Henri Lloyd X Nigel Cabourn
To mark the launch of the forthcoming Henri Lloyd x Nigel Cabourn collaboration project we travelled up to Newcastle to visit Nigel at his studio HQ. Home to his incredible 4000 piece archive we learnt about the design process behind the collection and his love for collecting vintage.
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“So the Henri Lloyd project, I met Henri personally about 1988, I got on really well wth Henri.
He was a lovely man, very knowledgable and he really looked after his staff.
It’s now run by Swedish people, when I got the job first thing I said was let’s see all the heritage. The guys in Sweden had bought everything, all the stock and all the vintage
So I went to Sweden and they had maybe about 10 boxes of full of vintage, there was young kid there of about 30, he is the head of sales we went through all the whole fucking lot with me and we found all the pieces that we referenced, we went back to 1968, there might have been some 65 in there, it started n 1962
So I was able to cherry pick the pieces I liked and I added in a few things in myself, vintage pieces that were not theirs, which suited the brand. I did some clever things with it, I found a velcro pocket that had a flap over the pocket, it used to have a piece of velcro like a long L under it. I thought fucking hell if I just put another piece of velcro there I can turn it into fucking H can’t I?!
So all the Henri Lloyd jackets have a H underneath, then I took the H and I plopped it on the back and did a giant H in velcro and put a pocket on it. It wasn’t such a hard job to design because I had a lot of inspiration for it.
I’m privy to all the best vintage around, all the best collectors in the world so if I’m doing a project I know roughly what I can find. These are prime pieces here really.
We’ve also done a big sweat with a H on, it’s come from the Champion, I’ve got some great Champion stuff, I collect Champion, I collect Patagonia.
About 1978 I started collecting vintage. It was just by chance, Paul Smith used to work for me in the 70’s. He actually worked for me from about 72-75 he was selling Cabourn, he got me into all the London stores because he only had one shop in Nottingham in those days.
He showed me this RAF jacket, British from the 50’s that had a button and tape on it, a slide button and tape. The jacket itself was pretty cool, and he said ‘Nige you should be doing stuff like this, this is a good move for you going forward.’ I says ‘Paul you’re fucking right I like this, I said where did you get it?’
He said I got it in the flea market, I said will you take me, so he took me the next day and I couldn’t believe it! All of sudden I realised there were whole markets. I mean was about 28 at the time.
You know you’re stupid sometimes, I started the business late 60’s and it took me some years to figure out where my inspiration came from.
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I had this conversation with Paul and that was the start of my love affair with vintage from 78. I got all the inspiration I could find from 78-79 and I went to Paris and fucking had it off like you wouldn’t believe, this was before Stone Island started with the outerwear, I was the first in there with it, that type of military inspired outwear, I was right in there in 79
I went in to the 80’s and I had such good outerwear in the 80’s. I’ve still got Paul Smith’s jacket, it’s not that special really, I actually took the collar off and put a leather collar on it to do something I wanted to do as well, I’ve still got that jacket.
I’m very inspired by British, especially British Army, British Navy, British RAF, they’re key. And then the next thing that really inspires me is mountain clothing. I’m very interested in George Mallory being supposedly the first man to get to the top of everest who fucking disappeared 800 ft from the top, they say he fell from the top but nobody knows!
I’m also very interested in Edmund Hilary because he was the first man to get to the top with Norgay Tenzing and of course he was the first man to go North to South on a Tractor in Antartica. I’m really interested in mountaineering, Antartica. I’ve got a lot of books on Military clothing and of course with really good pictures so I can really see what I’m doing but to do a really good job I have to go out and buy the piece generally. I might see something in a book I really love then I have to go out and fucking find it.
The skill of this is you have to find the clothing, clothing has to have a concept of a time, you take the concept, you take the year, you take the look, you follow it, not copying it but being inspired by it.”
Henri Lloyd X Nigel Cabourn launches 30/1/20 at midday 12.00 GMT.
Interview: Ollie Evans
Portraits: Jake Ranford
Editorial: Joe McDermott
Model: Nasty Brian
