Museum of London and Sherlock Holmes help Tinie Tempah create Men's Fashion Week suit

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Rapper and tweed fan Tinie Tempah teams up with Museum of London ahead of men's fashion week

As well as the women, cars, cards and “very, very, very wild lifestyle” namechecked by Tinie Tempah on his debut single five years ago, the future Brit Award winner also alluded to his brimming wardrobe, admitting that “I got so many clothes, I keeps some in my aunt’s house”.

Five number one singles later, what does the rapper think of his tweed suit, based on the Museum of London’s collections and inspired by their current exhibition on another stylish figure, Sherlock Holmes? “I love it,” declares Tinie, also known as Londoner Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu.

A photo of two men smiling while measuring a bespoke suitTinie Tempah at the Museum of London Tweed suit fitting© Museum of London
“It’s unique, it’s fresh. I’m very chuffed and I think all it takes is someone to reinvent it and bring it back in a kind of fresher sense.

“I think we’ve definitely been able to do that with the colour, with who it’s been made by and the way I’ve styled it as well. And that’s bound to work. It works.”

Tinie is the new ambassador for the London Collections: Men part of London Fashion Week, which begins on Friday. He met Timothy Long, the museum’s wonderfully hirsute curator, and Patrick Grant, an expert from Savile Row tailors Norton and Sons, to come up with the three-piece.

“We met over the course of four fittings and I’m in love with it,” he says. “I actually bought my first bit of Harris tweed from like a vintage store about four years ago. So now to have my own bespoke suit is phenomenal.”

A photo of a bearded man in a suit holding up lines of textileThe museum's Timothy Long with the bolt of the Museum of London Tweed© Museum of London
Like most tweeds, Harris is very much a Scottish export. But the term was coined by accident by a cloth merchant in the capital, James Locke and Co, in 1826, when a clerk misread a label marked tweel – Scottish for twill – on a consignment of cloth dispatched from Hawick, where the Lovat Mill collaborated with the museum on Tinie’s tweed.

“It’s got a hint of the double yellow line about it, and the grey of the London skyline on a dreary day,” muses Grant.

“I think the museum’s tweed is a cracker. You know, designing modern-looking tweeds is a real dark art and I think the combination of the scale and colour just makes this one sing in a very modern way.

“It feels very, very contemporary and very urban in the nicest possible way. It just feels like a reflection of the man.”

Three colour palettes were closely followed: the original colours from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of blue, yellow and urban grey, as well as the late Victorian styles found around the museum’s revered fashion and textile collection and the latest menswear “forecasting data”.

A photo of the outside of a mill with the words weavers of finest tweeds and cashmeresLovat Mill in Hawick, Scotland, where the Museum of London Tweed is woven© Museum of London
“In the end we’ll record the overall process and actually acquire the suit for the permanent archive at the Museum of London,” points out Long.

“The overall inspiration for the suit that Tinie Tempah will wear really came from him and the discussions. The history of tweed is definitely embedded right into London’s history.

“All we asked was that the suit be made from a Museum of London tweed but we wanted it to be something Tinie would feel comfortable wearing. So he worked closely with Norton and Son to try and figure out the specific cut, what kind of sleeve, what kind of pockets.”

“It’s all part of the story of Sherlock Holmes, which is amazing, and I’m just chuffed that they thought I would be suitable for it, to be quite honest with you,” beams Tinie.

“I think we are the reason why most people around the world are wearing a three-piece suit.

“And as a 26-year-old man in 2015, to now be a part of that great Saville Row history and legacy is phenomenal – definitely one off the bucket list.”


What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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More from Culture24's coverage of the show:

Arthur Conan Doyle notebook containing first ever lines of Sherlock Holmes goes on show

Artist's Statement: Kasia Wozniak on Fashion Photography Inspired by Sherlock Holmes


Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk//art/fashion/art511845-museum-of-london-and-sherlock-holmes-help-tinie-tempah-create-men-fashion-week-suit

Keywords: London clothes contemporary novel Historic Costume 19th century (1801 - 1900) Victorian

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