What is the real price of a fashion career? The story of Shelley Fox

OK: I think this interview is years overdue. We want to know more about how you started your journey in London with no support.

Do you want me to step back a little bit before that? Before the MA at Saint Martin’s? Because that’s everyone’s landing pad: you graduate from that and then you take off. And I believe students think there’s this sort of line that you follow and that’s how it happens. But it’s more complicated than that, or at least more interesting. I was never one of those kids who grew up in a house where my mum bought Vogue or inspired by the beautiful things around me. I have a very working-class background. I come from a steel town in Lincolnshire, in the north of England, where there was nothing going on, in any capacity. That was the Eighties, so my introduction to clothing or identity – to fashion – was through music, going to see bands, and looking at the outfits of all those tribes and subcultures. At that time, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school. I remember going through a careers book and chopping out everything that I was refusing to do. I ended up with “painting and decorating” course, which is hilarious because it was the program at our local technical school, which I didn’t attend in the end. In 1982, I did my A-Levels in fashion and dress, and that’s when I discovered designers like Vivienne Westwood and Comme des Garçons. I didn’t know you could go to college to do fashion. It might sound really naïve, but I didn’t even know it existed. And I get this is really hard for students to understand now, with the amount of information on how fashion design is trained.

I always used to make my own clothes. I’d go to charity shops, buying 1930s, – 40s, -50s curtains and fabrics. This is how I understood cutting and fabrics, and the way a 1930s tea dress would hang. I used to take over my mum’s living room and buy dressmaking patterns from the local department store. I guess that’s the reason why I love the White Project at CSM so much; it’s just a creative way to show students how to cut and make.

Then someone told me about this art school in Grimsby that I should go to. In those days, university was free and you had to fight to get in. I went to the two year foundation course in Grimsby. After that, although I didn’t dare to try Central Saint Martins, I’ve always known I had to get to London. The north of England, and particularly where I lived, was just redundant for me. The BA courses at the time, Saint Martins, Harrow – Westminster, Middlesex, only took 25 students a year – it was so competitive.  When I was applying for college, there was this ‘pool’ list with all the schools that still had places left and I remember scrolling through and thinking: “I just need to get to London”. I chose Croydon because it was near enough for me and then I went to Middlesex after that and I bailed out after the first semester. I was very unhappy there, and I am not even sure there was an issue with Middlesex itself. I just hated how fashion students were so pretentious in the late Eighties, when they would wear labels on the outside so that you could see how expensive their clothes were.

“When somebody at Ralph Lauren said: ‘Shelley, you should set up your own thing,’ I remember thinking: ‘How do you even do that?'” – Shelley Fox

When I left, I was so happy even though I was still figuring out what I wanted to do. I was 21 years old and living in London. I did multiple jobs, from the National Portrait Gallery to some amazing vintage shops. In 1990, I applied to Central Saint Martins, when Saint Martins and Central School of Art had just merged, from two totally different colleges and philosophies. I am glad I tried the BA Textile course because then I got to learn how to make my own fabrics since I already knew pattern cutting. However, halfway through the course, I went to see Wendy Dagworthy, who was the head of the BA Fashion at the time, to ask her whether I could transfer to Fashion. She simply said no. Many years later, when she visited me in New York, I reminded her of this conversation we had and I said: “I am so grateful you didn’t take me onto your BA program and made me stick to textiles because that formed my identity as a designer”. I was much more about the fabrics. The reason why I’m telling you this is because when you bump into these people, these decisions that get made, your life changes forever. At the end of my BA Textiles, I was doing my final collection. I was so used to seeing people having multiple nervous breakdowns just trying to get the perfect knitwear off the machines, but I was not like that. The night before the exhibition, I was cutting all the knitwear and spray painting it with Ross – my boyfriend and future husband – all the edges of the V necks, in our council estate in Old Street. It was this sort of deconstructive collection, but it was only responding to the lack of perfect machinery. When they came to grade it, they didn’t know what to do with it and so they called Louise Wilson, who came and said: “Give her a First-Class Honour and I’ll offer her a place on the MA”.

