Joe Casely-hayford
Fashion designer whose work melded street culture and tradition and was favoured by rock stars
JOE CASELY-HAYFORD, who has died of cancer aged 62, had since the 1980s been among the most prominent and reliably innovative designers of British menswear.
Drawing on his Ghanaian heritage and upbringing in London, Caselyhayford successfully established an equilibrium between the fashionable and the commercial, youth culture and tradition, streetwear and bespoke tailoring – and indeed the demands and difficulties facing a black designer in what in his youth was a white dominated profession.
What emerged from this potential melting pot of influences was no mere bland melange but instead clothes which over time heralded a more cosmopolitan look (European, even) while retaining a distinctively British identity. As such, they were popular with those needing to catch the public’s eye and Casely-hayford dressed many celebrities, notably rock stars such as the Clash, Lou Reed, Jarvis Cocker and Suede.
It was he who designed the costume for Bono’s alter ego The Fly for U2’s Zoo TV tour in the early 1990s. In 1992, the singer was photographed wearing it when he became the first man to appear on the cover of British Vogue.
Joseph Ephraim Casely-hayford was born at Beckenham, Kent, on May 24 1956. He was named for his grandfather, a significant figure in Pan-african nationalist circles in the early 20th century. Joe’s father had trained as a barrister but became an accountant, while his mother was an events manager for the British Council.
Growing up in Fulham (though he came to support Tottenham Hotspur), Joe became interested in fashion in his early teens, having read his mother’s copies of Vogue and Harpers & Queen and discussed Mary Quant’s dresses with his sister, Margaret. She now chairs the board of Shakespeare’s Globe and was formerly head of Action Aid UK. His brother, Gus, is director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington. Another brother, Peter, works in television.
At his father’s suggestion, Joe learnt to make clothes at the Tailor and Cutter Academy in Soho, having already had a stint in Douglas Hayward’s workshop in Mayfair. An understanding of the purposes and elements of tailoring, and how they could be refined or updated, remained the basis for all his later work.
While studying subsequently at Central Saint Martin’s art school, he met Maria Stevens. They were married in 1980 and she became his business partner. After studies in art history at the ICA he created his first collection by recycling Army camouflage tents he had found in a warehouse near the Clink in Southwark.
Driven in part by economics, as well as by a fascination with Britain’s vanishing heritage, much of his early work re-utilised clothes from Laurence Corner, the Army surplus store in Camden. Another source was massproduced textiles from Northern mills.
One example of his propensity for mixing the classic with craft influences were the leather ties he made for Steve Strange and Rusty Egan, who ran a nightclub at the Camden Palace in the mid-1980s after the success of Blitz, their New Romantics hang-out. Casely-hayford had an eye for profile-raising collaborations, and as well as fashioning stories for style magazines such as The Face and i-d, he created ranges for Sock Shop (alongside Vivienne Westwood) and, in 1993, for Topshop. In 2002, he and the artist Chris Ofili co-designed a series of T-shirts.
His versatility also led to his supervising the costumes for Derek Jarman’s film Edward II (1991), and to curating a revelatory exhibition, The Art of African Textiles, at the Barbican in 1995. That year, Diana, Princess of Wales, was seen in the front row when he showed in London.
Unlike other brands such as Bodymap which sprang from the increasing diversity of London in the 1980s but failed to weather financial storms, Casely-hayford’s label going until 2005, based at first in Whitechapel and later in Shoreditch (long before it was colonised by hipsters). His clothes were eventually stocked by 150 stores, many of them in Japan.
He then had three years as creative director of Gieves & Hawkes, the Savile Row tailors and outfitters. Charged with a brief to modernise its clothing, one response was to offer brogues which had perforations in random patterns, as if blasted (as indeed the original had been) with shotgun pellets.
In 2009, he set up a new venture with his son Charlie, a former model and stylist. Casely-hayford, as it was named, aimed to find a midpoint between “English heritage and British anarchy”, looking for inspiration to the streets around Walthamstow, where the duo based themselves.
The clothes were made to a high specification in Japan and new collections were often designed on long flights to Tokyo. Recent collaborations had included those with Purdey, the gunmaker, and Barbour, as well as the nightclub Annabel’s, which inspired a range of velvet jackets. Clients included the singers Florence Welch and Drake, and last year the pair opened their first shop, in Marylebone.
Joe Casely-hayford was appointed OBE in 2007. He is survived by his wife and their son and daughter.