Nobody needs telling about the virtual brick wall hitting aspiring designers – or walls: the nigh-on impossibility of self-funding a first collection, limited access to contacts, the dearth of willing buyers… But just when it seems that we were all doomed to ride along on the wheels of fast fashion as it crashes and burns a little longer, a dazzling good-guy called “emerging fashion” comes along and not only reaches the fashion stratosphere fuelled on global ambition and limitless resourcefulness alone but repaints all over it with an indelible progressive marker.
In the four years since Stefan Siegel built it from scratch in his London flat, digital design showroom extraordinaire NOT JUST A LABEL has been steadily, devotedly pushing some hefty fashion boundaries by cutting out the proverbial “middle-man” from the cloth and supplying the arms to new designers to take full command of their careers. Carving out the missing crucial link between grassroots talent and industry professionals looks set to have a profound and lasting effect on the mechanisms of retail and many other start-ups have followed suit. NJAL’s black sheep logo is a symbol of a fierce crusade for creative autonomy, or as Siegal has explained: “a place for those who find their way off the beaten track... to break the mould and re-color the palette.” And the “deceleration” of fast fashion and its armies of rip-offs is part of Siegel’s assault; to see an “end to the £2 t-shirt” and a decrease in the 50% of £23 billion spent on clothes per year which ends up in landfill.
At 8,000 designers, 20 million hits a month and a glittering catalogue of collaborations, NJAL’s creative pioneer flag was inched yet higher after last December’s project with Wallpaper*. An international crop of rising design stars for 2012 was selected for the magazine’s famed annual Graduate Directory, with specially-curated collections and an exclusive Wallpaper* Grads subsection appearing on NJAL’s coveted E-shop – galvanizing proof of a retailing model which gives small brands a big voice.
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