The Fall  

a

The Life of Simon  

All hail the reluctant king of menswear styling, Simon Foxton, whose vision has been influencing the way men dress for more than three decades.
The word "legendary" is bandied about with abandon in the fashion industry, often accorded to those who little deserve such an accolade.


In the case of London-based menswear super-stylist Simon Foxton, however, such hyperbolic terminology feels justified. After all, Foxton's combined body of editorial, commercial and academic work spans, seemingly effortlessly, four decades. Despite the myriad of trends and fashion "moments" that have brewed up then fizzled out during that timeframe, his authentic viewpoint endures.


Foxton was one of the pioneers of streetcasting, long before it was commonplace industry practice. Notably, from the outset of his career in the early half of the 1980s, he has championed the beauty of the urban black and biracial male; the kinds of slightly unconventional but proud blokes and everyday lads next door, seen out and about in London, who look great anyway. Through the colourful and forthright sartorial stories concocted by Foxton and his team, young men of all ethnicities would duly become bona fide models, looking even prouder, even greater; elegant, sexy, mischievous, strong, modern, real and, sometimes, hyper-real. (As his work gradually progressed, he would incorporate professional models in the mix, too). Foxton radically merged sportswear with high fashion, classic tailoring, streetwear and fetishwear, way back when - strange as it might now seem - such territories rarely converged. The results presented a bold, new way of defining and celebrating masculinity, sexuality and men's style.


His groundbreaking work has been regularly splashed across influential style and culture titles such as i-D, The Face, L'Uomo Vogue, Vogue Hommes International, Arena, Arena Homme+. GO Style, Fantastic Man, Man About Town, SHOWstudio and VMan, among many others. His more behind-the-scenes roles as a consultant and art director (formalised via the creative partnership &SON, which he co-runs with Nick Griffiths) have, since the 1990s, contributed to the ongoing success of brands including Levi's, Nike and, in particular, Stone Island. Successive generations of MA menswear design students at London's Royal College of Art and Westminster University have benefited from his mentoring, in his capacity as a visiting professor and tutor. Both the V&A museum and Tate Modern gallery retain examples of his work within their permanent collections.


So, what is Simon Foxton actually like? Given his legendary status, the uninitiated might envisage some ageing-diva caricature: hissing instructions at a bevy of quaking assistants; rocking up at fashion parties outlandishly clad in look-at-me attire; concluding conversations with "Fierce!" as an expression of approval. An ego as sky high as a towering pile of magazines in which his editorials have long since starred?


"I can't imagine anyone less legendary!" laughs Foxton. "I'm the most boring man alive, but I quite revel in that." We are seated on comfy armchairs within his small and orderly workspace in Bloomsbury, at the edge of London's West End. With his shaved head, clear skin and twinkly eyes, and sporting a navy Uniqlo button-down shirt, M&S beige chinos and Red Wing boots, the 56-year-old stylist could easily be mistaken for a youthful-looking architect or a graphic designer. Warming to the theme, he continues: "I live in the suburbs, I have an allotment, I never go out. Maybe that's what it is. My reclusiveness affords me an air of mystery.
I'm aware that when people actually meet me there's often a sense of disappointment. I think they imagine I am going to be somehow crazy or fabulous. I don't do fabulous." He thinks for a moment. "I guess, if anything, I have had quite a few assistants who have become big names in the fashion world," he says. "For example, Edward Enninful [now editor-in-chief at British Vogue), Jonathan Kaye (now fashion director at The Gentlewoman and Elgar Johnson [now fashion director at British GQ Style, contributing fashion editor at British GO and consultant fashion director at THE FALL]. I certainly don't take any credit for their success, but perhaps my advice and mentoring has gone some way towards helping them achieve their goals, so if that goes towards the epithet 'legend', then I'll take it."


Those who know Foxton can confirm his polite and modest qualities, as well as his wry, often self-deprecating sense of humour. The consensus? He's so refreshingly "normal" it seems almost eccentric. His pastimes and enthusiasms certainly exist far away from fashion runways, instead found amid life's more grounded pleasures and achievements. He lives with his partner of 35 years, Donald, a tailor, in a 1930s semi-detached house in leafy Ealing, west London.  He grows vegetables on the aforementioned allotment, loves hanging out and working in the purpose-built shed in his garden - filled with artfully mixed bric-a-brac, purchased at his regular weekend forays to car-boot sales. One of his favourite not-very-rock'n'roll activities involves driving to the local municipal rubbish tip to methodically dispose of refuse and recyclables.