I didn’t take the place at the time, because I could not even comprehend how to afford it. Even though it was only five and a half grand, I just didn’t have any money. I tried to apply for jobs in New York, very naively. My BA collection portfolio was shopped around at Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and all these companies. When somebody at Ralph Lauren said: “Shelley, you should set up your own thing”, I remember thinking: “How do you even do that”? Anyway, the Calvin Klein people bought some swatches from me for quite some money and I thought they just felt sorry for me. I went back to London to work for Joe Casely-Hayford, the only designer based in Shoreditch High Street at the time. It lasted for about six months; I was not qualified and it didn’t really work out. But it was a really good insight into a label in London.

“This utter terror of not being able to get out of where I was, was more overwhelmingly terrifying. ” – Shelley Fox

OK: You mentioned that you had a working-class background. I often speak to young designers whose families took a mortgage on a house to pay for their education. We know how scary and volatile the fashion career can be, with money-free internships and really badly paid jobs. At least now this is communicated more. Where do the courage and motivation come from, that makes people from those backgrounds go into a job which has no promise of profit? I guess in the Eighties it was even worse; you went into education with no promise of employability.

That’s a really good point, Olya. Today students are more aware of how to get into these jobs. For me, I remember the idea of not going to London, the panic I felt when I got into Croydon and the conversation I had with mum, who didn’t think we could afford it even though the fees were free. This utter terror of not being able to get out of where I was, was more overwhelmingly terrifying. And even when I went to Saint Martin’s, I didn’t qualify for my first year’s tuition grant because of my stint at Middlesex previously which is fair enough. So, I would walk in and out of Kingston council education offices bringing references and papers. I was just like a little dog you could throw the stick to. But I would not give up; I didn’t have any option and in the end, I got my 2nd and 3rd year BA grant paid for.

“When the rents are cheap, real estate, cities, and successful designers all live hand in hand.” – Shelley Fox

OK: But the option was probably studying law… or starting a “proper” job. 

No, I mean I don’t think I had an option other than college at the time. I had to go to college and get a degree. But it never occurred to me that I could do anything else. It’s a naïve thing to say. I mean, if I think about it now, I may say I would have been really interested in law, but that’s an interest I have now, after being in fashion this long. And fashion in the Eighties was not seen as a career, at least in London. We used to call London Fashion Week “London Fashion weekend” as it barely existed, and everybody would look to Paris and Milan, or wait for The Face and i-D to see what was going on in the club scene in New York. I was like a sponge with those magazines. In the Eighties, I used to read Honey magazine too, it was amazing. While Vogue at the time was just dull. But we did have our own underground current, that was all the designers coming out of the colleges. Even if London didn’t have a system in place, we didn’t have all the rules either. There was this general sense of freedom and the rents were cheap. When the rents are cheap, real estate, cities, and successful designers all live hand in hand. It’s like when Paul Smith opened up in the Seventies. He bought Floral Street, practically. It was an old, run-down fruit and veg market, quite dangerous at night. He still owns that property and he hasn’t paid rent to anybody.

“If you’re not obsessed with what you do, you may just stop now and call it a day. Because it’s too hard and it’s even harder now.” – Shelley Fox

There is something really connected between the survival of designers and the rent they have to pay, which is becoming crazy now in New York and London. That support mechanism has now come much more to fruition. I remember being at a large dinner gathering with Trino Verkade once in New York, and somebody asked why designers don’t know anything about business. And she just kicked off – and it was really good; “Why do you expect them to know everything? When I was leaving college, we didn’t think about it as a career. We were so grateful, to be in a room with other people that thought like us and to be doing what we loved, because we couldn’t imagine doing anything else”. There was a real sense of obsession. If you’re not obsessed with what you do, you may just stop now and call it a day. Because it’s too hard and it’s even harder now. However, I think there was more playfulness in the past; there was more chance to fail because you didn’t even think you’d be successful. It’s certainly naïve, but I get that’s the London training. The city has never been a fashion capital in the way we perceive systems and infrastructures. Everybody looks at Milan, where they have production systems, and so have New York and Paris. London was like: there is either the high street or a bunch of kids.

OK: It is still mainly like this. It is either the high street or a bunch of kids.

