Curating style and skills in fashion with Harris Elliott

Harris Elliott is a multi disciplined creative director and stylist with 20 years experience working across the fashion, art, and music industries. 

In this episode, Harris discusses what it means to be a stylist and artistic director. He talks about  the myriad of skills and attributes required to be successful in those industries, and about all the different ways that you can gather inspiration and research to inform your work.

Instagram: @harriselliottstudio

Website: https://harriselliott.com/

Website (Le Tings): https://letings.co/ 

Discover more about UAL Awarding Body qualifications.

Transcript

Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Teach, Inspire, Create podcast. I'm your host, Matt Mosley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. Each episode, I speak to artists and [00:00:15] creative industry leaders about their experience of teaching and being taught, who or what inspires them, and we explore creativity in their work with the hope of showing you that there are infinite ways to be creative in the arts.

Matt: Today, my [00:00:30] guest is Harris Elliott. He's a multi disciplined creative director and stylist with 20 years experience working across the fashion, art, and music industries. In this episode, I'm going to be talking to Harris about what it means to be a stylist and [00:00:45] artistic director. We're going to learn about the myriad of skills and attributes required to be successful in those industries, and we'll hear about all the different ways that you can gather inspiration and research to inform your work. There is a transcript available for this [00:01:00] episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen. 

Matt: Hi, Harris. Thank you ever so much for joining us today on the Teach, Inspire, Create podcast. We're super excited to have you. So we [00:01:15] generally start the podcast off by trying to take our interviewee back in time to where creativity came into their consciousness.

Harris: There's something that occurred to me a few years ago, which I could never fully understand in [00:01:30] terms of some of the references that I would often put in my work.

Harris: So I'm not into the military, but I really like regalia, and it was only in the last couple of years I remembered that my mum used to work at the Tower of London. And so it was then rethinking [00:01:45] about growing up and spending a lot of my summer holidays running around the Tower of London, actually going to see the Crown Jewels and seeing the Beefeaters and the Gurkhas in there.

Harris: Actually, it was from a very young age that the military was very impressionable on me because of [00:02:00] that. Also, from that kind of time period, as a kid, we'd often go up to London at Christmas to see the Christmas lights. It's something that my mum always wanted to do. We'd go on the bus and we’d go and look at the different window displays.[00:02:15]

Harris: And when I graduated, I'd studied interior architecture and design. One of the first series of projects I started doing was window displays, and again, it wasn't something that I would have attributed to what I was seeing growing up. But [00:02:30] when I look back, it was clearly heavily referential based on the experiences that I'd had with my mom.

Harris: And then fast forward, still a fair way back, when I graduated whilst doing the window [00:02:45] displays, I saw the phone number for Judy Blame. Judy Blame, for those who are listening who don't know, I recommend you go and check out Judy's work. Judy was a bit of an iconoclast in terms of an art director, [00:03:00] stylist and jewellery maker.

Harris: I reached out to Judy because I was inspired by a lot of the work that I'd seen in ID Magazine. I found Judy's number in a magazine, rang him back in the days when such things [00:03:15] existed in that way, and he said to me, send me an interesting fax of what makes you tick? 

Harris: So I created this collage, sent him this fax and then a few days later, rang him and he said, ‘come around, meet me’. [00:03:30] And I took some of the objects that I'd been making for window displays, and then Judy then commissioned me to create some headdresses for a show he was working on, off the back of that interaction.

Matt: Wow, so, you know, very early [00:03:45] on you were sort of, you know, in a conversation with industry professionals and…

Harris: Totally, but totally naive.

Matt: Right, yeah. 

Harris: Because I hadn't studied fashion so I didn't understand the hierarchy or [00:04:00] the levelling ground of how it all worked, and my only interest in fashion pre that point was the thinking that I would end up designing retail interiors for fashion brands and stores through what I'd studied. It was never around [00:04:15] the idea of body styling in that way.

