There is no typical route to becoming a fashion designer. Getting robbed, owning a noisy parrot, some glue, and thousands of sequins can all play a part. Debbie Williams is a designer with a store in the centre of a major English city. Like all fashion designers she's one of a kind.
TFP: Do you do designs to order, or sell from stock?
DW: We only do things to order for bands and people like that.
We manufacture a lot ourselves and tend to steer away from
orders. We like to keep our clothes at a very good price and when someone
wants something to order, it puts the price up because you never get it
right the first time. I know exactly what my regular customers want so I
can keep the price down. In the past, when I've taken individual orders
I've come away frustrated. What I do now is, when a customer is looking
for something in particular, I tell them if I get something in that I think
they might like I'll phone them. When I do get something, I give them a
call and tell them that I've got something similar so why don't you come and
have a look. That way they don't feel under pressure to buy it.
TFP: Do you get clothes from the houses in London, or do you use
local designers?
DW: We use mainly one fashion house in London. I've done
designs for them in the past. We have every single sample that they do.
So we have a lot of one-offs at reasonable prices.
TFP: What are your own designs like?
DW: We specialize in really glitzy, glittery clothes. We do
glitzed up jeans, glitzed jackets...
TFP: Where are you located?
DW: We're in the Birmingham city centre in a shopping arcade just off
one of the main streets. We're right by the side of Rackhams in the North Western Arcade.
I've got three floors here so you can
imagine all the stock we have here.
TFP: Oh, yes, I'm from Birmingham so I've got a good idea where you
are, close to The Body Shop. How long have you been
doing this? How long has Flirtz been open?
DW: Six years now. I had a shop before that for three years
selling the same kind of stuff. Still in the centre of Birmingham,
a place called Mega Active, for young designers. That's
where I started.
I actually started doing the leather jewellery after me and my friend had got this holiday booked. I'd got lodgers in my house and I'd just bought myself a new car. The week we were due to go on holiday one of the lodgers stole some money from me. I realised that I was going on holiday and I hadn't got any money to take with me. So I took the jewellery that I'd made and sold it on the beach at Majorca, and in some of the shops. That gave me confidence to try it over here. If I could sell it over there, I could sell it over here. It was quite hard walking into the first shop, and saying "Well, what do you think of these then?" That paid for my holiday.
I used to come to Birmingham on the weekends and sell my jewellery to
shops like Oasis. And then from there, the girl from Mega Active asked me
if I'd be interested in taking some leather scraps she'd got and making up
some jewellery to go with her outfits, so I did that. Then she decided
to leave for Canada. She'd got two weeks left on her lease so she
asked me if I'd like to buy her stock off her at a silly price and sell it
over the last couple of weeks of the lease. I had two weeks holiday coming
to me so I did that. And I thought this is easy. All you have to do is
wait for people to come to you. It's easy compared to painting the horse
drawn carriages with thirty coats of paint.
TFP: When was that?
DW: It was a year after Lady Di got married. My boss at the horse
and carriage company had made a glass coach the same as she got
married in. The local TV crew came and they did a news feature, showing me in
the workshop doing the lining, and my boss doing his thing. Then they
showed the glass coach going up and down the road with yours truly Debbie
Williams in it. (Giggle.) I've been in horse and rider type
magazines a few times.
TFP: So you're quite famous then, in your own way?
DW: Well...
TFP: Have you had any kind of training in design?
DW: None whatsoever.
TFP: You've not been to art school or anything?
DW: Well, when I left school I wanted to design album covers
because I like painting. But you were required to have three years basic, and two
years after that, but I couldn't wait that long.
TFP: Do you do any exhibitions or show
your stuff anywhere?
DW: No I haven't up till now. I haven't got any plans to, I'm
quite happy here. I've thought about opening more shops, but it would
just be more headaches. This is a big shop and I'd like to concentrate on
generating more interest in it.
DW: One thing that is a passion in my life is that I've been vegetarian since I was six ( in my mind that is) I'm now 99% vegan. I'd like to do non-leather designer shoes that are a bit different. I don't do anything leather now. In the past I've eased my conscience by thinking "Oh, well you could have got that from the animal after it died".
TFP: Is there anybody that you're influenced by?
DW: No, not really. Since I was as kid I've always been very
creative. I like to paint surrealist type things, and my designs are
quite wild really. Lots af slashed, ripped jeans and things like that.
TFP: How do you decorate your clothes?
DW: Mainly with fabric paint and glitter glue. And we use sequins.
Over the years we've used a lot of different things in our designs.
TFP: Is it mainly denim that you're selling? You've mentioned jeans
a lot, I'm getting the idea that you're into jeans right now.
DW: I love my jeans. Jeans appeal to a lot of different people. If
you try and target things that sell to as many different people as possible,
then you have more chance of being successful. Another thing we do is
have our bargain rails--five, ten and fifteen pound rails. On the five
pound rail you can get a lycra top with a little gold design of music notes
or flowers on the front. We don't make much money from them but it gives
people a chance to buy something that isn't bulk manufactured. I spend
hours at home doing them, sometimes my whole carpet is covered in them.
TFP: Who does all the making up of the garments?
DW: We get them in plain, or we'll add on to what's already there.
We don't have the garments made up ourselves. We take a pair of jeans and
cut them or paint them--making up is the boring part. We just jazz up
what's already there.
TFP: What's that whistling I can hear in the background? Have
you got workmen there?
DW: That's my parrot, I've got a parrot in the shop. I've been in
"The Evening Mail" with him, but that's another story.