But for the bunch of kids now the rent is too high and everything is more complex. And I don’t even mean COVID; that’s just a separate issue. In the Eighties and early Nineties, this wasn’t seen as a career in the UK. I remember that my mum didn’t understand what I was doing, but she didn’t mind. She never undermined you, she never felt like you were doing the wrong thing. When it was London Fashion Week, daytime tv shows would bring designers on just to take the piss out of them. They would think it was funny. I remember they invited Vivienne Westwood and ridiculed her in front of the great British public.

“In the 90’s you first had to go to Paris and get out of London. ” – Shelley Fox

OK: I just saw the one with Vivienne Westwood, they really made fun of her…

Yeah, that awful scene…she looks amazing and she is just being Vivienne. And she wasn’t taken seriously as a designer until 1990 when she went to Paris. I remember seeing her first show in Paris with my friend who was working for her. At that point, the whole industry saw her as a very serious designer. But you first had to go to Paris and get out of London. It’s interesting to see how that country takes it seriously. I also think that has obviously changed. When you go home and see your family and they ask: “Oh! Is this designer wear?” There are designers that became part of a wider zeitgeist of ordinary people. Football players, for example, really elevated fashion. If you didn’t know about it, you do now because David Beckham was always on the front page. Celebrity culture brought people to that kind of thinking as well.

OK: You were talking about this community of people where everybody was just grateful they could do fashion. What was the relationship between you and your peers when you were setting up brands? Was everyone supportive or on their own?

I graduated from my MA in 1996 and I had just been offered a job in Italy from a company that would do knitwear for Gaultier and Hugo Boss, when I received a call from the office of the Dean of Central Saint Martins. She said Liberty wanted to buy my collection. I had never considered going into business before then, but after only one week I left Italy and decided I would do this, even with an eleven grand overdraft. I started on minus. I scraped together the money for the rent – way cheaper than now – and I launched the label. I came out three years after Hussein and three or four years after McQueen. Designers like Tristan Webber, Boudicca, Vexed Generation, and Andrew Groves were my peers all-around at the same time too. I always visualised it as Central Saint Martins graduate students falling out onto Charing Cross Road and then the next ones come through and so on. I was the only one to set up a label from my year. There were so many coming out, but it felt like everybody was just looking for the next McQueen.

“Back at the time, it went like this for everybody: you graduate from Saint Martins in March, you start production to deliver to the stores in August, and you’re meant to have a new collection by September. You don’t even know what you’re doing, or who to ask for help. ” – Shelley Fox

OK: And now, 30 years later everybody is still looking for the next McQueen.

Yeah, and I think looking back to your point – and I can only speak for myself – I felt very outsider. Even though two years in I won the Jerwood Prize. That was a huge prize at that time. I was shocked because I had always considered myself too weird, I never fit in. It was all seen as too conceptual, with these weird words that didn’t mean anything. And you probably won’t believe this, but I didn’t have an intern until the fourth collection. It was just me and I don’t know how I did that. I didn’t even get a PR company until my fifth collection. And you know why I’m really glad about this? Because my second, third, and fourth collections were crap. I had my second fashion week after graduation, where I felt like I commercialised my collection really badly. My third collection was so-so. And then my fourth one was the breakthrough, in the sense that I didn’t get any sales and I was like: “Ok, I’m going to give it one more shot”.

Back at the time, it went like this for everybody: you graduate from Saint Martins in March, you start production to deliver to the stores in August, and you’re meant to have a new collection by September. You don’t even know what you’re doing, or who to ask for help. But the breathing space of the fact that I didn’t have any seasonal production for my forth collection was fantastic. I just had to produce one collection in that year, and produce it really tight. The next one would have been the “braille collection”. For that, I got back into making my own fabrics again, not ordering stuff from Italy, or trying to be part of minimum orders. If I look back now, I see how many mistakes I made. I listened to too many people, while nobody really knows what they’re doing, to be honest.

