Interview: Henry Holland, fashion designer

Published on Sunday 28 March 2010 11:39

Can I just stop saying the word 'fun'? Every time I say the word 'fun' can you just kick me under the table?"

Henry Holland has been having such a good time that he just can't stop talking about it. He's not up to his usual high jinks today, however. The 26-year-old fashion designer at the helm of House of Holland has the kind of flu that has numbed all his consonants, which, when combined with his thick northern English accent, makes his sentences pretty difficult to decipher.

He keeps his tartan coat on in his freezing London studio, shoulders hunched as he sips a steaming coffee from a paper cup. His eyes are streaming and he punctuates his sentences with ungainly sniffs and snorts. In short, he should be tucked up in bed with a Lemsip and a box set, but it's testament to his obsessive work ethic that he wouldn't entertain the idea.

His job is, after all, just too much fun. In just three short years he has gone from being an unknown fashion journalist working on teen magazines to becoming one of the UK's most respected fashion designers, with one of the world's top supermodels – childhood pal Agyness Deyn – as his muse, and a new line within the prestigious Designers at Debenhams range. H! by Henry Holland is about to cement his status as the latest British fashion institution.

So if someone had told him a few years ago what he'd have achieved by his mid-twenties... "I'd have probably punched them," he interrupts with his characteristic forthright northern wit. "I'd be like 'don't wind me up'. I think that the benefit for me was that I didn't have the in-built fear that so many people do, because if someone had planned for this to happen there'd be a lot of fear of 'I can't do that' but I've just literally gone 'let's try it and see what happens'. It is still insane day to day. You don't take anything for granted at all, but I think that's the beauty of it because I don't have a five-year plan. Or I didn't. I mean now I have a five-year plan: I'm going to take over the world."

Some might argue that he's halfway there. He grew up in Ramsbottom, a place which, before Henry and Agyness, was arguably most famous for hosting the World Black Pudding Throwing Championships. In 2006 he was working on the teen magazine Bliss when he produced a collection of slogan T-shirts during London Fashion Week, bearing cheeky, fashion-related in-jokes including "I'll show you who's boss Kate Moss" and "Get your freak on Giles Deacon".

When designer Gareth Pugh wore the latter to close his show, Deacon responded by wearing one which read "UHU Gareth Pugh". The fash pack was hooked, and London's trendy Dover Street Market immediately stocked the designs. Since then he has put out a number of collections, his most recent inspired in part by girl gangs, where those attending the show (including pals Alexa Chung and Pixie Geldof) were given BlackBerries installed with an App that meant they could buy direct from the catwalk.

Fans include Naomi Campbell, Beth Ditto, the Olsen twins, Gwen Stefani and Sienna Miller, and his designs are sold everywhere from Harvey Nichols to Colette in Paris and Barneys in New York. His aesthetic is very young, very humorous, colourful, ironic and – most importantly – fun.

His partnership with Debenhams is an interesting one. The chain of department stores collaborates with a number of fashion designers – from John Rocha and Jasper Conran to Betty Jackson and Matthew Williamson – as part of its hugely successful Designers at Debenhams range. However, Holland's is an unashamedly youthful brand, more so than the current stable of established designers.

However, while the work of some designers would be very difficult to take to the high street thanks to, for example, complicated tailoring or heavy embellishment, Holland's relaxed, fun and relatively simple approach has been successfully, and possibly easily, translated to this particular high-street collection.

Modelled by Pixie Geldof, the very young, very hip collection is peppered with House of Holland trademarks from bold T-shirts and tartan to a great heritage-style blazer in grey jersey, a pair of boots with kilt fringing and a handbag with Holland's face on it which he's nicknamed the "bagazine".

"It's the big one really; it's the big call, when you're asked to design for Debenhams," he says proudly. "The other people on the roster are some amazing names in British fashion so it's an honour to be asked. It's intimidating too though. You never really think of yourself in the same way as other people do. I feel like a bit of a fraud sometimes. The strongest recognisable thing for me is that sense of humour and sense of fun. We have experimented with it and when it fits the mood, that fun vibe... ooh I need better vocabulary!"

Holland himself has a cartoonish and, ahem, fun quality that's reflected in his designs. Slim and handsome in skinny jeans, studded Prada shoes and bright horizontal stripes, his signature quiff quivering almost imperceptibly as he moves, he's like some colourfully camp fashion superhero. In many ways he helps to define the spirit of modern British fashion, and of London Fashion Week. Where New York is commercial, Milan is glamorous and Paris is polished, London has a certain youthful and creative exuberance as well as a pronounced sense of humour.

