ihaveanaddiction

When I was a struggling dancer living in London I needed, as many others do, a part-time job to make sure the rent got paid. So I went out, CV in hand, to all my favorite shops, put on my best smile & managed after a while to get a job with a label that I'd long had an interest in: All Saints.

At that time the brand was on the edge of a growth-spurt, they'd been around for about 10 years but had recently been bought up by Karen Millen co-founder Kevin Stanford & were on the way to opening their new flagship store & HQ in Jack's Place, Spitalfields in London. It was there that I started working. I got a clothes allowance & a 50% discount on everything over the allowance! 50%!!!!!! You can imagine how my wardrobe grew! It was amazing, we'd all sit around, flipping through the coming season's look-book, planning what we were going to buy.

The brand itself was founded by its original designer Stuart Trevor in 1994. At first they only catered to menswear, but four years later the first womenswear collection came. According to Trevor "We were designing clothes that we wanted to wear and that we could not buy anywhere else. We became designers’ designers, all of the kids who dreamt of being cool fashion designers decided they were going to wear something that stood out from the crowd. People wanted something different.”. This original core-idea is still evident in the brand's design & overall feel.

Apart from the amazing clothes it was inspirational to work in that store, with the HQ above it, pattern-cutters & show-room below. We were always smack in the middle of everything that happened in the company, got to see new designs first, meet the designers, merchandisers, we were really at the heart of the whole operation, something which is hard to appreciate in the moment but in hindsight.... wow.

In any case, All Saints is now a global brand with a line of accessories, shoes & bags, stores all over the world & a clear aesthetic. They've opted to create a warehouse feel in their stores with a lot of bare brickwork & unfinished wood, going into an All Saints store is an experience in itself. They're a cool brand that has embraced new music & even has concerts in the basement of their HQ! Crazy to think that I was a part of the very first one & now they've had hundreds with artists like Fat Boy Slim, Kelis, Paloma Faith, White Lies & many more.

As yet they've not got a store in Sweden, but don't despair!!!!! They have an online shop & stores all over the UK, Europe & the USA. Like it says on the infamous belts that they made back in the day: ALL SAINTS ROCKS!