During that period, I got approached to teach at the American College in London, which was a terrible college and I don’t mind saying it, but they offered me two days teaching as chair of Fashion and a proper salary. I accepted and decided to give the money to a PR company. I didn’t do a fashion show until the sixth season. Which I’m really glad about because I feel like I didn’t grow up in the public eye, in such a forceful way. However, my PR Kate knew the owner of this bar in Shoreditch and asked him if we could use the basement for the show. Makeup was done in the boiler room. A tiny collection, probably twelve outfits, some of them were meant for the press, some others were more wearable. Two of my students walked the show, and so did the hairdresser’s wife, who was eight months pregnant and looked amazing in the garment. The show cost about a thousand pounds. There were only one hundred people, but among them, there was Alexander McQueen on the front row, who had his studio around the corner, all of US Vogue and the most important Japanese press. With that collection, the Jerwood prize competition came up. I decided I was going to apply for that, and if I didn’t get it, I was going to close down my business.

OK: A show after six seasons, with McQueen on the front row and all the press, must feel like an achievement. So why close down after that?

Because I wouldn’t have had the money. We were borrowing money here and there to do the show.

“When you are in it, you just do it.” – Shelley Fox

 OK: When you look back at all the stuff you were doing, maybe “looking back” is not the right word because it might romanticise it, but can you remember how you felt about those choices? Was it like “This is exciting and it’s all worth it” or “Oh my god, I’m in hell”?

I think that at the time you’re just in it. You have a goal, and your goal might be short-term, like in a year. Because I couldn’t possibly think that I was going to be successful or even a designer. When you are in it, you just do it. And it’s not always going to be nice, but you don’t think: “Oh, this is so unfair”. You think: “Do I want to do that? I need to do this”. It is very much a matter of fact because I didn’t come from a wealthy family.

OK: It was survival.

Yeah, in a way. It was a different thing at that time. I think it’s a matter of being able to negotiate for yourself. I was kind of good at getting sponsorships when I was a student… All those moments when I thought if I hadn’t found a job, I would have had to close down the label. I literally went from Joe Casely-Hayford to the MA, to going straight to production, and then six collections, back to back each with its own production. It was exhausting.

OK: How old were you when you did your sixth collection?

Probably 32-33. By that time, I had started teaching and, my work had been pulled for international exhibitions and was going around the world. Especially from the Braille collection onwards, there was a multitude of things going on.

“One of the things that used to stress me out the most towards the end was that I couldn’t answer the phone to my machinists, because I didn’t have the money to pay them.” – Shelley Fox

OK: Often, designers are getting positive praise because people around them want to be polite and supportive, but actually they are motivating them to continue when actually they should’ve stopped. 

You get these moments, like your first exhibition with people you really respect. We could barely pay the rent, but to the outside world we are sitting next to all these people in these exhibitions worldwide. And then one exhibition leads to another one and then another one and then someone comes to you with a commission so you just keep going. You are right, there is a burning bridge behind you, constantly. Everything was just so stressful. Even when we won the Jerwood prize, it just made us more on the map, and everybody knew about us but the money was still shit. The prize wasn’t what it appeared to be in the press, it was sold as a 125 grand prize, but let me break it down for you: it was 50 grand in loans if you got the orders, there were two shows they picked up, five or ten grand each. Liberty put 25 grand worth of orders, but that’s retail, not wholesale, and $10K worth of pattern cutting tables that were useless and came from an old factory that we couldn’t use. It was all bullshit because people thought we had made it and other support from the BFC wasn’t forthcoming after that. And then there was this free studio for a year, which kicked me out after 9 months, in the Jerwood space in South London. It’s great that I won it, because all I did with the 20 grand checks, which you do get in cash, was sit and write checks for all the invoices I had left to pay, but one of the best things though was meeting Hugh Devlin – a lawyer who was always supportive.

One of the things that used to stress me out the most towards the end was that I couldn’t answer the phone to my machinists, because I didn’t have the money to pay them. And I remember the day I could answer the phone, with pride.

Earlier on, you talked about this student whose parents were mortgaging their house. This is what came to the crunch for us: when I got that first teaching job at the American college and Ross had a job at UAL, we bought our first flat with a 60 grand loan from the bank. One year we decided to re-mortgage the house for 20 grand. With the sponsor, it didn’t go well and so Ross said: “Take the money and put it towards the shows”. He believed in it as well. He was encouraging me.

