STUDIO NICHOLSON’S SARTORIAL FREEDOM

In many ways, this approach to buildings — one that prioritises subtle beauty, quality and freedom for ordinary people — is something fundamental to the way Studio Nicholson approaches clothing. The London-based label was founded in 2010 by Nick Wakeman — a step that seemed inevitable following the decades she spent cutting her teeth as a designer for other labels — with these guiding principles at its very core.   

Clothing is created with a meticulous attention to the fine details, the materials used and the overall shapes employed, culminating in the perfect representation of freedom; pieces that can be seamlessly worn together and provide direction and flexibility to the contemporary wardrobe.

With “Studio Nicholson’s Sartorial Freedom”, END. sits down with Nick Wakeman to delve into this idea of balancing freedom with aesthetics, discussing why premium materials, understated styling and elevated craftsmanship are all fundamental pillars of the London-based label.  

We’ve got a thing going on in the studio at the minute, a buzzword which is about enjoying clothing again. For me, I really like that sense of ease with clothing. Everything should move well — clothes are meant to be worn. The inherent attributes of the brand are playfulness, functionality, ease and wearability. How fabrics feel is something I’ve always been interested in — I love fabric more than I love clothes. The thing that has really come out of the pandemic is: how do your clothes feel? Are they versatile enough? For years, I made trousers that didn’t really move that well — very structured and stiff, with compact fabrications. Now, I’m much more interested in how fabrics move — that really is the ultimate freedom for me. We all have to wear clothes everyday, but what do they say about you? Do they move well? Do they express anything? For instance, all of our trousers are quite playful in shape — they express something, they’re fun. They’re not stiff and done up.

I like right angles; I don’t like tricky structures. Probably the two most important things in life are where you live and what you wear — that says everything about you. I don’t particularly love brutalist architecture, but Neave Brown did something very interesting in London almost setting up social housing — essentially like pods for those that couldn’t afford period properties in London. So that’s why I like Neave Brown, and I do like that they still exist today and are still relevant — they’re postmodern and look gorgeous. 

Toyo Ito on the other hand, is entirely different — he’s a fantastic Japanese architect. He has this amazing quote, “I think of architecture as a piece of clothing to wrap around human beings.” — and I feel both clothing and architecture are there to protect. Human beings are driven by fear — everything comes down to fear. We need protection and security, and both of those things are ultimately, to me, the most important things. It’s not necessarily about the architecture itself, rather the principles behind both of their approaches to work — the authenticity of it all. If your principles are in order, then you’re going to create something authentic.

I don’t design anymore, but I do creatively direct all of the collections. What I try to instil in my designers is to know when to put the pencil down. If you’re sitting there and you’re either working on a 3D or a flat, the tendency is to overcomplicate. You’ve got to strip it back and focus on the fits, the silhouette and the fabrics. I don’t focus on unnecessary detailing, instead I like to focus on things like an interesting inside pocket — there’s function to it, it’s subtle. I hate nonsense. With menswear in particular, subtlety and secret detailing is really important — it has to have a purpose.

My mum made all my clothes from day dot, she would make me 100% Melton wool coats and dresses and they were all absolutely beautiful — I wish I still had some of them. By the age of six or seven, I started to say things like “I don’t really want that anymore, I want this, I want that. Can you get me some jeans with some patches on?” — I was the ultimate tomboy, once I got going. But yeah, my mum was really into fabric — she made all of mine and my brother’s clothes.

I would start making my own clothes in my teens. I left school to go and study a foundation and then went to Chelsea to study textiles: weaving, knitting and print, with the latter of the three being the thing I specialised in. I used to do a lot of printing, but I don’t do any of that sort of thing anymore. I love fabric more than I love clothes, really — without one you can’t have the other.

Cotton. Always. It comes in so many guises, and you can do a million different things with it. It’s more about the warp and the weft — how you weave fabric can turn out a million different ways. You can put finishes on cotton, you can wash it — you can get so much out of it. It’s so basic, but so beautiful. Without it, I don’t know what we would wear. It’s fundamental.

