SPENCER PHIPPS
The idea of a strong community made of people linked together by a common spirit. Nature and vibes, meanings and messages are the ingredients behind the work of Spencer Phipps. A designer who’s devoted to research and his ‘Educational Clothing’, a mission more than anything else. His creations caught the attention of many after a few years within the fashion system with his independent label. His American origins are a fundamental part of the story, as well as the idea of creating a network of information and consciousness. A new way of expressing creativity though garments could sound repetitive nowadays, but with Spencer Phipps and the great attitude of his shows the final goal is easy to be reached. An easy-going soul and such a honest mind is the stream that’s conquering the new wave of fashion.
I’d like to start with something linked with your roots. You’re absolutely connected with your American origins and background. I read that you realized how American you are while you were far away from your homeland. So, can we say that you’ve discovered the strength of your roots step by step or is it a different story?
I’d say that you don’t notice the strength of your roots until you’re surrounded by people who are completely different from you. It was really like that when I moved to Europe, I became much more aware of what it means to be American in 2020. For instance, when you’re in a room full of people whose mother tongue is not English, you have to face it and find a way to understand and be understood. However it’s a matter of culture for sure, and I’d say that I recognised my roots while I wasn’t in my own country. When you’re at ‘home’, you tend to take things for granted, you don’t recognise certain things’ beauty or non beauty. It’s probably a matter of comparison too, but I’d say that I’ve enjoyed rediscovering how American I am.
Is there a touch of nostalgia in your work?
Yes, definitely. It’s funny: as I get older, I find myself being more and more nostalgic of my youth, my time in California and all the things that I probably wasn’t paying attention to while I was in the USA. It’s fascinating how slowly all those things from the past come out year after year. Yes, we could call it nostalgia somehow.
On your website, there’s a section called ‘TRAVEL JOURNAL’. To be honest with you, it’s amazing. Aside from the beautiful pictures, I really like the fact that you can find it underneath the info section of your website, it seems to be a part of the whole thing’s DNA. How did you come up with the idea of this travel journal?
I’ve been very bad at updating it (Laughs, E.D.). However, it surely is a part of the project’s soul. This journal is supposed to be a community project. To me, it’s like drawing a world map of where things have gone. It’s nice to see how people wear and live in my garments all around the world and what they give back to them. It’s even nice to see how the clothes look, surrounded by different locations.
I’d say traveling is, somehow, a matter of stepping out of your comfort zone and getting in touch with a new world, in order to recognise and understand yourself. Do you agree on this?
Traveling is definitely like that, you have to understand a lot of feelings, a lot of differences and, actually, by doing so you’re going to understand yourself a little bit more. You can find out that you’re brave or not so brave, that you’re more or less patient than you thought. In the end, after every travel, whether it’s a short or a long one, you go back home and you’re different somehow.
In 2020, we have so many sources of information that we could travel from our sofa by scrolling down a smartphone. Because of this, do you think that people are becoming quite lazy, or are they becoming more and more curious about standing up from that sofa and living something in real life?
I think we’ll never be able to replace the real thing with a digital version. People are more informed, they have a better knowledge of the entire world today and decide which kind of adventure they want to choose for themselves. You can make a lot of research about what you’re obsessed with and decide to go to a specific spot on the other side of the planet, in order to experience and visit it. Through social media, for instance, you can even find guides or people who live there and could take you around. I mean, these things sound quite easy today, but if we recall how it used to be, it’s amazing how powerful these tools are.
Regarding your ‘Educational Clothing’, I made a connection with Katharine Hamnett and the way she used clothing as a vehicle of communication. As a communicator, do you feel more like an educator or a protester?
Maybe, an educator. The process we follow to make each piece is much more like the way someone would go about writing a paper for school. We spend a lot of time researching, not only about the aesthetic of the clothes but also about the message behind them. I spend a lot of time studying non visual languages and reading a lot of different things related to whatever the theme of that season’s collection is. We always ask ourselves: ‘Which is the logic and the reason why we want to go through it?’.
