The Contour of Luxury Spring/Summer 2018 | Page 61

Alexis Day Your bespoke tailoring is dashingly edgy and supreme, to say the least and it has garnered quite an impressive roster of celebrity clientele. If I may boast a bit for you, your clientele consists of George Clooney, Naomi Campbell, Harrison Ford, Keira Knightley, Mick and Bianca Jagger, David Bowie, George Michael, Usher, Bryan Ferry, Tom Jones, Jonathan Ross, Vic Reeves, Frank Lampard, Goldie, Morrissey, Kevin Rowland, Keith Flint from The Prodigy, The Killers, film director Joe Wright, Phil Daniels, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Sean Bean and, more recently, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Martin Freeman and Paul Weller. Who was your first celebrity client and how did the word spread about you in the entertainment realm? Mark Powell I think really what was good was, well the early clients that came to me, they just sort of discovered me, and then particularly early on, when I had the shop, it was always about just good word of mouth, so then what would happen is then maybe their, particularly someone like David Bowie, their manager or managing team or whatever, would connect you to other people in the business and then you’d get other people coming from that situation. But I think particularly in the 90’s, when I feel like my boom really, I feel like it was my big booming period, as these young men’s tailor, slash designer, a lot of it came through the sort of the stylist that I worked with, you know when I did people like George Michael, and Bryan Ferry. And then I did all those Brit bands at the times that were sort of quite edgy or cool, or you know, mainstream at the time. And then I was coming to New York quite a lot at the time as well. I started to do some very good people in New York. I even got friendly with John Kennedy Jr. when he was doing George magazine and stuff. I did a couple of fun covers of that with George Clooney and Harrison Ford. That was a good period, the 90’s for me. It was also the right time to sort of, with those sort of clients, because you need to be more mature, but not too mature when you do a lot of high profile celebrity clients, because a lot of them they still want you to be, they want you to be a man, I’ve got a lot of wisdom, but they do like for you to look young and glamorous. But I’m still very good looking now, so I don’t look too bad.