British fashion designer Gareth Pugh thinks Singapore's ban on chewing gum is 'a very good thing'.
'It creates such an obedience on the street. Where I live (in London), it gets unsightly, so this environment can be nice,' he tells Urban at the brasserie of the St Regis Singapore hotel on Tuesday.
They are words not quite expected of the Sunderland- born wonderlad whose critically acclaimed, controversial designs include dresses made of leather ribbons, sleeves of perspex pyramids and headdresses of blown-up condoms.
Alongside praise such as 'his genius is undeniable' from British Vogue, the 27-year-old has been described as fashion's latest 'wild child,' 'bad boy' and 'enfant terrible' since his debut at London Fashion Week in 2006.
In person, however, the ballet-trained second child of a policeman father and ex-call centre operator mother is amiable and mild- mannered, even bordering on shy.
In town to show his autumn/winter 2009 collection at the Audi Fashion Festival at Ngee Ann City's Civic Plaza last night, he punctuates his sentences with a grin or a chuckle.
With his floppy hair and kooky get-up of leather jacket, tee, loose cotton pants and flip flops, the skinny, pale-faced man exudes a certain boyish charm at the interview.
'I don't think being tagged a bad boy is a good thing,' he says earnestly.
'Journalists (just) need to put a label on you so that their readers can understand where they are coming from.'
For one, the Central Saint Martins graduate, whose earlier work was so outrageous it prompted Style.com's Sarah Mower to ask, 'Will there ever be clothes to wear here?', insists he is a designer, not an artist.
He calls seeing his pieces at the Superheroes: Fashion And Fantasy exhibition, which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year, 'weird'.
'A lot of what I do is about movement and how it reacts to the body,' he says. 'When you put (the clothes) on a mannequin, it just doesn't seem to fit right.'
Neither are his clothes clubbing gear, a common perception among the British press due to his club kid following and partying pals like British artist Matthew Stone and supermodel Agyness Deyn.
Just after his show last night, Pugh and Stone played a deejay set to a crowd of young, screaming hipsters at local nightspot Velvet Underground on Jiak Kim Street.
'My stuff is not referential to club culture,' he says. 'It's not for you to wear and roll around in on the nightclub floor.'
But the party has only just begun for the industry's newest It boy.
Last year, he was awarded the prestigious Association Nationale pour le Developpement des Arts de la Mode fellowship worth 150,000 euros (S$294,500), which includes showing in Paris.
Days of living like a pauper - his early studio in London was said to be unheated - are 'a looong time ago', says the man, now Paris-based.
Urban asks the young fashion star what exactly he is about.
What message are you trying to convey with your designs?
The premise of what I do is that I must make it interesting for me or I would not do it. I don't really think about what reaction my clothes will get or what people expect of me. And I suppose I'm interested in pushing things a little bit.
What interests you right now?
My set designer has just embarked on a project to launch the first museum of British folklore. We have a long heritage, yet there's no physical set-up to preserve and showcase it. It's something that interests me because even though I'm British, I don't know much about it.
Who is one designer that you look up to and why?
There isn't exactly one designer I look up to. Knowing how difficult it is to succeed in this industry, I would say it's anyone who can do what they do and turn it into a business yet still maintain a level of creativity and enjoy themselves.
Has your work changed since you moved to Paris?
To a certain extent, but I wouldn't say it is specific to Paris. With every season you show, you grow and do things differently. There are also a lot more other things to consider. For example, I can do a show in London for the cost of the models in Paris. Moving to Paris is such a financial burden.
Critics have said your designs are becoming more commercially viable with every collection. What is your response to this?
When you first leave college, it's very nice to be able to play around with things, but when you're playing around in front of (American Vogue editor) Anna Wintour, (International Herald Tribune head fashion reporter) Suzy Menkes and Sarah Mower, there is a lot of pressure. I had to do a lot of growing up. I'm glad I did whatever I've done though because if not I probably wouldn't be here talking to you.
THE HIT LIST
1 Mystery mask
Trust the designer, who once declared that he put womenswear on male models because they are 'just cheaper (to hire)', to shroud their visages in their entirety. There was the all-black, condom headgear of autumn/winter 2006. The next season, he followed up with latex gimp masks. Then he opened his spring/summer show last year with a model whose head was encased in a giant, glittery black box (Photo 2).
2 Balloon burlesque
Perhaps it was a sign that his career was about to take flight - a 24-year-old Pugh kicked off his debut runway show in London in February 2006 by sending giant balloons into the audience.
What followed was a collection inspired by every child's favourite helium treat, except that there was nothing childlike about the pieces. They included a bomber jacket so exaggerated it engulfed its wearer, vinyl bodysuits with over-the-top ruffles and one poodle-inspired headdress (Photo 3) said to be made of blown-up condoms.
3 Harlequin haute
Wunderkind Pugh has always had a love affair with the harlequin, the comic character from classic Italian theatre. His version, however, has a lot more punch than it does slapstick Punch and Judy.
Style.com's Sarah Mower likened the models at his debut autumn/winter 2006 show to 'perverse-looking harlequins', their faces painted in clown make-up but wearing a stern sulk. His signature oversized ruffles and monochrome chessboard checks also pay tribute to the theatrical jester - from your worst nightmare, that is.
Before Gareth Pugh, there were other bad boys. Here are three of the most notorious - John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Jean Paul Gaultier.
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WILD ROMANTIC
JOHN GALLIANO, 48
His slinky dresses and billowing ball gowns might be more classy than cutting edge but there is no denying that British-born Galliano is a bad boy.
It's not just his swashbuckler moustache, love for flamboyant outfits - he wore a pirate costume at his fall/winter 2009 show - and catwalk swagger.
