Aspiration

Fashion has always been built on aspiration.

There's nothing particularly new about that. Long before social media, brands were selling a version of life as much as they were selling clothes. Better houses, better holidays, better cars, better looking people. The idea that if you bought the right thing, perhaps a small part of that world might rub off on you.

I understand the appeal because I'm not immune to it myself.

I like beautiful things. I appreciate good cloth. I enjoy a well-made shoe and I've spent an embarrassing amount of money having suits made from some of the finest fabrics in the world despite having very few occasions to wear them.

The contradiction isn't lost on me. What I struggle with is something slightly different.

The older I get, the harder I find it to connect with the performance that surrounds so much of modern fashion. Perhaps it comes from where I grew up. I was raised in Rotherham. My grandfather worked in steel. My father worked down the pit. Like a lot of people from that background, there was a healthy scepticism towards appearances. Not because people didn't appreciate quality, but because there was an understanding that appearances and reality weren't always the same thing.

You learnt to look beyond the label. You learnt that expensive and valuable were not necessarily interchangeable. You learnt that some people talked a good game. That instinct has never really left me.

These days it often feels like fashion spends more time documenting itself than making anything. The same faces appear from one campaign to the next. The same references are recycled. The same opinions circulate around the same corners of the internet. Every brand claims individuality while increasingly resembling every other brand.

The internet promised endless choice. Instead it often feels as though it has produced endless versions of the same thing. Maybe that's why I find myself drawn towards subjects that don't fit neatly within the fashion industry.

A day spent fishing. A long ride through Derbyshire. An old block of flats. Old workshops and factories. Not because they're anti-fashion - they simply feel more real to me than much of the theatre that now surrounds it.

Mamnick has never really been an attempt to create a fantasy. If anything, it's probably the opposite. Most of what we've done over the years has been an attempt to document the things that already exist around us. The landscapes, trades, habits and communities that helped shape the brand in the first place. I suppose that's why I feel slightly uncomfortable whenever people talk about lifestyle. The word itself implies something curated. Something constructed. Something to aspire towards and in my eyes, most real lives aren't like that. Mine certainly isn't. It's largely made up of work, family, occasional moments outdoors and the constant challenge of trying to keep a small independent business moving forward.

Perhaps that's why I've become increasingly interested in observation rather than aspiration. Not because aspiration is wrong. Because observation feels rarer.

Anybody can sell a dream but paying attention to what's already there feels like the harder thing to do. And perhaps the more interesting thing too.

Words Thom Barnett

Photography Craig Fleming + Thom Barnett