Feature Label: Without Backbones Spring 2009

The team behind new label, With­out Back­bones hopes to “develop, stretch, and refine [their] designs, hop­ing to keep” their label “fresh and inter­est­ing” for them­selves, as well as oth­ers.  They also hope to “reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, and like a good album, be remem­bered.”  Behind the label are design­ers Robin Graves and Joseph Hodgkinson.

Graves spent his ado­les­cence grow­ing up in a provin­cial sea­side town.  This inspired him both neg­a­tively and pos­i­tively.  For Graves, design has always “been more of a nat­ural need or desire for some­thing new to expe­ri­ence.”  Always inter­ested in the aes­thet­ics of design, Graves stud­ied illus­tra­tion at the Uni­ver­sity of Brighton.  The envi­ron­ment fos­tered at Brighton led to an inter­est in fash­ion illus­tra­tion and print mak­ing.  Since then, Graves has worked in the fash­ion indus­try “design­ing in house” and free­lanc­ing “for clients includ­ing the Rolling Stones.”  Work­ing for the past seven years, Graves has always doc­u­mented per­sonal work, hop­ing some day to cre­ate his own stamp on the fash­ion industry.

Hodgkin­son, on the other hand stud­ied audio visual pro­duc­tion in Lon­don, but “always had an inter­est in design and fash­ion.”  Hodgkin­son met Graves, while they “were still at uni and some­where along the line, [they] decided to make clothes.  Over the past few years [they] have pro­duced lim­ited runs of direc­tional graphic t-​​shirts, but it’s only now that [they] have pro­duced [their] first col­lec­tion proper.”  The spring col­lec­tion is “a dress code of black on black, barely there boys in over­sized sports­wear, Pikeys and dogs, [and] 90’s sub­ur­bia England.”

Q&A

What does With­out Back­bones mean?
Is it bad to say that it’s mean­ing­less? I guess aes­thet­i­cally we liked the way the words look and sound. I sup­pose it does have a dark cyn­i­cal tone…… But I think we are ok with that!

Who are your favorite design­ers?
Joseph Hodgkin­son: I never really held much loy­alty to any design­ers, but cur­rently I’m find­ing Damir Doma and Juun.J quite interesting.

What mag­a­zines do you read?
JH: I work in pub­lish­ing so I prob­a­bly read too many mag­a­zines. 10 men is usu­ally pretty good.

Do you think that the inter­net and social web­sites have had an effect on the fash­ion industry?

Obvi­ously online shop­ping has had a huge effect on the fash­ion indus­try in gen­eral. But for smaller brands, It allows them to get their prod­ucts out there eas­ily and cheaply. Get­ting into stores and find­ing agents can be a total ball ache! We are cur­rently set­ting up our online store. So watch this space!

As to social web­sites like myspace? I’m not sure they have had a mas­sive impact on the fash­ion indus­try, not in the same way that it has for the music indus­try, but I guess that will change with sites like IQONS and Lex­po­sure.

With­out Back­bones is cur­rently being sold through Anio show­rooms, but the label will even­tu­ally be sold on through the label’s own online store, Cold Hands.  Keep check­ing the offi­cial With­out Back­bones web­site for more information.

Thanks go out to Joe and Robin for the interview!

NEXT FEATURE LABEL — S2VS

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Pic­tures from With­out Backbones