John Simons

Describe your style in three words?  
On the money.  

How important is identity within Style? 
Well, it is essential. Although, in part, I think it is good to be oblivious to your own look too. But it is not just your look, but what you say and what you think. You could say that your look is very important in expressing your personality, but equally important are the accompanying words and thoughts.

Is that integral to the style of British Youth?
Yeah, I would definitely say so. I may not be in accord with every look, but every look is expressed in that way. So that would include lots of subcultures. But in every subculture group, I think the same thing would apply, you express yourself through the naturalness of your look. What you say and what you think, and being true to yourself. 

How has modernism influenced you?  
Enormously - you know growing up after World War II, going to Art School, it was everything to me. Modernism in music, modernism in art and modernism in clothes. It's extremely important but in a kind of unconscious way. I didn't wake up thinking I want to be a modernist - it just coloured my whole approach to life.

How did you spot trends forming? 
I've always had a knack for that. I've always had an instinct for responding to the unspoken needs of my generation. I've always had that, and I've still got it. I grew up in a clothing family. I did an apprenticeship at Cecil Gee, and the same time I was going to St Martins School of Art. When you are 16, you are like a piece of blotting paper, and all that influence was crashing in on me all the time. But at the same time I had a good eye for it - just like you're learning an instrument you know that you have got a perfect pitch you are going to be streets ahead. Well, I had perfect pitch when it came to the clothes. I just observed people all the time. I nearly got into trouble a few times as a kid staring at people. I was always doing it. Remember once being a club when I was about 17 and staring at this bloke. Beautifully dressed in a pair of Chinos and a navy Fred Perry - it was quite a modernistic look for the time. He made a comment about me staring at him, and I had to explain to him that I just thought he was fantastically dressed. We ended up becoming mates. 

How much does music influence style and fashion? 
Well for me, tremendously. It was always an integral part of the whole process. Because I would look at the LP covers and I would see what Chet Baker was wearing, and I would want to wear the same. The Miles Davis covers, back in the day, when he was wearing the green button down's and all that sort of stuff. It was a massive input. From the film world, Steve McQueen always wore his clothes very well, and he became a kind of iconic figure of the Ivy League silhouette. See I was going to America in the mid-60s and seeing all these looks, and everyone looked good. It was a very vibrant time, and it was very much a shared look.  

Is attitude an integral part of style?
I would say so, yes. For good or for bad. I mean you can't pretend to have attitude - but if you have a manner or confidence about you that seems honest and genuine and it helps to portray your style, I think that's great.

Another you? Any other job that would have appealed?  
Yeah, if I had a better ear, I would have tried to be a musician. I did always play the tenor sax, but I wasn't all that great. And I would love to have been great. So, we've all got dreams of what we might have been or could have been, should have been. But yeah that was something I loved - that whole sort of Jazz life. They were absolutely the formative years. 

In London in the fifties, those clubs were where you went to hang out. Yeah, they very, very much influenced me. The modernists used to hang out at the same clubs - my early customers - who morphed into the Mod's, as they became known. Originally we tried to cater for them in our early shops in '63. Everyone wanted to look like Jack Lemon in 'The Apartment' and stuff like that, you know. But then gradually through musical tastes and group interests, it went from that original Ivy League look to a Modernist look. Also influenced by a lot of the Italian people in Soho. And I suppose a lot of things permeated that, the Jazz musicians, the evolving style, the evolving music and groups with shared interests. I did see myself as part of a quite forward-thinking group. And I think that look has stayed popular to some extent regardless. Even Punk was a part of Mod - in a way.

If you could put any three bands on a line up? 
For me, The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, which also featured Chet Baker. The Chico Hamilton Quintet. And then Charlie Parker, with Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie in the early Bebop Quartets. Yeah, so Charlie Parker was the kind of East Coast, really gritty Jazz. Gerry Mulligan had a great, well-packaged identity and so did Chico Hamilton. 

You've had an amazing career in fashion. What are you most proud of?  
Oh, I am not one to pat myself on the back, you know. Find that quite hard. But I am probably most pleased that people are still influenced by what I did, still respect it and see as something at the cutting edge of their lives. For decades after I was initially doing it. One thing, I was always very far ahead: I used to bring out stuff years ahead, and I was probably sometimes too far ahead! Yeah, I am pleased to have had some kind of influence on people, and they have enjoyed what I did. It's not always been easy to be creative and make the bottom line, you know. I think The Ivy shop was a golden period though and that would cross with the first Squire shop in Brewer Street, Soho. That was the period where we really established our way. 

What is the best Gig you have ever been to?  
Stan Kenton at the Albert Hall in 1955, when I was a 15 or 16. They were a really influential band in the early days of Jazz, and for me, it was incredible. An unbelievable experience. It was my first sense of getting into a scene, I bought a trench coat from Millets, the old military shop, to go to it. Cost me six guineas in old money!