Together with the clothing, the names of your four collections are interesting to me. My favorite one is probably ‘NATURE LOVES COURAGE’, from Spring Summer 2019. Do you recall an act of braveness that really inspired you?
Wow, well, there are so many. I’d say there are tons of brave acts: we have Greta Thunberg today, she’s doing an amazing thing for our planet and society. However, there also are smaller acts that really inspire me. For instance, the braveness of a person who goes on a specific trip, challenging boundaries and personal limits. Probably, as to braveness, what really moves me is the act of stepping out of the comfort zone.
Your collections always have a brutal touch about them. You put people directly in front of an issue. At the same time I can even highlight a delicate touch, a gentle attitude. It’s quite a great compromise to me. How important is attitude to you?
Attitude is everything, at the end of the day clothing is just some fabrics stitched together. The way people wear it, how they put their life in it makes the garment alive. We’re more than just our physical self, we have so much room for our spirit. They way you present yourself to the world and your attitude is more linked to your inner spirit than what we see from the outside. How we live our body is a result of how we conceive it and see things. So, how you want to wear things and make yourself feel comfortable in them is the fascinating part. That’s why I love castings.
So, tell me a little bit more about your castings.
We look for real people. I don’t like to call it just ‘street casting’, the thing is that we look for people that could be a part of the community we’re working on. We found mountain guys from Chamonix and had them walk in the show, as well as people on the streets: we select cool and nice guys you’d like to be a friend of. They can be out or far from the stereotyped idea of what a model should look like, but the spirit is there and this is the main thing.
It’s fascinating how, generally speaking, the word ‘power’ has an immediate feeling: it gives you a bad vibe, probably something linked with abuse and the idea of being a victim of that power. On the other hand, if you have the power to do or not to do something, for me it has a lot to do with responsibility as well. I’d say that, In 2020, power is a matter of caring and looking around with respectful eyes towards people and what surrounds us. What’s your own idea of power?
At first glance power is all about doing things over someone else, there’s always a person in charge and then, the others. I think that’s an oversimplified idea of power. In 2020, it’s more personal and power comes from you as an individual. The decisions you make, the things you choose to bring into your life or even sort of refuse. Individually, we’re much more powerful today than we’ve ever been before.
TEMPLES
Being a member of a band is a matter of connections. It must be a connection with sounds and visions, but first of all it must be a human connection. Being connected with your colleagues as well as the audience. The energy you give to the people is the fuel that’s going to keep alive the spiritual connection and power of a band. A band is a group of individuals searching for unity and a unique point of view. Many said that they’re psychedelic, others that they’re one of the best British contemporary bands, for sure Temples are one-of-a-kind in their spirit. It’s amazing how they sound, a fusion of new sounds smashed together with intriguing words. Their look is amazing, so glam rock and British. It’s even more amazing how everything collides together on stage.
With musicians, I’m always quite curious to know some- thing about their audience. Do you have a specific city or country that generally gives you back quite a lot?
An audience is one very important aspect for every artist. We were in Mexico recently and, yes, we had an amazing audience there. A lot of Spanish countries tend to give us back a lot in terms of warmness and feelings. They’re receptive and energetic. Definitely, Mexico and Portugal are the best.
Would you define being on a stage a powerful experience or is it somewhat different?
For sure, there’s power in music. Music is crazy, it can do a lot of things that other aspects can’t do. In a lot of art forms, there’s power: they might have the power to move people, as well as make people think or even hate what you do. What’s important is to create a reaction. In the end, it’s important when people have a point of view and feeling about something. Power is a tricky subject, it can have a lot of meanings, but I’d say that it can be interesting, as long as you don’t misuse that power in a way that you become egomaniac and think people are beneath you. That’s what happened in the political system, but music is a different thing. It’s a powerful moment for us on stage. When we do a sound check, there’s no feeling of power. What brings us power is having an audience that receives the music. So, the powerful thing about the show is the audience. Probably, it’s about accepting and absorbing the power of other people in a genuine way, as an energy or stream.
In ‘Step Down’ (from ‘Hot Motion’), you’ve analysed the idea of being in a position of power and relinquishing it, as the only way to save everybody else. For me, the feel- ing of being in power can have two meanings: it depends if you’re using that power for yourself or someone else. How would you describe your own idea of power?
