Peter Saville for Anglo-Italian
The beauty of Punk is that one finds it at a young age. Its values have had a disproportionate impact on me, shaping my world view and staying with me into adulthood and my career. Factory Records, with its combination of spirit and design became a fixation for my teenage self — Tony Wilson and Peter Saville were guardians of an ethos, commercial and creative all at once, with a focus on authenticity, integrity and community. Whilst I can’t claim to be anywhere near the heights of Factory I see marked similarities between our rationale and what drives us. So when Peter became a customer, and over time, a mentor, boyhood Jake achieved something he never thought conceivable.
The shop has had the ability to move me in many ways, whether that be recognition of my view point, the generosity and kindness of our customers and suppliers, as well as dozens of other ways that keep our small store and the community we have fostered so close to my heart. On one of our early days in business, I was sitting on our shop’s sofa late at night working on our next collection. The phone rang, I picked up, and there was Peter on the other end, who’d just driven past 57. He wished me well, exclaimed at how late it was and encouraged me to keep going. On a more recent night Peter appeared in the doorway in our Barn Jacket and an old bucket hat, leaving the driving rain to have one of our now regular discussions about design, music and business. A hero of mine wearing my clothes — I’m not sure if shop life could get any better than that.
When we opened our Bespoke operation a couple of years ago, I had found our incredible cutter Caoimhe, but we needed craftspeople to put her patterns together. In short we struggled to make our garments in London, despite beautiful sewing there wasn’t the handwriting which we have spent years obtaining in our jackets. So we decided to open a workshop in Italy, with makers employed and our Bespoke given the structure it needed. Small, but done for the right reasons, dedicating us to keeping the craft I love relevant, made beautifully by skilled people whose talents are under threat.
Around that time I was sat in the Bar Senza Nome in Bologna, enough cocktails deep to text Peter and let him know that I too had started a Factory, and could he possibly advise on a logo. Moments later Peter had agreed, and two years later here we are. A small nod to an era which gave me a vital framework: to do things well, to do things with integrity and to eschew the commercial in favour of something with purpose, interest and meaning.
Thank you Peter, for your time in giving this interview, our new logo, and your kind patronage of my designs and our small store.
— Jake Grantham
The beauty of Punk is that one finds it at a young age. Its values have had a disproportionate impact on me, shaping my world view and staying with me into adulthood and my career. Factory Records, with its combination of spirit and design became a fixation for my teenage self — Tony Wilson and Peter Saville were guardians of an ethos, commercial and creative all at once, with a focus on authenticity, integrity and community. Whilst I can’t claim to be anywhere near the heights of Factory I see marked similarities between our rationale and what drives us. So when Peter became a customer, and over time, a mentor, boyhood Jake achieved something he never thought conceivable.
The shop has had the ability to move me in many ways, whether that be recognition of my view point, the generosity and kindness of our customers and suppliers, as well as dozens of other ways that keep our small store and the community we have fostered so close to my heart. On one of our early days in business, I was sitting on our shop’s sofa late at night working on our next collection. The phone rang, I picked up, and there was Peter on the other end, who’d just driven past 57. He wished me well, exclaimed at how late it was and encouraged me to keep going. On a more recent night Peter appeared in the doorway in our Barn Jacket and an old bucket hat, leaving the driving rain to have one of our now regular discussions about design, music and business. A hero of mine wearing my clothes — I’m not sure if shop life could get any better than that.
Where did your interest go from there?
In the library at art college, I discovered what you would call the canon of art and design. Basically the history of graphic design, reaching back to the beginning of the 20th century in the modernist movements, i.e. futurism, vorticism, constructivism etc. I left the library one day with a stack of books, of basically the art that I knew nothing about.