgrounds. Some of the speakers I found passionate and interesting but others seemed nervous with the upcoming spending review always in their thoughts. I personally think that although the current financial situation is going to hurt in the short term, it provides the perfect chance to 'rip up and start again' in certain areas. It also means that in my specialist area: international projects and collaborations, there will be smaller, more targeted campaigns and this is how we love to work anyway.

The Speakers

We heard interesting comments from the two most influential figures at the council: Tom Riordan and Keith Wakefield, the two seemed genuinely interested in improving the city and protecting frontline services under threat from the spending review. Sir Richard Needham spoke a lot about his time in Northern Ireland and Italy, and although sailing close to the edge with a couple of comments, seemed to entertain the crowd. I did not personally take much from the talk, perhaps because many of the stories were from before my time :s 

Gerald Jennings from Land Securities spoke about the new Trinity scheme currently under construction on Briggate (he also gave me a 'shout out' in his speech, which was nice!) I have spoken with Land Securities about Trinity on a number of occasions and retain my belief that the project has a long-term, strategic plan that is routed in deep research of Leeds and it's people.

Sally Anne Greenfield spoke about some of the work the Leeds Community Foundation undertakes and spoke with true passion.

Creative Cities

After lunch we heard from Evert Verhagen. I felt very much on the same wavelength as Evert. So much of what he said, I have been saying behind closed doors and during meetings in the past 12 months. It was interesting that, in my opinion, the most 'real' comments came from someone who has travelled and has an international perspective on things. 

Sometimes it takes some time away from a city to truly appreciate it. It allows you to get a real feel for it's international standing and reputation. By being away you miss things and remember things you did not appreciate while living there. Also you can see the comparison between your city and the others you live in. I certainly found this when living in Barcelona. Some things in Leeds are fantastic, others need work, but this is the same in any city, let us not kid ourselves that everywhere else is great and Leeds is bad. 

The thing that most interested me about the talk from Evert was when he spoke about the talent within a city and how that becomes your most valuable commodity. It must have hurt a few people in the room, when he suggested that the best creative people in Leeds may be thinking about the quickest way to get to London for the best opportunities. Of course there are exceptions, but this statement is certainly true for a lot of my peers.

Evert spoke a lot about how the world is now all about cities. We looked at various charts of the ‘best’ cities in the world, the obvious candidates were at the top: London, New York and Tokyo, but there were others on the list that really intrigued me. Copenhagen, Taipei and obviously Barcelona are cities that I know well and I think show what is possible by putting the talent at the forefront of a strategy and creating a culture and structure that facilitates innovation rather then stifles or modifies through outdated measurement tools and processes. 

From a personal point of view, I did notice the trend when graduating from the European Institute of Design only last year. Here was a class of around 150 fresh new creative talents who were looking to hit the world’s most interesting cities and begin/continue their careers. Some ended up in London and New York, but others chose other interesting cities: Copenhagen, Stockholm, Berlin, Sydney, Milan and others stayed in Barcelona. I would of loved to have suggested to some of these people that Leeds was a place to consider as a first stop after Barca, but unfortunately we do not have the right things in place to position ourselves on this list.

I made improving the city in this area and attracting the top talent and building that creative, innovative community my main priority after graduating. I graduated top of the class so could of gone to another city and easily done some of the projects I have had to fight tooth and nail to get off the ground in Leeds. I do it though, because I love this city and always find more reward in creating something new rather then joining something that is already underway and doing well. 

Workshops

Back to the conference and next up during the afternoon session was a series of ‘workshops’ where you could speak with fellow delegates about a certain subject. I had chosen ‘innovation’ before the event and found myself on a table with some interesting people. It seems innovation can mean different things to different people but overall I had the sense that we were all ‘kind of’ agreeing on what innovation was. We spoke about how in order to encourage or facilitate innovation the right conditions must be in place. I explained my ideas for creating a central hub or group where perhaps the seeds of a creative, trends-driven community could grow, but sitting in a room consisting mainly of council members and property developers my advice of ‘prepare to fail’ and ‘take risks’ did not seem to sit too easy. 

Final Thoughts

Overall I enjoyed the conference, it is always good to gain an insight into what other people in the city are thinking. Wether I agree or not with what was being said is not the most important thing, everyone in city has an ‘angle’ or area they are coming from so of course there are going to be disagreements. I know the area I am interested improving/creating in Leeds and have a really clear idea of how we can begin to do it, maybe by attending events like the one on Friday, I can get an even clearer understanding of what everyone else in the city wants and see if my vision fits into that or not.