Holland has an almost aggressively down-to-earth quality, not only side-stepping any notions that he might harbour artistic pretensions, but tackling them head-on with gloriously-tacky pop culture references. He loves Girls Aloud. How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days is one of his favourite films. And you get the impression that he'd be more at home in a greasy spoon than any celebrity haunt.

His inspirations come not from the world's rich, powerful and skinny elite, but from his mother, grandmother and aunt, three glamorous northern women, who all encouraged the young Henry in his artistic endeavours. His Aunt Connie, he tells me, had a facelift, and "looks better than Dolly Parton." His grandmother wore matching trouser suits until the day she died, and his mother is "more fabulous than I am", evidenced by the cult following she has built up on Twitter.

"My mum would never open the door without her earrings and lipstick on," he laughs.

"I once had to knock the door down because I'd gone out for the night and forgotten my keys. It was 4am and she came to the door in her dressing gown really pissed off with me, but she had put her lipstick and her earrings on, but then I'd never answer the door without doing my quiff."

Mama Holland is, of course, incredibly proud of her son. "My mum went to bloody Selfridges when they launched my tights range for Pretty Polly and had her picture taken by the stand, wearing one of my jumpers so I was like 'they obviously knew who you were'," he says, amused but exasperated. "And when I go to Paris she'll turn up to meet me dressed head-to-toe in my tartan. With a sporran."

Holland is something of an expert on tartan thanks to his autumn/winter 2008 collection in which he sent Agyness Deyn down the catwalk in a tiered tartan wedding dress. He spent six months researching the history of the cloth, registered an official House of Holland tartan with the Scottish Register of Tartans and jokingly describes himself as "Mr Tartan", as he points out his Scottish Fashion Award for best use of tartan in a collection – "the only award I've ever won!" – which is gathering dust in his studio.

Sadly, he doesn't have any House of Holland tartan left because he gave it all to Take That for stage costumes for their arena tour: "I had a bit of a moment though, when I went to see them. It was probably the cider, but I was like: there's like 100,000 people here and they're, like, riding a unicorn in my trousers!"

He may be modest, but he's certainly no stranger to celebrities. His friends include singer Lily Allen and model Alice Dellal. Radio 1 DJ Grimmy used to sleep on the floor of his bedroom and he's sung karaoke with Kate Moss. And then there's Agyness Deyn, or 'Agy' as he affectionately calls her.

They met when they were 13 and she was working in the local chip shop. They remained friends through high school before moving down to London and even now, despite their schedules, they speak every day. US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour invited them to the famous Met Ball and together they help to define the current youthful mood in British fashion, but Holland insists they are still able to laugh at themselves.

"I used to be a snowboarder so I wore really baggy trousers, which is probably why I'm never out of skinny jeans because I look back and think it looked like I'd pooed my pants," he says with a laugh. "Agy went to a different school and she was much more about Firetrap and Diesel. She was all like 'yeah, yeah, I look cool'. And then I think when we moved to London there was a massive north-south divide in fashion. I think when you move down here your whole attitude towards dressing and style and fashion changes. We came down with these really polished, overdone Toni & Guy haircuts and we gradually became much more subtle and toned down."

Holland is not the first designer, or indeed creative person, to have highlighted the vast differences between the north and south of England. He's lived in London for eight years, but remains a northerner, joking that he always thought his first fragrance would smell of pies and coal. So does he consciously bring that northern charm to his designs? "I think it's our sensibility that's northern," he says (he tends to acknowledge the contribution of his handful of staff by talking about "our", "us" and "we" rather than "I").

"We might dress like Londoners but our attitude towards life is very northern. Even Agyness living in New York, she's still a northern girl. She was moving house recently and she was in the van with the removal man. Like, in the front, texting me about how exciting it was that she was up front with the removal man. It's our sensibility that's northern, not our aesthetic, because I do still go home and everyone shouts at me from their cars 'what the f*** are you wearing?'"

Well if he wasn't already so down-to-earth, that would be sure to do it. Still, it's incredible that a man who has conquered British fashion in just a few short years remains so un-starry. Where not long ago he was being turned away from fashion events at the door, now his own show is one of the hottest tickets in town.

He's gone from printing T-shirts in his front room to selling his clothes in the world's best boutiques and department stores, from telling his mother what to wear at the age of three to dressing celebrities and from grabbing a sneaky fag behind the bike shed with his best friend to attending the world's most exclusive parties with her on his arm. It's all down to an unashamedly British sense of humour that's reflected in his clothes, which truly have put the fun back into fashion. Hooray for Henry.

H! by Henry Holland is available in Debenhams now

&#149 This Article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday March 27, 2010