Editor's letter
This month’s ‘F Word’ is Furious. Not ‘Fashion’, although that takes up much of our time. No, it is about fury. And the team who has put this issue together is at the forefront of just about every single government cockup. They are at the heart of making Black and Brown fashion writers and broadcasters and communicators heard. They are students going into a work placement year where there are few internships. They are graduates who have to go home. They will do almost anything for a job. And we are, in Britannia PLC, facing an estimated unemployment figure of around four million, higher than at the worst point in the 1980s – and an equivalent to the depression years of the 1930s. The lucky ones are those who are back at college, even though they are facing, like the staff, an alien situation, thanks to the pandemic. Six months or more of isolation and Zoom has warped communication lines between us all. No parties, no Halloween, no clubbing and no hugging. And no sex if you don’t live in the same house. So yes, people are Furious. And the October issue is the result of this; young journalists, writers and critics who all come from the BA Fashion Journalism course, to tell this story. Young voices, new attitudes.
In this third issue of The F Word, Ollie Day meets hatmaker James Pink, working from his home studio in Leeds after years at CSM and Burberry. Yet another person to leave London, along with Christina Donoghue, who reveals her diary of unemployment at home in Hertfordshire. George Pistachio has got a job, but still finds time to start his new column, ‘In a Nutshell’, on Uggs. They will, he writes, survive the Apocalypse, along with cockroaches and Cher, while Morgan Bowden is The Graduate (2020). Joe Bromley reports from the front line of ‘Pause or Pay’, as students return to a new normal; old fees. Profiles, interviews, humour, investigation, satire and hope. Platform, our sibling title, reports from the wonderful Ebony Horse Club in Brixton, in a piece photographed by Kacion Mayers, written by Yelena Grelet. We are so happy to include Hannah Karpel’s interview with Sam Ross of Magnet Agency. He is, quite simply, a force of change in Fashion for the better, championing the kind of talent that challenges visuals used by turgid brands. Aswan Magumbe has profiled young CSM designer Shasha Marni-Jackson who is putting her own special twist on knitwear, and the fantastic Sadie Clayton, artist, designer and teacher tells us about her ideas and her practice, while Jennifer Williams-Baffoe, fashion designer, fashion educator and UN envoy is our first podcast. And finally, today’s dandy highwayman, Poundlandbandit, gives us his starter pack. We end with Why Don’t You? our eternally camp advice column, illustrated by Sophia Ford-Palmer.
There will be another F Word for the November issue, when we welcome the stellar talent that is journalist Kacion Mayers. FABULOUS!