“I remember being on the studio balcony, the collection there, all the stylists, the machinists… and then the money got pulled. I had to go to the PR company to tell them I was pulling out my show. They were obviously pissed off, they put a lot of effort into it. But a part of me was relieved.” – Shelley Fox

Some years later, I remember just being in a bar with my mum and bursting into tears saying “It’s not working”. I was trying to hide it because I was in the Guardian,  The Independent, and in many other magazines, constantly. People read the press and they see one thing, but the reality is so different. In 2000, when the housing market was going up, we mortgaged the house for another 50 grand to pay for credit cards and stuff for the shows. And then I remember being in Paris for a show a couple of years later; I went to see a really important PR company that still exists. They were really impressed with the press book. We were thinking of showing in Paris, but the sponsorship collapsed days before the show. I remember being on the studio balcony, the collection there, all the stylists, the machinists… and then the money got pulled. I had to go to the PR company to tell them I was pulling out my show. They were obviously pissed off, they put a lot of effort into it. But a part of me was relieved. We worked with SHOWstudio instead, filming the whole collection. A new thing for 2002. We had a stills photographer and a videographer, and we built a film that was launched after fashion week at the ICA. I didn’t have a lot of contacts in the art world, but ICA and British Council were all very supportive.

“When I went back to London after selling season, it was October and the boiler had stopped working. We had no money, no hot water, or central heating for 14 months. This is when I decided to stop the company and start teaching.” – Shelley Fox

OK: British Council, not the British Fashion Council though. 

Yes, I had a lot of support from them. But I was trying to make it all happen by myself. And I remember flying to Prague for an exhibition opening of my work, only to jump on a plane to Paris the following morning, and waking up and literally just throwing up. I was so stressed. One season, when I took the collection to Paris for selling, I started to have a gut feeling that I wanted out. I loved what I was doing, but I wasn’t going to do it for much longer. No more re-mortgaging the house, it was Ross’s house too. So when I went back to London after selling season, it was October and the boiler had stopped working. We had no money, no hot water, or central heating for 14 months. This is when I decided to stop the company and start teaching. I could finally feed myself properly. To get a hot shower, I would wake up at six, and go to the gym before heading to college to teach. We did that for months, but what was really scary about closing my company after eight years as a sole trader was finding a way I could pay every bill I owed anybody. I started feeling sick all the time. I remember going to sleep, I don’t know if I was hallucinating or dreaming, but I felt like I had a massive ice cube in my stomach. In my dreams, I saw all the patterns coming above me.

It’s just the system you find yourself in. I felt like I didn’t know who I was as a person because I wasn’t Shelley Fox the designer anymore, and what happens when that goes? That thought really terrified me.

When I finished the last order for Browns everyone was like: “Hey Shelley, looking forward to seeing your new collection”. I didn’t tell any buyer that I was closing; I pretended everything was normal, I delivered the collection and got paid. Only when the money was in the bank, did I announce it. I did it to pay my machinists and the people in the factories

OK: So many of your graduates started or want to start brands. Do you think anything has changed in how the journey begins and what they need to go through physically and mentally? In New York and in London, because maybe it’s a different story.

There are brilliant designers who come out of this program, but it’s still a struggle for them. I think they would have a different starting point in London. Even though New York has a lot of money flying around, there isn’t necessarily the space or the system for them. Certainly not for people like Melitta Baumeister, or Caroline [Hu] But I’ll give you an example with Kopi [Kozaburo Akasaka] when he was in second year, he entered VFiles with a terrible contract attached to it. I get the adrenaline because I’ve been there myself, but I took him to my office and told him: “If you sign this now, you’re in the middle of your degree and you will be doing the production while you are meant to be doing your MA collection. It will be a mess and you are going to be knackered”. And since I had read the contract really closely, I said: “If you sign this contract, not only will they take a chunk of sales now, but they also take a chunk of sales when you leave them after two years”. He went away thinking about it. Eventually, he didn’t sign it and concentrated on his MA collection. And then Dover Street Market came immediately after graduating. Even if that doesn’t always pay the rent, you can still tap into their press machine. Bit by bit he was able to grow and I think that now a lot of his market is in Tokyo.