Harris: So it's something that then became a bit of a pivot point. Judy recommended me to another brand shortly after called Boudicca. I made some helmets for them. And then I started [00:04:30] assisting a number of stylists who are mainly in the music industry rather than in fashion, but then I thought I'd give that a try because I was always into clothing and so that became my intro into actually working in fashion.

Matt: Do you think that was [00:04:45] in some ways helpful to have that naivety about the fashion? 

Harris: Oh for sure because if I'd realized that the levels of who Judy was then I might have been a bit more reserved about just getting in contact. So yeah, I think it helped a lot in some [00:05:00] ways and then it was just knowing very early on that you have to have a… very much a can do attitude and anything that gets offered to you you take it with open arms within reason. And [00:05:15] then if it means no sleep for 36, 48 hours, then by any means necessary, 

Matt: Yeah, that’s the job.

Harris: That is actually the job.

Harris: Another early learning: that it's not for the faint hearted and you need to be wired a certain way [00:05:30] if you want to work at certain levels within the industry, because it's not very forgiving. Things change all the time at the last minute and so you have to be really adaptable.

Matt: I think one of the things that would be really helpful is what's your [00:05:45] definition of a stylist or an art director?

Harris: Both roles can mean different things to different people and no two stylists are the same and no two art directors the same. They might have similar skill sets and [00:06:00] attributes, but in terms of how each person works, it's all completely different.

Harris: And so from myself, I started off as a music stylist and the job, or the projects, begin with the record company calling you in [00:06:15] either directly just with management and the label or to meet a particular artist. And it's very much, for me, how you connect person to person. It's… for me, I'm very intuitive in the way that I work and if [00:06:30] there's got to be some form of rapport with working with someone. I often insist on meeting an artist because sometimes the labels will just say, ‘we want you to do this particular project, the shoot will be on such and such a day’. And I've learned through just my own process, ways of working that that's just not the [00:06:45] best way for me and it's, how do I build up? This personal connection with said person or group of people in, in the band and then, it's at that hopeful meeting of the minds, it's that level of trust that they're [00:07:00] affording you to be able to take their image in whatever direction that you've all agreed will be a means of moving forward.

Harris: It's not just the case of going out and getting clothes and therefore taking a few snaps and therefore that's it. That's not what makes me a [00:07:15] stylist. There's a lot of building relationships with loads of different people. It's building relationships with brand owners. It's building relationships with store owners, with different designers.

Harris: It could be spending a lot [00:07:30] of time in flea markets. And so you're constantly researching and so a large part of it is a research role because you're trying to find another way of telling a similar story over and over again. [00:07:45] And so, how do you tell that story, but also how do you build up a language that makes sense, that you have something that's identifiable to you and the ways in which you work.

Matt: Yeah that’s the complex thing, isn't it? And then how to make something which is unique and bespoke to [00:08:00] each client, but then also identifiably your own?

Harris: Once you, it becomes your career, you often underestimate how much work actually goes into it because it becomes second nature, but there's a number of egos to massage, [00:08:15] a number of expectations that you've got to manage on many levels from your own point of view, as well as sometimes you're borrowing clothes from brands that have got real strict restrictions.

Harris: Because some artists will turn up and say, ‘Oh, we'd love to wear [00:08:30] Louis Vuitton’ or whatever brand it might be but brands at certain levels, they have these really strict lists of the people that they would want to wear their clothes. And so they won't just lend these clothes to any and anyone, it has to fit in within [00:08:45] their brand remit. So if they don't know the particular artist, whichever brand it is, you then send the details and it's then down to their discretion on whether they think it's okay if that particular person or group fits their image or they want to [00:09:00] be able to be supportive of that.

Harris: Very often younger artists will come up and have this expectation, well, I've seen people wearing this, wearing that, and I want a bit of that. 

Matt: And so you have to manage their expectations. 

Harris: Yeah, totally. And then resources and managing a budget expectation as well. Because there's [00:09:15] newer artists you get lower budgets to work with and then therefore you've got someone coming in saying I only want to wear this, but actually what you can afford will take me down to the market for you.