We work with loads of really premium Italian mills and design fabrics with them — we don’t just buy it off the peg. Those guys I have known for over 20 years, since I had my other brand. Without those mills, we wouldn’t be here — we have such a great working relationship with them.

Regarding manufacturers, we make across the board. We make in China, Portugal, Italy, Japan and in the UK — with each one being a specialist in what they do. So, we will make our shirts, trousers and mackintoshes all in different factories, with each one having a real handle on what it is we want out of them. Each factory really appreciates what we do, they do a great job — they’re really into it. We really look to make things locally, too — so if we’re producing fabric in Italy, it can’t travel too far, it has to me made in Europe. Same applies to the UK and Japan — it’s a big part of our brand, and it should be for everyone else, really.

I don’t really believe in unisex clothing, I sort of believe jackets should do up the right way and trousers should do up a certain way — some elements of tradition are important. But, saying that, I wear a load of menswear, and I know a lot of men shop womenswear. I guess it really comes from me; I don’t own a dress, or a skirt — I don’t wear those sorts of items. At the core of Studio Nicholson we have a continuity line — it’s extremely important to the brand, we have a womenswear trouser that emulates a menswear trouser, and the two best-selling trousers in menswear are also mirrored in womenswear. There are slight differences in fit — they’re built for each gender, but the look is still the same. There’s an androgyny there in the way they mirror each other — you could dress a menswear and womenswear model exactly the same, which gives the appearance of being androgynous.

The answer is: I like youthfulness, and I think it’s quite interesting to dress women in a sort of boyish way. But saying that, I wear makeup, I wear jewellery, I don’t button my shirt up all of the way — there’s added femininity there. I appreciate a sense of freedom that men can wear whatever they want, I think that’s great — it all comes down to freedom.

I went to Japan for the first time in the year 1999 — or it might’ve been 1998, one or the other — and I went from a very sort of grimy ‘90s London into this city that was so calm. All of the tones and colours in Japan are so beautiful: every shade of brown, tan, beige and pale green. Everything was so ordered — everyone was so supremely well put together. I remember landing at Narita and looking out of the window of the aeroplane and all of the guys on the runway were all in different, colour-coded overalls — they all looked really smart. It just continued: every room, outfit and restaurant were beautifully tonal. Everything about it blew my mind. While it’s a large city with a big population, it’s extremely quiet, calm and ordered — and that appealed to me massively. I’ve been going for over 20 years and I’ve learnt a lot — I haven’t been in two years, though, which is a crying shame.

It still does blow my mind, but I do also like to get out of Tokyo and experience the smaller towns and villages, to get a bit of that old-school feeling and sense of discovery. I’m very jealous of those who visit Tokyo for the first time, like if I bring a member of staff and I see their face light up — I’ll never have that feeling again. Having a brand there and working with Beams very closely gave me a great understanding of their retail environment and culture. I also make clothing that’s really well liked in Japan — there’s a huge mutual affection going on there.

It was a really funny thing. We were looking at ‘90s thrift dressing, specifically in America. We were looking at the movies by Gus Van Sant — My Own Private Idaho, those sort of movies — where the characters were wearing thrift store Americana, and we realised there was a massive link with ‘50s Americana. That was what was in the thrift stores, like in the movie Kids. They were wearing plaid shirts, baggy chinos — there was that whole sort of baggy movement in the ‘90s, you know, think of Chandler Bing.

We looked at this direct link and there was this amazing story between ’50s Americana and these ‘90s cult movies and what people were wearing — leather jackets, jeans that were a bit off and plaid shirts, that sort of thing. The thought was: “How do we create a collection that modernises this, taking it onto another stage and bringing it to where we are now?”. So we looked at lots of plaid fabrics, sweater vests and cardigans that were less collegiate but still represented a nod to it. The approach was subtle, less in your face — I hate obvious, I think tenuous is better. Every season we have a theme, a moment of inspiration at the beginning and then it ends up as something else in the end.