Joshua Kane: Designer, Director and Rule-Breaker

When did you first become a Member and what does Home House mean to you?

I first became a member in September 2020. It was just after the first lockdown had ended and I was super excited to be going out and socialising again. I started meeting with clients and other designers and graphic designers, and it was the perfect location to meet people as it was so close to my office in Marylebone. I also hosted a collection shoot at Home House which was really special, where we hosted an immersive dinner event for 12 ambassadors in the Asylum private dining room and on the balcony overlooking the Garden.

Tell us about some of your favourite memories at Home House?

That’s a really easy one. My absolute favourite memory from Home House would have to be the end of January last year when I hosted my engagement party for 100 guests. Myself and my fiancé took one of the private rooms and we had all of our friends and family there to celebrate our engagement, which was really special. It was such a magical experience and we made many memories that night. Without a doubt, that is absolutely my favourite memory at Home House.

We hear it’s a really exciting year for you, can you tell us more about the homeware collection you’re launching?

So for this year we are very excited and proud to be developing and presenting the first few exclusive pieces for the very first Joshua Kane homeware collection. We’re using our beautiful historic British woven fabrics in wools and 100% silks with fabric wrapped vintage furniture to create the first ever Joshua Kane homeware collection. It will also feature some of our iconic fabric designs printed onto wallpapers in a range of colours. We’re using the depth of our 9 year archive with some of the original patterns from our first ever runway, as well as developing new fabric designs which will be available from the mid to end of 2023.

Can you tell us anything about your new runway collection?

We do one runway collection a year and following the success of our Dandy Rebels runway show last year which was our first ever live show taking place in the United States, we are looking for bigger, better and more adventurous this year. I obviously can’t say too much about it yet as we haven’t fully announced anything but we are looking to follow up our first US show with a new International location to present the next collection. It’s going encompass spring, summer and winter designs all amalgamated into one experience.

Where do you get your creative inspiration?

My creative inspiration mainly comes from people. From my family and friends to people I work with and meet along the way. I always say I love to be a sponge when meeting people. It’s characters that inspire me more than anything. Even looking back at old stories of Beau Brummell, the original dandy, and what his narrative was –that’s the most inspiring thing. It’s very much about storytelling and character-building.

When did you know you wanted to become a designer?

I would say it was probably when I was in sixth form, so I would have been around 17 years old. As part of our Art Class we had a fashion design module where we spent two weeks becoming a fashion designer, which is of course quite a brief introduction - but I’d always loved designing outfits and characters from a young age when I was designing superheroes’ costumes. So it became a natural transition to design and create characters within that early impression of what fashion could be for me. I fell in love with it right away.

What made you decide to strike out on your own

That was quite an easy transition for me. I’d worked for Jaeger and Burberry Prorsum and did a runway collection for Sir Paul Smith for a number of years. I spent about 12 to 15 years working in the industry, harnessing my skills and experience – all the while creating my own bespoke suits at home. It became a natural transition where I felt like, at some stage I had to take a big risk. I was already designing my clothes and it was just calculating that risk to a point where I thought that people would want to order them. I definitely took the risk and I’ve never looked back.

What do you love most about working in fashion?

I love meeting people. I love all the different characters from all different walks of life that I’m lucky enough to work with and create designs for. So whether it’s someone’s wedding suit and they’ve saved up their entire life to come and get something beautifully made by me, it’s a red carpet outfit for someone’s that’s never walked a red carpet, or it’s for someone that’s performing on stage for the hundredth time, I love all the inspirational characters I get to meet. That’s what I love most about the fashion industry. It brings really interesting people together.

How does your approach merge traditional tailoring and design with your own unique style and innovation?

I love taking bits of technology and mixing it with the oldest bespoke hand-sewn design techniques and fusing all of those things together to personally express myself. I like to break rules. I don’t like to conform to boundaries that other people have set. I was always taught: once you know what the rules are, you always have the ability to break them where you see fit.

Tell us about some of your career highlights so far?

My career highlight is always the thing that I last did, so it would be putting on my first ever show in the USA. It was a massive achievement to do an entire runway collection halfway across the world, with loads of people working on the collection internationally, flying the collection back, taking the entire team with us and setting up shop temporarily to pull it off. Yeah…that hasn’t really set in yet!

Tell us about your last ‘pinch yourself’ moment?

I pretty much get one of those a day at the moment! But it was probably the morning after the Dandy Rebels show – waking up and searching the images on Google and seeing pictures of the show that I hadn’t seen. Obviously being backstage I didn’t see what was happening at the time, so then you see a professional photo of the models in all the looks and the staging in the setting with the video game projected 360 degrees all the way around the show. That was a crazy moment. I’m still pinching myself about it every morning.

What’s next for you in 2023 and beyond?

The most exciting thing about this year I think is working simultaneously across the runway and the homeware collection, whilst also creating and developing our Joshua Kane video game which has been three and half year project. I think this year is an amazing year to pull all the different design projects together with the identity of the brand running throughout. So the video game and the homeware collection will feature fabric designs from our archives as well as the brand new runway collection, threading together all the different projects into one big world of Joshua Kane.

How did you get into designing and developing a video game?

I started designing video games about three and a half years ago, but it’s been a childhood dream of mine for as long as I can remember. All of my runway shows are very much about world building, character building and concept building, and within that there’s always limitations. I can’t do certain things I would love to do for the runway shows, but stepping into the digital realm I can do all of that and more at the click of a few buttons. We’ve been creating an 1850’s scale of London within the game as the map, and that creates the most amazing setting for the video game.

What advice would you give to young designers trying to make it in the fashion industry today?

The industry now is a very different industry to when I started in 2008, which is when I graduated. There’s so many more ways to get into it now than there used to be. It used to be very linear: you go to art school, you go to fashion school, you graduate, you try and get a job. There’s a million different ways to access the industry now, and technology has a big part to play in that. One thing still stands true though, if you want to be successful and if you want to make it, it’s literally about working harder than anyone else around you in that room and being more dedicated than anyone else. I was definitely never the best drawer or designer in my year of graduation, but I was very determined to succeed and to keep learning new skill sets to try and differentiate myself from everyone else as a designer. Determination and dedication would be my best advice.

www.joshuakanestore.com