We Spoke To Fergus 'Fergadelic' Purcell About Fashion, Designing Airplane Liveries and Collaborations

Images via Sam Travis

So, you’ve got a really varied list of previous collaborators, obviously Palace, Marc by Marc Jacobs and McQ...

Well spotted, people don’t often bring that up.

Yeah, I really liked that.

Oh, thank you, that was a pleasure to do

Was that something you always wanted, to work with such varied companies?

It was. It wasn’t ever something that I knew how to make happen, but it was always something that I was really hopeful would happen. And it wasn’t that I really conceived of a career direction but just in terms of the kind of aesthetics inside my own head of what I thought I could maybe do and who I could hope to work with, it was all across the board and it’s wider will than what I’ve managed to do. I don’t really put limits on the different areas, the different genres, different brands.

You say there’s room for more variation, what’s something you’d love to do?

I’d love to do work in film, which I’ve never done. I’d love to do a credit sequence or logo or do graphics actually embedded in the film itself, or anything. That’d be super fun. You know, just all sorts of crazy stuff, who knows? I’d love to design an airline livery, how about that? Wouldn’t that be fun? I mean, that’s fucking pie in the sky but you know.

I dunno, Richard Branson might go for it...

Yeah. Well let’s put that out there, you never know. That would be awesome wouldn’t it? But that’s the incredible thing with artwork and particularly with commercial art and graphics, there are so many applications. And now with online stuff there’s even more than when I grew up. There’s just an endless spectrum of stuff to explore, and I’d love to try anything really.

You’ve mentioned in previous interviews feeling quite out of sync with time, in terms of during university and when you finished, and the sort of work that you were doing. How difficult was it to stick true to what you wanted to do and what you loved to do at that point in time? Because it must have been tough.

Well I don’t want to sound too emo about all that, because it really was my choice to not go in a more conventional, commercial graphics sort of direction. So, as soon as you take on that stance yourself you have to stick to it, you have to be brave and to go for it. I’m innately quite stubborn, and so in a way it wasn’t that hard, it was just how it had to be, and it’s come really good. So I can’t complain, and I think if I could have foreseen what’s happening now I would’ve been so blown away, and it’s happened. 

I really can’t look back and moan, and in a way it was more a case that I had to retrain myself and re-look at what I wanted to do after college, because I thought college might plug me into something that was ready to go, like a career waiting to happen, and there wasn’t one. Looking back I can see why there wasn’t one, because I’ve chosen a strange direction and that’s maybe given me freedom to say, work for lots of unusual combinations of brands, and that kind of thing. That was very much worth going down a different path for. Does that make sense?

Yeah, completely. When you have worked with labels like MBMJ, McQ and the more high fashion labels is there ever an adjustment in how you work or is it just them asking you to do what you do, just on their clothes?

It’s been the latter, so far, pretty much. I suppose that everyone that I work with, there’s an adjustment in the sense that I’m having a conversation with them, we’re making this mutual thing, and hopefully they’re letting me off the leash and I’m really going for it, and I’m trying to manufacture that situation in the first place, but also I’m meeting their needs, so for everyone that I work with that happens. So there is an adjustment in that sense, but in terms of making a distinction of a fashion thing vs. a streetwear thing or whatever, that doesn’t happen. I don’t approach it any differently in that way.

What do you think that world finds so alluring about skate and streetwear and what has been class as low-brow culture before? What do you think it is right now and in the last few years that’s changed that?

I think that it obviously goes in and out of fashion to a certain extent, but I think humans are perennially interested in language and in image and therefore in graphics, and it was only a matter of time before that found its way onto clothing. Even if you think back to heraldic crests or clan tartans or things like that, garments that had a visual message to convey, we’ve had that for hundreds of thousands of years, and in a way, T-shirts are a modern manifestation of that same syndrome, or not just in T-shirts but in graphics or imagery on any kind of clothes. And fashion being what it is, that comes in and out of fashion because it’s cyclical.

As for why that’s come back with a vengeance, I think when the huge recession hit and the housing market crashed that was synonymous with the rise of that heritage fashion, everyone dressing like they’re in world war 1, and also at the same time kind of dressing sensibly, like they’d either got a job or were ready to get a job — short back and sides haircuts — and I could see how that was a generational youthful rebellion against mohawks or piercings or whatever it was, but really I think it was more about battening down the hatches and looking sensible and also maybe nostalgic casting back to a past that was seen as idyllic or less complicated in some way. It was almost like a loss of confidence sort of thing, that’s how I saw it. It was only a matter of time before that changed and the utter extreme opposite of that was this big beautiful (I think) explosion of confidence and making statements again, and the first way that’s gonna manifest itself is in graphics on clothes and T-shirts — or, one of the first ways.