In the 1990s, when slapdash grunge was in, the Central Saint Martins graduate championed the bias cut to create figure-hugging dresses.
LVMH made him the first British head of French label Givenchy in 1995 and then Dior a year later.
THE HIT LIST
1 Period revival
Galliano's fascination with period dressing and detail dates back to his French Revolution- themed 1984 graduation collection that was snapped up by London boutique Browns.
He has since created Napolean-style jackets, waistcoats and corsets all updated with his trademark flamboyance.
2 Bias-cut chiffon dress
Whether his inspiration is campy 1960s romance novel Valley Of The Dolls or Masai warrior women, he never fails to deliver the look that made him a star. His sexy, bias-cut numbers have since become a red carpet favourite, seen on the likes of Princess Diana, Charlize Theron and, in February, Gisele Bundchen as she walked down the aisle.
'Hide that tummy, elongate that neck, shade the butt. I'm an accomplice to helping women get what they want,' he said.
3 Oversized headdress
No Galliano show would be complete without the headdresses designed with British milliner Stephen Jones.
There were the hobo haute hats crafted out of light bulbs, popsicle sticks and plastic combs from autumn/winter 1996. More recently, there were the oversized pirate hats, bonnets and wizard- inspired headgear for spring/summer 2009.
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ANARCHIC DRAMATIST
ALEXANDER MCQUEEN, 40
A 24-year-old McQueen was immediately dubbed 'enfant terrible' (French for terrible child) when he burst onto the scene in 1994.
British-born and Central Saint Martins-trained, he presented a Jack the Ripper-inspired graduation collection which was famously snapped up by the late eccentric and stylist Isabella Blow, who became his mentor.
His ascent to stardom - he has won British Designer of the Year four times and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2003 - has been defined by an imaginative descent into all things dark and dangerous.
His infamous 1995 Highland Rape show featured bum-bearing trousers and tampon strings hanging from skirts.
Explaining that he no longer needed to hide 'behind theatrics' in a 2005 Guardian interview, the master tailor continues to shock and disturb nonetheless.
International Herald Tribune's Suzy Menkes said of his autumn/winter 2009 collection: '(It) was as if all McQueen's fantastical visions from his 15 years in fashion were on the runway, enlarged by a computer click.'
His shows also continue to push the boundaries of performance art. Past antics have included robots that blitzed a twirling Shalom Harlow's dress in spray paint and sending a double amputee model out on carved wooden limbs.
THE HIT LIST
1 Taxidermist
From encasing a model's head in a ball of butterflies to having stuffed birds displayed as if tugging at a model's locks, McQueen obviously has a thing for taxidermy.
"I have always loved the mechanics of nature," he said at his spring/summer 2009 show that had stuffed animals ranging from a tiger to a polar bear as the backdrop.
He took his perverse fascination to a new realm with his autumn/winter 2008 collection. French model Sigrid Agren hobbled onto the catwalk in an all-white, fully feathered long dress and giant headpiece that bounded her arms (Photo 10).
The designer's fowl take on the infamous swan dress Icelandic singer Bjork - a McQueen fan - wore to the 2001 Oscars, perhaps?
2 Kate Moss holograph
Not exactly a look but certainly something fashionistas and artists alike will be looking back at for a long time.
As his autumn/winter 2006 show came to a close, white smoke rose in the middle of the catwalk and, moments after, spun to reveal a floating Kate Moss dressed in a billowy white gown.
If the supermodel resembled an apparition, it was because the audience was only enjoying an image of her projected through an optical device.
Wrote Style.com's Sarah Mower: "Only Alexander McQueen could provide the astonishing feat of techno-magic."
3 Bumster trousers
McQueen grew cheeky, literally, in 1995 when he sent models out in trousers slung so low that they exposed the buttocks, reportedly a response to the low-rise jeans trend of the time (Photo 12).
The daring design prompted jokes about visible panty lines but it was the designer who had the last laugh.
He was awarded his first British Designer of the Year award a year later.
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GENDER BENDER
JEAN PAUL GAULTIER, 57
Even at his age, Gaultier - otherwise known as JPG - still gets tagged French fashion's ultimate bad boy.
Without any formal training as a designer, the ex-assistant to Pierre Cardin pushed buttons in the 1980s by putting men in skirts and often getting kitted out in kilts himself.
'A man doesn't wear his masculinity on his clothes, his virility in his head,' he has been quoted as saying.
Known for his high street-inspired brand of high fashion - think cut-out jumpsuits and leather bike pants - he has also shocked with his choice of models that has included the old and the obese.
But Gaultier is no shock jock.
He is known to be a master tailor particularly versed with coats, suits and tricky fabrics like lace and leather, best seen in his couture collections that started in 1997. One of the most shocking points in his career was when he was appointed classic French luxury label Hermes' creative director in 2003.
THE HIT LIST
1 Conical bra
It would be safe to say that Madonna probably would not be the Queen of Pop if not for Gaultier.
He was responsible for the iconic conical corsets that the singer wore on her 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour, giving her bad girl image a further, er, lift.
2 Kilt
Prada's dress-like polo tee shocked the fashion world this season, so imagine the response when Gaultier sent male models out in transparent lace skirts in the 1980s.
Considered one of the pioneers of gender bender dressing, the visionary told The New York Times: 'It was not to provoke and shock the people. It was only because I thought that people were changing... so that it was no longer a shame to express femininity.'
3 Classique & Le Male fragrances
Gaultier's first men's and women's fragrances, launched in the 1990s, have come to be as iconic as the man himself.
Like his clothes, their bodalicious packaging set tongues wagging.
Both continue to enjoy brisk sales today with Le Male said to be the numero uno man's scent in Europe.
This article was first published in Urban, The Straits Times.
