“CONSTANTLY HAVING YOURSELF AND YOUR WORK QUESTIONED FORCES YOU TO PUSH FORWARD WITH ONLY YOUR BEST IDEAS.”
The garments in Jack’s collection have a soft and natural richness whilst concurrently appearing distressed and dishevelled. They are rugged yet beautiful, with a monochromatic colour palette that echoes his own attire. Steering away from anything too overworked or over-embellished, it is instead the fabric that speaks volumes; where the idea that you don’t necessarily know what you’re looking at is a bonus for Jack. The clothes are then able to have their own life, their own mood; and this, Jack explains, they can bring to the wearer.
Focusing on his small home village of Teynham in Kent, Jack captured images with his Polaroid camera that explored the textures and surfaces he felt connected to. With his camera always by his side, it is the subtleties in the landscape and nature of his surroundings that inspire him; the weathered and eroded surfaces, or scraps of materials or objects that lend themselves to the textural qualities that he was in pursuit of. Working with these images and materials, he would later translate their qualities into fabric, creating surfaces which looked naturally worn or beaten with the suggestion of their having had a previous function or life. He tells me that film is another great influence on his work; where the ability engendered by the medium to encompass such a wide span of visual information in single frame shots never tires him. Film director David Lynch is at the top of his list, with Mulholland Drive being one of his most loved films. “It’s dark and theatrical, and after watching it numerous times I’m still not entirely sure what is going on.” Mean Girls, paradoxically, is another of his favourites – but whose isn’t it?