Silver Spoon Attire
Launched last season with a range of soft as butter, street attitude-laden leather jackets, London-based label Silver Spoon Attire has already gained international distribution for its menswear/womenswear spring range which the design duo behind the label insist is all about delivering top notch quality in modern designs.
Damian Collins cut his fashion teeth at the manufacturing coal face that was his parents' garment factory in Leeds. He started out just folding, but after serving his factory apprenticeship, began designing the sports merchandise (particularly football) which the factory produced. Having set up a T-shirt label, Digital Filth in 2005, he went on to form his own design consultancy and it is through this that Silver Spoon Attire came into being.
"I was commissioned by Bentley," he tells me, "to design some leather jackets and the results were outstanding." Together with partner and fellow former Leeds' resident Avigail Claire, they came up with the idea for a label. "I thought of the name," beams fashion student Avigail. "I go to the Instituto Marangoni in east London and it is full of really rich Russian girls, who arrive in flash cars with blacked-out windows. They have so much money to spend, we decided to aim the label at them."
After an initial leather offering, the pair have for spring/summer widened their scope and included cashmere cardis based loosely to string vests, seersucker dresses, bamboo T-shirts, men's shirts with low loops for a belt, perforated leather shorts and 'remixed' handpainted denims which will only be available to buy in London. Damian confesses that he used to be a Headz, obsessed with collecting the latest trainers, but given that "I am a short skinny guy that whole look doesn't suit me." Silver Spoon is luxury streetwear - the sample are made in New York and Italy and production currently takes place in Hong Kong and China. The leather jackets are available online and in selected stockists now. "We've got international agents," says Damian proudly, "but we are still sorting out UK stockists."
If like me the only spoons available to you as a child were steel, don't be put off. There are some great fabrics and details here that anyone, not just disgustingly rich Russian fashion students, can appreciate.
Words: Marian Buckley
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