What do the models, designers, stylists and photographers at London Fashion Week read? We meet the “Creative Director/Publisher, etc” of Rubbish and founding publisher of LFW's The Daily.
Rubbish! No, I don't mean all that weird stuff gradually piling up in my kitchen, nor even Michael Landy's latest conceptual extravaganza, Art Bin; nope we're talking fashion here. Specifically: we're having a nice cup of tea in the offices of Rubbish magazine with Jenny Dyson, aka Mrs. Rubbish, the “Creative Director/Publisher, etc” behind the whole mag/blog/agency shebang.
Rubbish started life in 2006 as one of those big, cool fashion magazine/book things you occasionally see and can't afford. But Rubbish was always a little bit different – as the title suggests, the aim was to look at the fun side of fashion, focusing on the silly and the satirical. Beautifully designed – clearly a labour of love – Rubbish instantly became something of a cult classic.
The whole thing was started by Jenny Dyson whilst she was European Editor at Teen Vogue, and since then, Rubbish has evolved via iconoclastic London Fashion Week tabloid Daily Rubbish to include The Daily – a daily broadsheet for London Fashion Week insiders co-edited with Cat Callender. The Daily became so huge that it's now published by Dyson and Callender's venture Jenny and the Cat Ltd. And now they even do a range of Fashion Icon finger puppets! With LFW rapidly approaching, we thought it'd be nice to find out more.
And indeed it is – it really is refreshing to meet someone so enthusiastic about the industry they work in. “At its best,” Jenny explains, “fashion can be really magical. Most fashion shows take nine minutes, but sometimes those nine minutes can be exquisitely beautiful and inspiring, and make people cry because they're so moving. And it can be a combination of the music, the girls, the clothes... Designers like Hussein Chalayan or Alexander McQueen: it's like going to an amazing theatre show that only a few people are privy to. It really is a special thing.”
But it's not just a life of sitting about being fabulous. Is it? “A lot of people just see these beautiful creatures walking up and down the runway in extraordinary clothes and probably think it's just people sitting there looking. Whereas actually it's hugely manic for everyone – for the models in particular, who have to go from show to show and get their hair pulled out and put back in, and their make-up taken off and put back on...”
“A lot of people there know each other, but they've already been in New York, then it gets to London and they've already done all the small talk. It can get quite lonely actually, waiting for shows to start.” And this is where The Daily comes in: “The newspaper fills a lovely gap – it's a friend for the front row.”
This appreciation of people and of a sense of community represents perhaps the culmination of Jenny's entire journalistic career. Before Teen Vogue, before the years at Vogue and Elle and Tatler, Jenny's first job was in a small American town called Fergus Falls, about an hour or so from Fargo. Covering things like ice fishing and drag racing on lakes (the mind boggles), Jenny also got to grips with the really hands-on elements of publishing. She even describes Rubbish today as a kind of “cottage publishers”.
As you'd expect, Jenny is clearly passionate about London Fashion Week: “London is definitely the most creative and inspiring,” Jenny says. “They're all really brilliant, but London is very exciting – it's very much known for the new, and for innovation. Partly because of Central Saint Martins and all of the amazing fashion colleges. Everyone's always looking at the next generation of fashion designers, so it always has that buzz – 'what's going to be the show of the week?'”
“But in general,” Jenny continues, “London is just so creative and inspiring. And that's a lot to do with the fact that Londoners do have a sense of humour and don't take themselves too seriously: they're prepared to take risks.” Like Rubbish and like The Daily? “Exactly. There's a certain chaos to London which I love, and that's what creates such brilliant originality. And I'm sure that will never change.”
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