“I think my parents are going to be quite shocked when they see this in Vogue!” Laughed Nicholas Daley, Zooming in to chat about his spring lineup. He was talking about the red, yellow, and green sweater in look 14 of this lookbook. It’s a replica of one his mother and a friend made by hand many years ago for his dad, which Daley remade for this collection as a nod to his parents.
Daley could have also been referring to the “Reggae Klub” logo tee in look eight, a reference to the reggae club his parents ran in the late ’70s and early ’80s, or to the plaid kilt in look 12. “My mom would have a go at me if I didn’t have a kilt in the collection,” he explained. Daley could have also been talking about the “Slygo Sound System” logo, a wink at his father’s past DJ name, DJ Slygo.
Nicholas Daley, the designer, is a family man. But his charming sentimentalism aside, Nicholas Daley, the brand, is not necessarily stuck in the past. This season he continued his exercise of looking at Jamaican folklore, charting the history of the diaspora from West Africa to the Caribbean, he said. His instrument to do so, in addition to fashion, continues to be music. “I was looking at drum circles within the Rastafarian community, the Nyabinghi where you see them all together in a circle,” the designer explained. “Without this sound there wouldn’t be reggae, ska, grime, hip hop, and all of these other music genres,” he continued, “it all comes back to the drum and the influence of West African drumming.”
One of the key elements of this collection, and perhaps the most individual to Daley, was a signature tartan he had woven in Ireland in red, green, and gold. He applied it to relaxed wide legged trousers and worked it into swirls in work jackets. To balance the recurring tricolor story, Daley also developed a fantastic cotton jacquard with a sound wave pattern, which he explained is a homage to the Nyabinghi rhythms that inspired the collection. This he cut into a handsome shirt jacket with rounded pockets, a hoodie, and a casual suit silhouette, which all captured Daley’s appeal: Uncomplicated and both nostalgic and forward-looking at once.
Up next, after a stay in Paris during men’s Fashion Week, he is set to attend the Glastonbury festival with his wife, Nabihah Iqbal, who will be DJing. “This is the duality of the things I have a lot of passion for,” said Daley. “I work as a designer, but then I am someone who is so heavily influenced by music and culture, this collection definitely reflects that.” What it reflects, too, is that Daley is tapped into a world that extends far beyond fashion. It’s something he should always hold on to; it breathes authenticity into his clothes.
