Prints Charming
HENRY HOLLAND, British designer and the king of slogan Tees, talks about his India-exclusive line for Koovs.com
HB: What is fashion to you? HH: Even though the business of fashion is very serious, somewhere I don’t think fashion should be taken too seriously. It’s a form of expression. It should be taken with a pinch of salt. It’s only a dress; no one is going to die. What I find exciting is that clothing gives you a way to harness your creativity, even if you aren’t the most creative person. You can be creative with outfits and create characters through them, and be completely different from one day to the next with what you wear. In 2006, Henry Holland’s slogan T-shirts—‘I’ll show you who’s the boss, Kate Moss’ and ‘Get yer freak on, Giles Deacon’—catapulted him into the limelight. So much so that two years later, it enabled him to launch the House of Holland. Since then, he is known as one of Britain’s most original designers. On his first ever trip to India, Bazaar caught up with him to talk about his capsule collection for e-retail giant Koovs.com that launches this month.
Who is Henry Holland? Henry Holland: A cheeky Northern monkey who likes the bright, bold, playful, and silly, and is humorous in a tongue-incheek manner. A designer who started off writing and styling for magazines, tried to get a formal education in design, got rejected, yet, here I am. HB: Tell us about your collection for Koovs. HH: I think our aesthetics fit well in the Indian market; both Koovs and I work a lot in colour and print. The challenge came in picking fabrics that would be suitable for the Indian climate. This collection is snapshot of the greatest hits from the House of Holland archives, such as the print stories and the polka dots. The palm print is brand new, created just for this collection. That’s what is so great about this collection with Koovs, that the Indian customer can get a piece of that through this venture since I do not retail here.