So, I think that’s why, and  within that, why skating was latched onto; skaters have always had a great style and graphics has always played a really big part of their language and their style, and so that’s why that was such a real touchstone. And you know, skating is just cool. I don’t know why someone travelling sideways down a street on a trolley is cool but it just is, isn’t it? It’s like seeing someone dancing, there’s something just beautiful and human about it, like surfing will always be seen as cool, it’s just one of those things, like rock-climbing, I dunno. It’s dangerous to a certain extent I suppose. It’s got a kind of glamour because of that but then there’s something more about that way of moving, there’s something a bit magic in that, it’s like something you might do in your dreams or something. It’s also got that appeal to it, and it’s also hard to do, as I found to my cost. I was never any good.

I was always crap. Loved being around it, but I was always crap.

It’s good to try! [Laughs]

You worked with Sophia previously on Silas. When Aries was launched what made you want to work with her on that?

Well, we’d never worked directly together on a project of our own conception, if you know what I mean? So it was about doing that, and it was about exploring the idea of what we first conceived of as unisex clothing. We were gonna sell clothing that wasn’t going to be defined as “this is the men's line, this is the women's line”, we were just going to make garments that were gonna be sold. And it had various other interesting conceptual ideas that we abandoned because they were just a little bit difficult to do as a small start-up company, and instead it quite quickly became womenswear, at which point it became clear that we should do tomboyish womenswear. 

What was it like with that transition from unisex clothing to womenswear? Because, I’ve seen men in it, men want to wear Aries, but has it slightly altered how you put it together?

Yeah, it’s deliberately aimed at a woman customer, but if men are buying it too, that’s awesome. The T-shirts are generic shaped T-shirts, so it’s anything that a bloke would normally wear, almost all the other garments are reconfigured to be an altered version of the men’s cut. If men are happy to wear any of that stuff, they totally can, and I’m all for it. I mean, the jeans will work on a man’s body, but they’re also slightly changed to accommodate more of a female fit. If through that we have, in a roundabout way or backwards way to normal —because we’re used to women having to buy into men’s stuff — that’s really awesome. That’s even more interesting than doing the unisex thing in the first place, or, it’s a different way of achieving that. So I’d be really happy. It’s really 21st century, it’s about time.

That’s what I always loved about it, that you knew it was womenswear but you would see men wearing it. On to KR3W, how did this collaboration come about? 

KR3W just approached me to see if I wanted to do it, within the remit of this specific named collaboration that they do, and I was sold straightaway. I knew that their customer could represent a new, different audience to someone I might normally reach so that was really exciting, and I love their aesthetic and so it was a change to really explore that side of what I do. 

The collection is great, I’m a big fan of it.

Thank you! I’m really pleased, this is the first time I’ve actually seen it in real life.

Again, is this just you projecting your vision with a mix of KR3W’s vision? Because it is quite distinctively ‘you’, as well as being quite distinctively ‘KR3W’

That’s great, I’m glad. That’s a success then, I’m really glad you see that. That’s really thanks to them, Mike, the air director, as soon as I expressed interest, pitched a bunch of references that were actually my graphics, that he’d culled from the past, as direct reference points and tat established a really coherent language to base it on. It really made sense, he’d seen a side of my work that he could see would really work for what they do, and when he sent it to me I could only agree, so it was one of those very simple, direct working relationships where each step just fell into place. It was really easy, and that’s maybe why it looks strong.

So it was just a really coherent vision?

Yeah, exactly. And they just really knew what they wanted which is great because often — they’re one of the bigger companies I’ve worked with — and often, personally speaking, if you’re working with bigger companies is things can get very diluted and there are a lot of different voices in there, and people with their own agendas, you know? Things can really go astray because of that, and so I tend to avoid those kind of projects and it was really fantastic working with a company that has the benefit of their kind of reach, and yet has that really tight, singular vision. 

What’s next for you? 

I’d love to do a bit more stuff in the record industry, and rather than say, a record cover, or something, I say record industry, because it would be really fun to do a big-time album; do a cover, do the whole thing. That could be quite mental. 

A friend and I were talking actually not long ago about all of our ’90s and ‘00s R&B CDs, and how the sleeves used to pull out and they used to be posters. We were chatting to a musician we were with and he was saying how they don’t do that anymore, he didn’t know anyone who still does that. It’d be interesting to see that sort of thing make a comeback.

Oh, there’s so much to be done with pop music Ephemera on so many levels. Obviously the video or the internet clip is the king, and on that level so many acts have a really visually sophisticated — even stuff that’s super mainstream, kind of banal pop music — has a really sophisticated visual, it’s really seductive and that’s really worked on and genuinely interesting. But for some reason it’s almost like the record industry has given up on anything else. Even if it’s a download, why wouldn’t a download come with a digital booklet of imagery, or GIFs, it could be anything. Visuals and music have always wanted to sit together since the start of pop music culture, and that’s something that needs to be explored more, and I’d love to be involved with that. I don’t quite know how I’d make that happen, or who it might be, but I’d love to do that, it would be an interesting challenge.