Samuel Ross scooped the £150,000 British Fashion Council/GQ Designer Menswear Fund prize on the evening he’d just shown his best collection, A Material Study for Social Architecture, in the cavernous Printworks venue in London’s East End. Ross and his popular brand A-Cold-Wall need no introduction for millions of boy followers internationally. He’s living proof that nothing succeeds like success, a leader who emerged onto the designer streetwear scene after working for Virgil Abloh at Off-White, and an important trailblazer for the talented generation of young black British creatives who are explosively breaking through into London menswear from multiple directions.
His ambition to use his platform to set a positive example, and to lift eyes to the possibilities of social change also marks Ross as belonging to a generation in London—and beyond—who are committed activists of one kind or another. From staging his show in the vast ex-industrial East London venue—to which he’d invited the public—through to the clothes and accessories, the event served to establish Ross as a constructionist, a designer literally using the raw materials of the building trade to say that the foundations of a new society will rise from the rubble of the old.
He took the colors of cement and clay as a metaphor to demonstrate how the basic wardrobe of streetwear—hoodie, track pant, parka—can be elevated as building blocks of a far more sophisticated modernism. There was grit on the floor and dust in the air, references to metal, electrical wiring, concrete, industrial tubing. In the time of Brexit, many designers have been voicing rage and disgust at the decay of the political system and looking for ways to get through it. This was Ross’s response: If things are falling apart, then it’s time to rebuild them with our hands.
A product of British art education—he studied graphics and product design at De Montfort University—Ross feels the responsibility for redirecting the collective narrative around diversity in the U.K., and knows he’s in a unique position to be able to speak to his customers as they grow up with A-Cold-Wall. After the show, he had a lot to say about that. “I started from hardship, but I’m not in that place any more, I don’t wish that to be celebrated,” he said. “I want to focus on a more positive, altruistic future. I’ve done a study, looking at the hype and positioning of A-Cold-Wall—growing from four stockists up to 165 in four years. The brand is now positioning at a higher tier of garment construction and development. It ushers in new price points. But for me, it’s very key that we keep accessibility through the information the brand puts out—that’s not just about purchasing garments, it’s about opening the brand to the public. I wanted to ensure that there wasn’t this conservative division that is often associated with bourgeois fashion—that didn’t seem very liberal to me, so pushing forward. It’s incredibly important that there’s this circular form of communication, I want to incubate that discussion.”
He gave a personal insight into the meaning of the sculptural metalwork that was molded to faces throughout the show. “They’re clamped pieces of lead. My father is a Central Saint Martins–trained stained glass artist, the only black one in the country.”
Inclusion—the activating of the talents of a generation—can only happen if there are role models to show routes toward more positive places. Lots of people say this, but few put their money where their mouths are. Ross is not one of them: He made the surprise announcement that he had donated his BFC New Gen sponsorship money, a previous prize, to an ex-A-Cold-Wall intern, Eastwood Danso, who having been inspired by his work experience, went on to study fashion and had his first presentation this week.
“The generous New Gen bursary given to myself and ACW has been redirected. So there’s this idea of giving that’s not verbal, it’s tangible, it’s financial,“ he said. “I’m speaking boldly here, but I wish this to be an industry trend, because the whole point, as we grow, is that we should feed back in. I want to encourage people from all other diasporas to come in to this space. And so this is a kind of handshake to them.”
On all levels—to peers, to those beneath, and to those above in corporate positions of power—that is inspirational.
