Parnell Mooney on shunning the pressures of the fashion industry
Welcome to CHEW THE FAT WITH…, our long-form profile series where we invite you to sit down with fashion’s next generation as they dig deep into their memories. To chew some fat - defined as an informal conversation brimming with small talk - we encourage you to pull up a chair and take a big old bite as we spill the tea on the life and work of the industry’s need-to-knows. Just remember to mop up after yourself.
Rory Parnell-Mooney has successfully achieved what many find impossible: shunning the pressures of the fashion industry. How? By putting on his blinkers and finding his own yellow brick road through its messy wonderland. But just like Dorothy’s hazardous journey to Oz, Parnell-Mooney’s flight to freedom hasn’t always been plain sailing. After creating his eponymous label PARNELL MOONEY in 2015 and a breakout stint at FASHION EAST, the Irish-born designer found himself at a crossroads. “I don't think I ever really took time and thought…what do I actually like? What am I into?” explains Parnell-Mooney. “I took two and a half years off and got offered this studio space and spent almost a year just making stuff and seeing what felt right. I don't think enough people do that…we follow a plan.” Now the designer has shaken off the shackles of the industry and is imagining a future where making clothes he wants to wear – we’re talking slick leather trousers, bleached Y-fronts and twisted tanks – is simply enough. In other words, the designer is back – big time – and he’s here to dress #hotboysummer. Following the release of his Autumn/Winter 2021 collection at London Fashion Week, Ella Bardsley sits down with Parnell-Mooney to talk dodgy photocopiers, industry egos and his complex stance on fashion education.
Ella Bardsley: How has lockdown impacted your creativity?
Rory Parnell-Mooney: I don't want to be like 'COVID has given me this new clarity' or whatever. We have to say that it is a shitty situation for everyone, it's a fucking pandemic! But actually, it has kind of given me a new kind of clarity. It’s made me feel a bit more like someone who makes loads and sits outside of the system, rather than being like, ‘Oh, I'm a designer that's part of a fashion week and I need to keep up with what everyone's doing.’ I totally respect designers’ decision to take some time off and not do a show this season. Hopefully, that gives London this new kind of clarity on timing and pressure. I have felt better about the work that I've created in lockdown than I have about work that I was more judgmental of outside of lockdown.
EB: In lockdown you kind of exist in a vacuum. Do you think that's why?
RPM: Yeah exactly! And you don't know where things are going, right? You're not like, ‘oh I've got to do this for this show and then everyone's going to drag it out and then I'm going to sell it to all these stores.’ You don't really know what the point of this is – and that's weird, and that's hard – but it's also quite liberating. It's putting the important things about what I'm doing first. I love making clothes, it’s kind of all I’m really interested in. I love clothes that are really well made but also that have been sourced really well. COVID’s given me the time to do that stuff properly.
“I wish someone kind of kicked me in the ass a little bit earlier on and had just been like who do you think you are?”
EB: You worked with Fashion East straight out of CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS. How did you find that experience? How important do you think collectives like Fashion East are in nurturing young designers?
RPM: It's honestly so important, it's the reason that London is cool. But I think when it comes to things like Fashion East, it’s also really important that the designer is totally ready for it. I went into Fashion East with such an ego that I wish someone had kind of knocked me down a little bit and been like, ‘you really shouldn't do a show.’ I don't think that I ever really sat down and thought, what is the product I’m making? That might sound really commercial, but I think at the end of the day, we all exist in fashion, we're all making clothes for people to buy. I don't think I ever really thought about that, and that's way more how I think now. I wish someone kind of kicked me in the ass a little bit earlier on and had just been like who do you think you are? Nobody needs another show for the sake of having a show. Like, let's actually talk about clothes. Let's make things that people want to buy.
EB: You’ve previously said that you love clothes, but not fashion. What do you mean by that?
RPM: I'm a real maker. My dream day is coming to the studio and just turning my phone on silent and making stuff. It's a funny kind of trajectory for me, because I basically spent the entire time before my stint at Fashion East in an institution or kind of answering to someone else. We follow this trajectory that university puts you on, which is like, do a bit of research, do some development, photograph this in a hallway, present a portfolio…I don't think there's ever a project at university where they say: what do you like? What are you into? What feels good on you? What do you put on and think, ‘Oh, fuck, I feel really good in this?’ That's totally what I do now. I do still do all of the stuff that I did at university, I'm still doing research, developing it and things. But that also just comes secondary to when I'm doing fittings and when we're styling looks, I now just think: does it look nice? Am I into it? Do I want to look like that? Is it cool? Does it make the model feel good? That's another really important thing that you never talk about at university. It's really important for me that the boy in the fitting thinks: ‘that’s really cool, I love the way I look in it.’ That's what makes you feel good as a designer. There should be more projects in university where instead of asking the designer ‘why does it look like that?’ They should ask the model: ‘do you feel like a mug?’
‘There needs to be a point. Especially in fashion. It's impossible to get a job, it's impossible to get work in the industry.’
EB: You’re now a tutor at University of the Arts London as well as a designer, how integral you think fashion education is to the success of a designer?
RPM: That's a hard one for me. I think education is really important. I think that a good fashion education is life changing. My MA was really, really intense. Did I learn more than I have ever done before? Probably. I think certain fashion lecturers are some of the most inspiring and engaged people for young designers to be around. Do I think that the system needs to be looked at? 100%. I don't know if the system serves a student very well. But some of the people I work with and also some of the people that taught me, as tutors, are honestly amazing. Louise was really amazing. She really, really cared. We had loads of conversations where you were being told that what you've done was wrong, but you were also learning why it was wrong…
EB: Criticism is a key thing to learn in this industry.
