London is too tough on fresh fashion talent: 'Menswear designers are operating in penury'

One message stayed with me throughout the autumn/winter 2015 menswear season – the image of a carrier bag with the phrase “Thanks 4 Nothing” emblazoned on the front of a jumper from Christopher Shannon. He's a Liverpudlian, and as a fellow Northerner I recognise his sardonic sense of humour. Other Shannon items sported slogans that said things such as “Broke” and “Save Me”. There was plenty of conjecture about these messages reflecting the wider British socioeconomic state – and I couldn't help but relate it to Shannon's position as a young British menswear designer working in London.

The city is acknowledged as a crucible for fresh talent, specifically when it comes to menswear. An undercurrent has bubbled up, launching names on a global scale. Alongside Shannon, there's Craig Green, JW Anderson, Astrid Andersen, with the London Collections Men showcase launching in 2012. The clothing has been exciting enough to entice major brands, including Burberry Prorsum and Coach, to show alongside them. New York has followed suit with a menswear fashion week, based on the same model, to cheerlead its own new designer generation. They're all looking to claim a share of a global menswear market worth £298bn as of 2014, its growth outstripping that of womenswear (4.5 per cent yearly, versus 3.7 per cent). In recognition of all the above – growing businesses, growing markets, a growth in demand – British GQ last year launched a £150,000 prize to support and mentor emerging menswear talent. Shannon was the first recipient.

So why is Shannon still emblazoning sweaters in this provocative way? The answer is, there is still a lot of menswear designers operating in penury, producing clothes that are exciting but difficult on many levels, not least to make. The UK has 58,000 fashion and textile manufacturers employing around 506,000 people. In London alone there are more than 150 small fashion apparel factories and studios, but most are focused on low-cost high-street clothes, with relatively simple patterns and without the complexity that marks out the best of British design. Look at the toggles and tags on Green's signature quilted garments, knotting around the body like judo attire, or the intricate patching that characterises Shannon's padded jackets and collaged sweatshirts. Then imagine trying to sew all this together.

This complexity also makes these difficult to both buy and sell. “I always think there's a customer for almost anything in womenswear,” says Craig Green, the young star of British menswear who won last year's British Fashion Award for emerging menswear, and whose clothes have been internationally lauded since his line launched in 2013. “You can paint an old tea towel and you know stores will buy it and you know that there will be a woman somewhere who will buy it. With men's I think it's a bit of a harder one to gauge… I think that's why people see stockists come and go.” Green's clothes combine tricksiness with a utilitarian bent: solid knitwear pieces and cotton shirting contrast with his body armour-ish quilted showpieces. But even Green says he wears the same nondescript Levi's jeans every day. “I can't wear my own clothing,” says Jonathan Anderson, a London menswear star who proposes progressive, aggressive ideas like ruffles and flounces, skirts for blokes and a general gender-bending bent. “I shop at Gap.”

That's strange, because given that minuscule budgets limit access to the kind of luxed-out materials – vicuña, multiple-ply cashmere, crocodile – that many menswear labels use to gussy-up otherwise basic garments, the unique designs of London menswear garments are what mark them out. You'd never mistake a Green for a Shannon, or an Anderson for an Andersen.

“I think the biggest challenge for menswear designers is to have the confidence in creating a strong and identifiable signature,” says Damien Paul, Head of Menswear at MatchesFashion.com, who stock Astrid Andersen, JW Anderson and Craig Green. Paul himself also sits on the British Fashion Council's NEWGEN Men panel, providing mentoring and financial support to young London designers, enabling them to both make their clothes and stage a show. “Historically, where we've seen other designers have problems is that they can either veer too extreme, and show collections that can be alienating to buyers, or can veer too commercial, which means that they lose their point of difference,” Paul says.

That point of difference – that design identity – is the one thing London talent can bank on, the one fund that floweth over. It's also copied, endlessly: Green's ribbon ties have appeared on numerous catwalks – for both men and women – during the round of spring/summer 2016 shows that have just closed. Jonathan “JW” Anderson has parlayed his striking menswear signatures into a successful cottage industry. In 2013 he sold a minority stake to the French luxury-goods conglomerate LVMH, and also took up the reins of the Spanish leathergoods company Loewe, which they outright own.

“Menswear was an accident,” says Anderson – he now also heads womenswear, for both Loewe and himself. Because who would be a young menswear designer? Despite the growth of the industry, it still lags behind womenswear (worth roughly 50 per cent more globally, at £448bn). Anderson achieved success and investment after launching his womenswear line. “I almost feel like you have to do womenswear to grow menswear in London,” Green said to me, a year or so ago. This June, he showed a clutch of his menswear on female models. He'll be sizing it small, for womenswear retailers to buy.

And as exciting, engaging and enriching as attending a Craig Green show is, that was a somewhat depressing experience. Because you wonder if menswear really needs designers – if men really demand anything other than simple-minded sportswear and a well-tailored suit (or indeed not, if the price is right)? You wonder if there's really a future for menswear brands, or if success stories like Anderson are an anomaly? You hope not, and you hope they can grow. But times are hard – a few London designers have already abandoned their menswear lines entirely (Jonathan Saunders now focuses on womenswear), or have closed their labels (Richard Nicoll and Meadham Kirchhoff have ceased trading in the past couple of years). That plaintive Shannon sweater slogan – “Save Me” – now seems all the more apposite.