Noki House of Sustainability
Fashion is all about expression and throughout it's history there have always been those designers and icons who love to push the boundaries. Female First look at the rebels of fashion.
Vivienne Westwood
Vivienne Westwood is known for her love of mixing fashion and politics and even made a speech at a Conservative Party Christmas bash after swapping her life long Labour support in favour of the Tory party last year.
Westwood has been hailed as the founder of punk fashion and started her career running the famous Sex shop with husband Malcolm MacLaren- who managed the Sex Pistols. The shop was an icon of the 70s and helped Vivienne become one of the best known designers to come out of Britain.
During her career Westwood has used her influence and passion for fashion to fuel her political views. In 1995 she joined the British Civil Rights group Liberty to launch a range of limited design t-shirts sporting the slogan 'I AM NOT A TERRORIST, please don’t arrest me', to highlight the lack of civil rights for suspected terrorists.
Noki: House of Sustainability
The creative genius behind Noki is one of the most mysterious figures in fashion at the moment. Designer Jonathan 'JJ' Hudson never shows his face to an audience and always wears a surgical mask to hide himself from photographers. He rarely speaks to the press and has never been known to do an interview
His Myspace page indicates that Hudson is 31 and originates from Aberdeen...but that's about it. He's been around in the fashion business for almost a decade now and his label is well known all over the world but still manages to keep that eerie sense of the unknown around him.
Hudson is a deep thinking and eccentric character who described his inspiration last season as “A need to see extreme modernist design to counterbalance the corporate retro overload.†He also describes his occupation as “slaughterhouseâ€, and says “the New York Slasher†is his hero.
For Spring/summer 2008 Hudson gave us a cross between fun childish cartoons and terrifying nightmare zombies. Slashed vintage tshirts, knee high stripy socks and crazy clown wigs were all finished off with the Noki signature surgical mask.
Viktor & Rolf
Since then the label owned by Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren has continued to arouse the industry with their stunts and quirky designs.
For their debut menswear collection, Victor and Rolf modeled the clothes themselves, changing outfits on the stage.
The pair used their autumn/winter 2007 showcase to make a statement about there being too much concern over models safety by giving each model in their show their own scaffolding and lights to be worn on their shoulders as they headed down the catwalk.
Caz Moss- Female First