RPM: Yeah, exactly and I think it’s a very nuanced thing. It's very difficult to learn how to give feedback in a way that is a critique, but it's also constructive. It's not a nervous stance, but it's also not too nice, you know? There needs to be a point. Especially in fashion. It's impossible to get a job, it's impossible to get work in the industry. So having someone actually say to you at university: do you know what? This is really fucking difficult and you're not working hard enough…it’s important.
EB: What are some of the biggest challenges that you’ve faced as a young designer?
RPM: I think that coming back after my break has been a really positive experience for me, because I've come back with this confidence where I honestly just do not give a fuck. I'm making clothes that I really like, and the feedback is really good. I also have this newfound relationship with Instagram, which has given me a direct relationship to the people that follow the brand and want to buy it. I think that has really changed my outlook on creating work and has made me have a way better relationship to creating work, like people DM’ing me and saying that I want to buy it…it feels so much nicer and completely different to before where every time I finished a show, I'd be like, ‘oh, fuck this. I hate all that work. Now I want to move on.’
EB: Really?
RPM: Yeah, but I think that's a hangover from university where you work so hard until you finish the project and then you stay up all night for a whole week. And then you hand it in, and then you go to a crit. You never want to see that stuff again. Whereas now I shoot something and I'm like, ‘oh my god, that looks great and I wanna wear those clothes.’ I'm going to go back to those clothes again and again, thinking about how I can elevate them for the next season, using similar shapes, and slightly different fabrics. It just becomes a much more organic movement. I wish I'd learned that earlier.
EB: Do you think that’s to do with maturing in confidence as a designer?
RPM: 100% yeah, I grew up! I took some time out and I grew up. Fashion university builds stuff up so that you feel like making clothes is the be all and end all of everything. And if you stop making fashion even for five seconds, you’re a failure – which is completely incorrect! Go away and learn something and then come back and make clothes again – that's such a great thing to do. The other thing that university teaches you is that you need to capitalise on any press that you have. So many final students say to me, ‘when the MA show happens or when the BA happens, I have got to start a brand straightaway because I'll have all this press.’ And you're like, ‘oh my god the press is really fickle.’ Instead of thinking about how you’re going to capitalise on this, think about going to work in Paris for a couple of years and learn loads about where you can source fabrics, where you can get things made, or where you can buy the best fabric…then come back and do it because it will just be better. No one teaches you at university that if it’s good, people are gonna care about it. It doesn't matter that you're five minutes out of university, or you're four years out of university, or you've decided to start a brand at 40. If it’s good, people are going to care about it.
EB: What's the best piece of advice you've received?
RPM: Louise once said to me: ‘never look side to side.’ I think that that's really important. She was like, stop looking at what everyone else is doing and just stay in your lane. Do what you're doing and do it really well. I think that that's really important, especially for students, but even designers to just think: what do you want to do? How do you want to do it? How can you do the best you can and just be like, it doesn't really matter what anyone else is doing? Because you're happy with what you're doing.
EB: Talk us through your recent showcase in which a photocopier spits out polaroids. What’s the significance of that?
RPM: The idea of the photocopier is always something that has been in my head. I wanted to do something that felt very of the time, which was me in the studio, recording myself coming out of a printer that I kind of half broke and stuck a piece of paper onto! I think it’s a bit wild that people are doing such massive shows at the moment, this felt more immediate and straight up. I don't think there's a huge amount of pretence there. I'm not trying to be like, ‘oh, this is from a big fashion house.’ It's quite clearly me in a studio, it feels irreverent.
EB: Talk us through the inspiration behind the latest collection.
RPM: I'm into the opposition of things and I'm always trying to look at that. It’s about looking at my old work and my new work and bringing those two things together. For example, thinking about opera gloves but then also what you'd wear to a nightclub. The idea of dressing up to go out but also thinking about how you're dressed to go to the office – putting on clothes to go somewhere for a reason because we don't have the opportunity to do that at the moment. It's hard for me to give exact reference points…that's definitely how I used to work. It’s not really how I work now; I can’t say I design for one guy in mind. Some designers have this great narrative where they think about Nureyev in Studio 54 and they want to design for him in that situation. I might have Nureyev on my wall and there are films that I talk about in the press release this season, like Claire Denis’ Beau Travail, where the French Foreign Legion are pressing military garments. It's a really beautiful film. I definitely watched it, and that definitely influenced it, but it’s not directly about that one thing. The references for this season are a drag net of everything that I've been looking at for the last six months.
EB: What constitutes success for you as a designer? And do you feel you've already achieved that for yourself?
RPM: Yeah, that's interesting. I think success for me would be get getting the brand to the point where it's self-sustaining and being able to do projects that I think are really cool and having the money to do that. I don't see myself turning this into a massive fashion house and churning out a million collections a year. The designers that I think are really amazing and really successful, are people like DRIES VAN NOTEN and JW ANDERSON. People that are doing four collections a year, and not really worrying about doing pre-collections or t-shirts etc. I love the idea of always just doing two or four collections a year. My dream scenario in the future would be to have a studio and a factory that were attached, so I can basically spend half my time in a factory talking to people that love clothes and being like, ‘maybe we can try doing it this way. Let's do the pocket like this or finish it like that.’ Yeah, I love the idea of working with makers. I don't ever want to be too far away from the construction process of it.
EB: What’s next?
RPM: I’m currently working on a new online shop that should be open in the summer.
EB: Just in time for clubbing!
RPM: Haha exactly, that’s the gag! Going out this summertime? Buy some clothes!
EB: That should be your slogan.