Interview: Jonathan Pryce, Glasgow style blogger

Published on Sunday 3 October 2010 14:29

Take one style-obsessed Glasgow boy, give him a camera and you have the latest phenomenon to hit the world of fashion

WHEN Jonathan Pryce walks down Buchanan Street, or Byres Road, he is not idly wondering if Urban Outfitters has a new drop of purple skinny jeans, or if Waitrose is marking down the fresh tuna.

Instead, his eyes are scanning the middle distance, looking for fresh meat. That's fresh fashion meat, the cool Glaswegians who wear dead men's sailing blousons or headless dollies as pendants, and who feature on his influential street style blog, Les Garons de Glasgow.

Those of us who don't pop out to the shops in plus four-length harem pants, accessorised with Dr Marten's boots and milk bottle-end sunglasses, can only wonder at the brave souls forensically documented on Pryce's site.

To be fair, that chap was snapped at London Fashion Week, where there are presumably no neds to puncture the fashion victim's nerve and send them home in tears to change into their joggers. But even when he's not in London (or Paris, Berlin, Tel Aviv or San Francisco) Pryce has an enviable talent for tracking down the fearless and fashion forward, and persuading them to have their pictures taken.

He set up Les Garons de Glasgow a year ago, with his best friend Daniel Stern. The pair were students together, spending their non-studying hours exploring and documenting the envelope-pushing edge of the city after hours. But it was strictly amateur stuff, often done on disposable cameras, until Pryce spent the third year of his marketing degree studying in New York.

"They let me do some non-business courses and I was able to take a real photography course, where you went into the dark room to develop your own pictures," he recalls wistfully.

And while exquisitely dressed Pryce was studying the science and craft of composition and exposure times, he was also stopped and snapped by several of New York's fashion bloggers. The idea intrigued him and, after seeing an exhibition of photographs from The Sartorialist, probably the world's best-known street style blog, he returned home with the idea for a Glaswegian version fully-formed.

It was an unlocked door waiting to be kicked down: the city, despite having a thriving student scene, an artistic subculture, a tireless legion of high street shoppers and some fine independent boutiques and thrift stores, had no one to record it all for posterity.

"I had always loved Glasgow's creativity, that people got involved in dressing up," says Pryce, who grew up in the not- particularly-fashionable environs of Kilmacolm. "It's quite an expressive, working-class city. In the past people wanted to escape the nine-to-five grind, get their glad rags on and go out and this has spilled over into the present, even though people work quite different hours."

A city full of students is always, he adds, a rich hunting ground, "because they have the luxury of being able to dress however they like, all day, every day." They are also at the stage of their lives when they can reinvent themselves with previous generations' cast-offs, whether they are fur hats, paisley maxi dresses or mosh pit-distressed grunge band T-shirts.

"People come here from England, and from all round the world, and they can be anyone they want to be. They know they won't be judged, and that no one knows who they are or where they're from."

All street style blogs need a constant stream of new faces and fresh looks, which is what draws Pryce to the city centre and west end on a regular basis. Heavy footfall makes Buchanan Street and Byres Road his two most productive hunting grounds, although he also finds fashion gems in the east end, around the Barras and near his home in the Trongate.

What makes a great look, he says, is the wearer's personality. "There are some people who look great but they're not that comfortable. They're trying something – which is good – but they're not confident and comfortable. It is all about rocking the outfit."

Ladies were rarely seen without a pair of wedges and a top-knot. So recent shots feature lots of these, as well as close-ups of interesting shoes (often scuffed beyond the point of no return), bags, rings, tattoos and all the other ephemera that make an outfit work.

And when it comes to the final edit of his pictures, well, it is his choice for his blog. "Sometimes someone just doesn't make it because it's not what I'm into."

Pryce has always been interested in fashion. At school in Kilmacolm, he borrowed, and devoured, his art teacher's copies of Vogue. His mother is a photographer. But he is a child of the early 21st century and, as well as a passion for studded ankle boots, he has an eye on the main chance.

Les Garons de Glasgow is not going to keep him in Acne biker boots but Pryce also works as a photographer, stylist and social media consultant. There is also a range of Les Garons de Glasgow T-shirts available through the blog and at the pop-up shopping events Pryce has started running with his indie fashion chums. "I've always altered my own clothes, had my own design projects. When I was in New York I did a collection of vintage that I sold through stores. I could pursue the T-shirts more but there always seem to be a million things on."

In the interests of not keeling over, Pryce has been forced to cut down his commitment to the blog. He is no longer driven to post every day. Four or five times a week is, he thinks, quite sufficient. "I need to have a life other than this."

The compulsion to keep on snapping is, however, a strong one. "Running the blog is a great reason to do something. If you sit down to paint, that is just a vanity project. But the blog has a following, it has a reason to keep going." And as the blog itself becomes a phenomenon, with club owners desperate for Pryce to record revellers in their finery, others have observed that, since he has started stalking the corridors of phwoar with his camera, people have started making much more of an effort with their outfits.

Pryce is a fashion blogger, not David Attenborough, so if he is changing the eco-system by recording it, so be it. "Fashion is narcissistic, it can be vain, it can be pretentious. But if you take it for what it is, and enjoy it, surely that's not a bad thing?"

www.lesgarconsdeglasgow.com

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 3 October, 2010