Originally hailing from Berwick-upon-Tweed, Foxton was a punk in his teens. "I loved the DIY spirit of punk," he remembers. "I liked The Clash, especially the spray-painted slogan clothes they wore. I also liked a band from Scotland called The Rezillos, who had this sort of cartoony, kitsch feel about them." He moved to London at the end of the 1970s to undertake a foundation course, and then a fashion degree, at Central Saint Martins. He graduated in the early-1980s, thereafter launching a fashion label named Bazooka, which briefly enjoyed cult credibility when featured in then-burgeoning style magazines such as i-D, The Face and Blitz. Alas, the favourable publicity did not translate to meaningful commercial success. Towards the mid 1980s, with the encouragement of i-D founder Terry Jones, Foxton began styling shoots for the magazine, working with the photographer Nick Knight. He enjoyed this creative process, more so than actually designing, and the twosome have since regularly collaborated.
The contrast between the unabashed vividness of his aesthetic and his low-key lifestyle therefore makes it possible to view his back catalogue on its own merits, little distracted by the all that other clutter - the social-media presence, the endless self-promotion - increasingly seen by many as integral to industry success. Arguably, the strength and purity of Foxton's overarching vision first became fully apparent when, in 2009, The Photographers' Gallery in London honoured him with a solo exhibition titled When You're a Boy, curated by Penny Martin, editor-in-chief of The Gentlewoman. Older and newer work Foxton had produced with photographers including Knight, Jason Evans and Alasdair McLellan adorned the walls. It was one of the gallery's most well-attended shows.


"Advertising agencies were a lot slower to shake off that culture of innate racism. It was rarely verbalised, but you were made very aware of it in their casting decisions”


Today, the power of his process becomes apparent once more, as we pore over some of Foxton's archive - a myriad of images torn from magazines, spread casually across the floor. It looks consistent and contemporary, even though much of it was created and published before the new generation of Instagram-savvy stylists was even born. Then there is the homoeroticism and the sexiness, whether intentional or not. "It's not usually the intention," insists Foxton. "But when it happens it's often a surprise and a bonus. Sexy images are memorable and popular. I like sexy images, and rude ones, too. Just look at my Tumblr!"


How does Foxton now feel about his own work when looking at it en masse? He visibly squirms, uncomfortable at possibly having to big himself up. "I feel happy about it," he responds, cautiously. "I like what I've done. But because I'm not always mulling it over, it was really only when I did the exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery that I started to see the common threads in the work."


In the past, Foxton has been frank about not being obsessed with fashion, expressing bewilderment at the notion of fleeting seasonal trends, while acknowledging an appreciation for memorable "looks" and timeless beauty. For him, the process of making images that exist within a fashion context is therefore more personal and akin to storytelling, rather than some tiresome need to be "on trend". "I think about the world I want to create, then find the characters," is how he simply puts it. "Each shoot tends to be like a short film, creating the ideas and the characters and the fantasy. I don't tend to overanalyse this process, but it has become apparent to me when I talk to other people about it."


I ask him to select some shoots from each decade since the 1980s that he feels are in some way pivotal or, at least, his personal favourites. We then pore over his choices. While doing so, it becomes possible to discern ways in which men's style - their view of themselves and the fashion industry's view of them - has gradually changed (even though they may not realise this trajectory has in part been aided and abetted by Foxton). How does he believe men differ in their approach to their own image compared with back in the 1980s? "Oh, generally, men are a great deal more style conscious now and totally unembarrassed by the notions of grooming and dressing-up," he says. "I think it can only be for the better, really. And no one is forcing you to choose that path - there are still plenty of guys who couldn't care less how they look, which is fine, too."
Does he think some of the social-media generation of young men have become absurdly vain, though? Foxton sighs wearily: "The selfie-taking thing is a totally different kettle of fish that I can't get my head around. It seems such a vacuous pastime. The internet has made us all into babies discovering our reflection for the first time."


Diversity and the ongoing discussion about racism within the fashion industry have of late become more hotly debated than ever before; designers, fashion houses and magazines are routinely named and shamed for their use of predominantly white models. What is also starkly reaffirmed, as we continue perusing the various images, is Foxton's matter-of-fact casting of black and biracial models many decades ago, when, as he recalls, this was still subtly frowned upon by those in control: "Advertising agencies were a lot slower to shake off that culture of innate racism. It was rarely verbalised, but you were made very aware of it in their casting decisions. Black faces were only seen when they needed someone sporty or 'exotic." Did Foxton think of himself as breaking new ground back in the 1980s with his more open-minded approach to race and masculinity? "It would be disingenuous to say otherwise," he says. "Of course I was aware of it, but I was part of a movement. It felt only right to be doing it. London was changing. Barriers of class, race and sexuality were breaking down and we discovered that we were holding tools that could perhaps speed up that process. Ray Petri and the guys at Crunch, Judy Blame, Nick Knight, lain R Webb at Blitz, Neville Brody at The Face, Caryn Franklin at i-D, to name just a few, we were all at it. It really was an exciting time to be making images." However, he also points out, "The models were often people I knew, or hung out with and liked at the time. It just seemed very natural to me and I used to be surprised when people picked up on it. For me, it was the same then as it is now - I cast people who I think look good, no matter what their ethnicity is."
All of which makes an i-D shoot such as 1987's Superbad, styled by Foxton and photographed by Knight, seem remarkably ahead of its time. Foxton cites it as one of the first editorials of which he felt really proud: "It's epic. I'd been shooting for a couple of years previously, but this one felt pivotal. We shot it in London and Paris, on location and in the studio. It ended up having the look of film stills. The inspiration came from '70s blaxploitation films




"I think about the world I want to create, then find the characters, and a perceived glamorous and slightly dangerous kind of nightlife.”