“We had ten LVMH prize winners from this program [The Parsons MFA] in 8 years. But when I see all that money, I’m like: “Geez, I don’t know what to do with it.”” – Shelley Fox

OK: There’s big support there too. Shanghai and London are good places to start. There is money and a financial relationship that people understand. The problem with London is that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. There are a lot of good intentions here, but they are not structured. Nobody knows what they are doing. Instead of having those solid relationships with people where you understand how everyone can grow, everything is so focused on designers. It’s the same thing with a visa, only designers can get one in London. Nobody else can apply for exceptional talent; no photographers, no art directors, not anyone else within a brand or a team. It seems like there is a fetish for designers, they are so high on the pedestal; these fragile, precious things. Everyone treats them this way, but then, if there is no structure or clarity, no one knows what to do. You give someone 20k, but they don’t know what to do with it. 

Yeah. I’ll be honest with you, that freaks me out. We had ten LVMH prize winners from this program [The Parsons MFA] in 8 years. But when I see all that money, I’m like: “Geez, they don’t always know what to do with it” because these guys are surrounded by tons of people and tons of advice. Caroline Hu for example; everyone had an opinion about what she should have done. You need to have a strong character. I mean, this is what was interesting about someone like McQueen. You have to have some structure or a strong person assisting you. Obviously, in his case, there was Sarah Burton, a head of press, and a stylist like Katy England. And then Trino Verkade would bring a major sponsorship from American Express and all that other stuff. You can’t expect to load that all up on one person. And it was 30 years ago… Time goes so quickly, but you are right, education too, has a lot to answer for promoting all these designers. It’s insane.

OK: When I think of my education, I realise that we were too stuck in the idea that we all need to be fashion designers when actually, I apply that knowledge in so many ways, even when I write business models. Is it wrong that there isn’t an opportunity for everyone to become a designer? Or do you think that is a mistake by schools and curricula which do not show students other ways to use that knowledge outside of making clothes?

I think you really have a good point, Olya. You are right, there should be an opportunity there for students, but I think it’s also a combination of two things: there are a lot of irrelevant curricula and people teaching who have never been in the industry. And in these places, they don’t tell the truth to the students. There’s a fine line between not closing down their dreams and encouraging them. I guess teaching and mentorship are just two different things. Students come into my office and we end up having a completely different conversation. It’s like having a consultancy rather than teaching. So, you try to ask questions constantly to push them. Same thing for students from other pathways who for example go into curating. Liya Liu came from a BA in Saint Martins with a really great collection and she came to me to do her MFA, and after that said: “Shelley I really don’t feel the need to make another collection ever again”. And so, what she did was to put together exhibitions for students from Parsons and Saint Martins and bring them to New York and Shanghai. She raised all the money and the sponsorship by herself. She was great.

OK: I want us to stay a bit more on what you said about the importance of not killing that dream in them. Shouldn’t the school’s responsibility be all about: we are making a good designer out of you, and then when you graduate you do whatever you want with it. Design is a very logical job. Do you think the mistake might be the conversation about them being “genius” creative directors?

Yeah, I think maybe I expressed myself incorrectly. When I say dream, I mean that we don’t know where all of that is coming from and what they are leaving behind when they come to the program. What family situations they are leaving and what’s been in their background. A dream for many of them is not even doing their own brands, at all. I’ll give you an example: there’s a student I had in the very first year, Carly Ellis, from Liverpool and with a very working-class background. She had no intention of setting up her own brand, but she was a brilliant team player, who loved working with people. She got her first job at DKNY, then went back to London, where she worked for Next, an awful place. In the meantime, I had Nike coming into my office and I said to the whole team: “You need to employ this person”. Now she is head of tennis; the only one on her team who got to keep her job when COVID broke. She is in charge of Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams. She even shared this text with me of Serena Williams, forwarded from her manager. She was at the Australia Open and said: “This is the best outfit I’ve had, can you please let the designer know?” Carly is a Nike kid and she is having her dream job, with a boyfriend and a house they bought. And there are others too. I’ve got this student who’s going to Thom Browne to do knitwear. That’s their dream, to see themselves as designers and work for companies they appreciate. And that’s hard to achieve alone. I don’t mean dreaming as in the individual dreaming of a designer. That is a whole myth.

OK: In London there is still this idea of one big persona.

I think the problem lies in the fact that I know how talented they are, while design teams in companies don’t even know how to read their portfolios. So, I have to call them and say: “You really need to see this person”. They trust me now, so I can place people in many brands. These designers all enjoy working in the industry and sometimes I tell myself: “Maybe I shouldn’t have sent them there, because they are not going to treat them properly.”

