For us, ‘designer’ means more than what the general public usually thinks of with the word. More often than not, that’s just limited to a creative director for a luxury house or the person who started an indie label. When we say designer, it’s the breadth of people doing the work behind the scenes who never really get any credit for their contribution to design.
So celebrating them is one thing we’re going to keep doing at 1 Granary. We interview them about their perspectives on the industry, award them prizes for their talent, and, sometimes, we throw parties for them, too. Remember our Paris one? It had been a little while. So the other day we brought together nearly 200 designers from brands like Burberry, McQueen, Stella McCartney, JW Anderson, Victoria Beckham, and Toteme; the founders of independent labels; and the graduates only just starting out – the full spread of the design community in our network, gathered at Home House in London.
Just a laid-back evening with drinks, senior designers seeing old friends who they’d studied with two decades ago, rubbing shoulders with those who have just left school and are dipping their toes into the biz. At the end of the day, this industry is one that’s built on connection. It’s definitely about who knows you and can roll the dice in your favour; who can vouch for you when a new role opens up, think of you for a collaboration, or help navigate some in-house red flags or salary negotiations. A night like this won’t fix the harder things designers are facing right now – the unstable jobs, rising costs and the constant demand for output. But it can make the connections a little less accidental, and remind people they’re not navigating it alone.
We can’t reveal the contents of our conversations outright, but we’ll be slowly interrogating some of the industry problems that came up all evening via our newsletter over the coming months. Until then, here are some snaps of what went down at this year’s Designers’ Night, shot by Alaric Macdonald.