Self-control is the most powerful thing. Obviously, there’s another side of the coin too and, unfortunately, people tend to use power in the wrong way. However, it’s just a matter of discovering the different kinds of power we all have.
While I was thinking about this double meaning, I made a link with your song ‘Context’ (from ‘Hot Motion’). ‘When you put it in context, it makes sense’ really resonates with me, since I really care about words. To me, the idea of context is made by what surrounds us. A specific word told to someone in a specific way could be a weapon. Do you recall a bad or good critique, or a comment you received that literally stuck in your mind?
To be honest with you, there’s quite a few. Regarding things taken out from a context, probably there are some quotes used by journalists to make the piece catchy. You know, those extracts used to introduce a piece. For instance, I recall one of those saying ‘We took loads of drugs’. Actually, the whole thing was a parody of that concept, but written like that it sounds completely different. It’s annoying when it happens, but journalism is even made by creating snap- shots to make people read the article. There’s a comedian in England who fascinates me and says ‘Can you have con- text-free words?’ I’m not sure, but I don’t think you can.
‘See the boredom on their faces / No one ever cared as much as you do / Everybody has a story / And their story means nothing to you’. ‘It’s all coming out’ (from ‘Hot Motion’) is definitely about liberation and how we have to go straight to the point setting our own pace, that’s obviously made by our story, our background. Do you often see boredom on their faces?
Lots of people are bored all the time. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of facial features (Laughs, E.D.). Other times, it’s definitely caused by a feeling. However, that song is about prospective and how things look different from the out- side rather than the inside. It’s not about an audience, it’s more about an introspective idea and how things could or couldn’t look. It’s a matter of how you want to see things in the end: everything can change depending on the point of view, or how you want to see it. I tend to not judge the boredom that can appear on their faces.
‘You’re either on something’ (from ‘Hot Motion’) is so human as a song, because it gives out the idea that everyone has his own way of being up or down for some- thing. Actually, to me, it also gives out the message that we should give to others and their actions or no actions the right value. With that said, is it easy for you to have a touch of healthy carelessness?
It’s a balancing act of when to be carefree and what to be obsessed with. That song is about social awkwardness. To be even more precise, it’s about being jealous of people that only seem to be carefree. I’m sure nobody is, probably lots of people put up a front. You can’t lay out everything on the table, all of us must have a filter. Somehow you can’t be invasive, you can’t lay everything down. It’s a matter of being able to face others with the right touch, since we all have to respect everyone at the end of the day.
To me ‘Hot Motion’, your latest album, is a deep dive into human relationships, with all the ups and downs. Do you think the idea of a group and what it means in terms of belonging to something has changed over time?
For us, it’s a personal connection: being an artist and feeling the responsibility to be connected with your audience. People are naturally invasive nowadays, through social media you can see everything that goes on behind the scenes of an artist. So the aspect of myths, the mystery surrounding music, doesn’t exist anymore, or probably it’s not the same anymore. The amount of exposure we see into people’s lives now has blinded us, as a society, to understand what’s real and what’s not. On the other hand, things like social media are obviously beneficial as well, because you can reach more people and, maybe, in the end you can establish a deeper connection with music, but certainly it spoils the whole aura a bit.
You’ve got a personal style, an attitude. Attitude is everything when it comes to aesthetic and art. Style is definitely subjective, and it’s impossible to be explained. Probably, that’s the fascinating part. I’d like to know what the word ‘aesthetic’ means to you and how important it’s within your work.
As far as the album cover goes, the artworks, typefaces, colours used, everything that aesthetic could mean is so important. It even happens to cross over on how we dress as well. I don’t see how you can really be picky about an album cover and then just do not have a certain style in clothing. We all would like to truly believe that we don’t think about fashion, it’s such an ambiguous term, but we’re linked with it for sure. I prefer style as a word, but aesthetic is fundamental in every art form. Probably music, as an art, is even more complex. As a musician, you must have poetry, melody, attitude and beauty all mixed together.