LG: Do you think schools should touch on the business side more? 

I think that even when our first collection launched, I started to play by other people’s rules and that was a mistake – and the collections got too big with too many fabric options. And this sense of confusion makes you lose opportunities with buyers. Coming back to your question about “should fashion design courses teach business”, I think nobody would have gone to a business course at Saint Martin’s at the time. There are two things I remember from when I was there in the mid-nineties. Louise would have these sessions where she would bring designers to talk to us, like McQueen, Galliano, or Antoni and Alison. The latter came to talk to us about how they sued Armani. The brand ripped off this t-shirt, which was very London, very naïf and it said something like “wonderful” or “amazing”. All they did was to take those words, move them around and send them down the runway in Milan. And I was so hooked onto every word they were saying, how they sued Armani – this multi-million brand – being just two tiny London designers. They won, but they said: “If you asked us to do that again, we would never. Because it was exhausting”.

“It’s really nice to step out of this bubble I’ve been in. All the politics that I’ve dealt with, and the fighting for the [MFA] program.” – Shelley Fox

LG: Do you have an answer to that “what’s next” question? 

What I have been doing a lot recently is, that when I sent out emails, I wanted to let all my industry contacts know what I was doing. People would be coming back to me, like really important curators and other people I’ve been having dinner with and talking about what’s next. It’s really nice to step out of this bubble I’ve been in. All the politics that I’ve dealt with, and the fighting for the program. And the more successful this program became, the harder my job became. So now I’m like: “Take it! It’s all yours”.

I’m just so excited to look at my archive. Not in a reminiscent way, at all, because it would be no good, but more about what’s next. And I have those moments where I’m going back to those early pressures like: “What are my skill sets? What am I good at”? I can’t even remember. Even though you’ve spent all this time on consultancy for students, you still doubt yourself. I don’t think I have all the answers yet. But I think it’s also nice to read, think and reflect and take time off. I really need to step back, because I think that 14 years in New York have gone so fast. But I am doing that thing that I’d do to my students: “What have you got to say, Shelley? Is it still relevant”? I don’t know what’s next.

OK: Well, it’s an amazing place to be. What a luxury that you can just take this break and in months or a year you might be like: “I don’t want to do anything!”

Yeah, it is exciting not to have a schedule or an agenda. That’s nice. Like a clean slate again and I don’t know when I last had that.

“A tutor from Saint Martin’s once told me: ‘Shelley, I tried to put all students forward to get possibilities in Paris, but I get emails asking for the boys.'” – Shelley Fox

OK: Shelley, can I ask you a very personal question? If you look at brands, you see that the female creative directors usually have kids, while the female designers underneath them don’t. I always wonder why. You’ve always been with Ross and that’s an achievement in this industry. Did you consciously decide not to expand the family?

I think you’re absolutely right, and it’s an observation that hasn’t even occurred to me. I haven’t thought about it so much. I think I knew from a very young age I never wanted children. I remember a really close friend of mine, we were friends since we were 18, we went out for dinner. She said she had something to tell me and I realised I drank all my glasse of wine while she didn’t touch hers. When she told me she was pregnant, it really threw me off. I remember thinking: “Is that whole me-not-wanting-kids, a real wall I put up, or is it just me…” but then I would just say: “No, it’s fine. I’m cool”.  I could barely feed myself. I only had myself to think about, and Ross. And it’s true, we’ve been together for 32 years, and we got married 10 years ago last month. But simply not to get kicked out of the US. I think I was incredibly lucky to have found a soul mate so young, who trusted me, who put up with me, who knows me better than I know myself. He also has an amazing aesthetic; we worked together so long that that level of trust is crucial.

Olya, going back to the children, a tutor from Saint Martin’s once told me: “Shelley, I tried to put all students forward to get possibilities in Paris, but I get emails asking for the boys”. He’s retired now, and that used to upset him, that his female students were not given that same opportunity. That’s very much unspoken in the fashion industry.