It felt exciting and it resonated with people when it was published." Moving on to the 1990s, we examine the shoot We Haven't Stopped Dancing Yet, which featured in the Positive issue of i-D, 1992, in which the magazine explored the impact of AIDS. A line-up of lithe, dancing black guys, wearing everything from cartoony green catsuits to rubber chaps and trousers festooned with teddy bears, pose joyfully across two pages, capturing the polysexual energy of key London club nights at the time, such as Kinky Gerlinky. "I shot the pictures for this with help from Jason Evans. I didn't really ever want to be a photographer, despite Terry Jones encouraging me to do more photography, but this time I tried it," remembers Foxton. "It went down really well - it has a nice, cartoony feel to it. Yes, I chose all the clothes, I still do. I'm still very hands-on, even though it's quite labour intensive." Inspiration? “Well, Jean-Paul Goude had done a whole series of photographs of dancers that caught my attention. Also, the inner sleeve of the Roxy Music For Your Pleasure album cover, where the band are all in a line - I think that was in the back of my mind as well."


Next, a 2009 issue of Arena Homme+ plays host to the madcap WTF Frillaz - a succession of confrontational-yet-humorous images, shot by Knight, of buff, tough-looking black guys, wearing incongruous adult-baby dresses that Foxton had had imported from Hong Kong. "I love that juxtaposition between the hardness of the men and the ridiculousness of the dresses," he acknowledges. "I told them all beforehand what it would entail and they were all fine about it." Under the expert eyes of Foxton and Knight, the hypermasculinity of the models is, miraculously, not compromised in the slightest by the frilliness of the frocks.
Finally, Transhuman After All, published in Man in 2014 (having been originally created at Knight's SHOWstudio), pushes the boundaries of visual technology at that time. Any kind of grit or reality is usurped by a dreamy collage of digitally manipulated imagery and motifs culled from the internet and social media, interspersed with models clad in the latest pieces from designers including KTZ, Craig Green and Hood by Air. "We wanted images that had no natural qualities," Foxton says. "We wanted it to look completely artificial. The shots themselves were done very simply, the emphasis here was on the postproduction. It was a reflection of how the way we look at things is changing."

Fast forward to 2017 and, ironically perhaps, Foxton's own feelings about working for magazines are also in a state of flux. He seems less enthused than previously. "Over the past decade or so there has been a steady move towards reductivism," he explains. "Publications want credits and realism, which I totally get. It's a cutthroat market out there and everyone is chasing smaller and smaller ad revenues, but that doesn't always make for a visual feast. A lot of editorial these days is, at best, like unpaid advertorial, and at worst like e-commerce."


He finds himself increasingly more motivated by other creative opportunities that continue to come his way. The hugely successful 10-year-long consultancy with Stone Island, for example: "It's such a great company to work with. The people there are fantastic and the product is so innovative and exciting. The brand goes from strength to strength, the whole experience is very rewarding." He's also been "helping out my great friend (Turner Prize-winning artist) Steve McQueen on a couple of commercial jobs lately, purely in an advisory role". A Big Designer Name is currently seeking his input, too, but as this has vet to be formalised, Foxton asks me not to reveal who this is.


Additionally, teaching keeps him stimulated, as well as connected with the new wave of graduating designers and image makers. "I love working with students - their energy and new ways of tackling problems is very infectious," he says. "Ib Kamara and Campbell Addy are doing some pretty groundbreaking stuff. It's not always to my taste, but I think that's a good thing. I like to feel challenged. I love Viviane Sassen's work, if she falls into the 'younger breed' category. Designer-wise I really like Craig Green's work, but there are also a lot of my ex-RCA students who are doing some great stuff, for example, Liam Hodges, Feng Chen Wang, Matthew Miller and Astrid Andersen, to name but a few. It's always a buzz seeing people who you've taught blossoming into fully fledged designers."


The Foxton HQ phone keeps ringing. Time to leave. Before I do so, however, I ask how being a stylist in 2017 differs from when he first started out? "I think the difference is that there were very few stylists back then. Nowadays there are literally hundreds of style publications and thousands of stylists, but very little of note is standing out." With a characteristic quip, he concludes, "I guess it has always been quite easy to be a stylist, though. You just say you are one and people tend to believe you!"