The only thing I can perhaps share with you is not about children, but more, in general, having a personal life. There was one year, 2018, we had a fire at Parsons and I remember during the summer asking Ross to stay one more week upstate, just before fashion week kicked off for the MFA  program. Ross saw this property upstate and he sent it to me because he had been looking for 5 years and I would always postpone the conversation. He used to get so angry with me; he would tell me: “Will you just focus on your future, and yourself and us, for a change? It’s always about the students, the college, your job”. However, in August we went to see the house, just out of curiosity, because it was already in contract. However, when he googled it, he saw it was back in the market. We went to see it and I said yes, immediately.

“Ross [Fox’s husband] made me focus on my future as he said to me: Shelley, do you think anyone is going to remember you once you leave? What are they going to do? Put your name on a park bench? ‘Shelley, director of MFA, dropped dead through exhaustion.'” – Shelley Fox

OK: Shelley, that’s fate.

So that’s how I agreed to buy a house. One week later, at fashion week I left the house at 7 am and got back at 1 am 4 days straight. And that’s just a different example of thinking about the future. If I hadn’t made that decision, we would have never got upstate, because after COVID everyone else was trying to get out of the city and the rent went through the roof. But Ross made me focus on my future as he said to me: “Shelley, do you think anyone is going to remember you once you leave? What are they going to do? Put your name on a park bench? ‘Shelley, director of MFA, dropped dead through exhaustion’. And do you think your students are going to remember you?” This obviously reminds me of Louise [ Wilson]. And I get it. I’m so sick of seeing 52-year-old women dropping dead around me, which has happened quite considerably. I lost a friend, 52; she designed the Haçienda, in Manchester. Then another woman from college, then Louise and Basia. All of them were around my age. And I’m asking myself, would I be stepping down if COVID hadn’t happened? But I’m so glad I’m walking away from it all. And I also think I got the best out of what we could do because now I feel like the culture’s changing in education. Criticism, and being bold with your students don’t’ feel welcome at this point – it feels like there is a huge lack of critique or maybe that’s just in America, – and that’s hugely damaging in education, and I worry that students are just happy in wanting to be pleased.

OK: My lessons right now start with me saying: “Guys, I’m not a therapist. You can go upstairs and they will provide you with the support you need. I’m here just to teach fashion.” You want to give students really thick boots and then send them to the forest to explore. Instead, they either don’t want to step into the forest, which you can’t avoid, or they want you to carry them.

I always say about students: “You can take the horse to the water but you cannot make them drink it”.

“[The application process] got more complicated over time, especially with only 18 places to fill. Even from 300 portfolios, we can discard 100 immediately, just on visualisation.” – Shelley Fox

OK: How do you filter strong students from weak when they apply? There needs to be some test, you know like “only the strong can get through”.

In the early days, I used to interview in person. And the British Fashion Council gave me an office for free in Somerset House to interview all UK and European students coming over. And that was nice because you could have real conversations. I remember a student from LCF with a photography book, not much fashion, she was fighting to get into the MFA. Even though it wasn’t a real fashion portfolio, there was something I really liked about her; her maturity, and the way she talked. I took her on and she was great. Carly Ellis came from the BA. Not the best portfolio, I’d say, and she agreed with me. But there was something about the person. In those early days, it was really easy to interview. But what happened is that the more successful the program became, the more problems it brought. I think it just got more complicated over time, especially with only 18 places to fill. Even from 300 portfolios, we can discard 100 immediately, just on visualisation. And then you start with the “maybes” and you do some check-in on the stuff we missed. And sometimes when a person is already on the program, causing problems, you go through their CV and you see they came from a BA in Agriculture and Fishery. How could we miss that? We are so busy we can’t check every detail.

Last week I was in the middle of some transition meetings for the MFA program, and I asked myself: “How do you write down how you breathe? How do you write down your gut feelings? Your Intuition? You can’t. An instruction book does not come with it”. So now I am trying to convert 14 years of knowledge into a couple of sheets of paper. I had to train the new interim co-directors and write this document on how to get through admissions. But it’s not going to be completely right and there’s this part of me who feels responsible even though I know I have to let it go.  And now I have to do another one with syllabi and teaching, timetables, and scheduling. Again, I’ve set up the whole spring semester for all the tutors to teach, but a lot of them already told me they are not coming back. It will just be different, but I am happy to close the door on it.