Harris: It's kind of how do you make that [00:09:30] work? And there's many different ways of… sometimes I refer to it as the dark arts of how you glean or, you know, or gain the clothes that you need to? And it's not dark, but just kind of know how to…

Matt: Talk to people in the right [00:09:45] way. Ask the right questions.

Harris: And build up the relationships, which mean that certain stores will just lend you clothes. And I've really built up really good relationships with certain stores, but then that constantly changes and it [00:10:00] changes very often I've found over the years because new stylists will come in and they'll offer the world and they'll go and ruin things for more established people because clothes don't go back on time clothes go back crumpled or dirty or clothes may not go back [00:10:15] at all.

Matt: Yeah so they’re impacting the trust that is between the brands, the stores, the stylists.

Matt: So in those early days where you were [00:10:30] learning the dark arts a little bit, is there a particular job that you worked on where you feel that you had to learn quite a lot quite quickly?

Harris: Yeah, I think probably when I was assisting, I learnt loads on certain jobs. I [00:10:45] remember once assisting a stylist and we were styling Westlife and there'd been a brief, which was as the band, and then there were extras, I think there were 50 extras and they had to have three color changes in terms of their outfit.

Harris: [00:11:00] And the day before the directors changed the colors and the stylist I was working with was of course very experienced and had a huge archive of rails and rails, but it was this real baptism of [00:11:15] fire. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Harris: How do you suddenly turn this around and you don't get any more. I don't know if they offered any more money, but you don't get any more time. The shoot date is still the shoot date and you still have to deliver. And there's also the negotiations that you [00:11:30] have to have with the extras because you're asking them to be able to bring things as well, but that's also needing to have those personable skills to be able to have those questions and also for them to also to be able to engage.

Harris: Because I've often been in those situations and [00:11:45] you brief people and, ‘ah, sorry, I didn't stay at my mum's last night, so I haven't got anything’, so you're having to always reinvent things and think.

Matt: There's a lot of resilience there, isn't there? 

Harris: Oh, you need, you need thick skin. 

Matt: Yeah, yeah, a lot of staying calm under extreme…

Harris: Or not.

Matt: Yeah, [00:12:00] yeah. You just find a way to get it done, isn't it?

Harris: And that's the thing, you just have to get it done. When people suddenly say, sorry, I can't come in because of X, I can't suddenly tell my client that, oh, my assistant didn't turn up, so therefore, I'm not going to [00:12:15] deliver. I've had people, they just didn't show up.

Harris: They're being paid, and they just didn't show up, and then they turn up two days later, ‘Oh, you don't need to pay me’. It's like, it's not actually about the money, it's about the loss of trust, and it's about, the role was allocated for you. [00:12:30] And if you're not there to fulfill that role, that means either another assistant has to do two roles, or I have to do two or three roles in order to be able to make it happen.

Harris: So there's a lot of trust. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Harris: There's a responsibility to be able to make things [00:12:45] happen. And excuses just don't, they just don't cut it. It's a solution based career, you have to have a result and if you can't find what was the original mood board idea or reference, [00:13:00] You have to have a plan B and go back with a, that was not available because said brand weren't going to lend or because those colors weren't available in any of the stores and so we're trying this or this. Again, over the years, often you'll have people like, oh, I couldn't find it. [00:13:15] And so what do you want me to do with that piece of information? Because I cannot go back to clients and say, well, you know what?

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to postpone, because we can't get that thing.

Harris: And so it's for people to understand, the amount of pressure and the levels and [00:13:30] your portion…

Matt: Do you have to sort of learn to love that pressure a little bit as well?

Harris: I think you…

Matt: Maybe not love it, but like, you know, I think you thrive with it. 

Harris: I think you kind of do have to thrive with it because it's, it's not an easy thing to [00:13:45] be able to even navigate or to kind of recoil if you just suddenly hit a blank. I'm always of the belief, and it's from one of the stylists I assisted early on, that the job is never complete till we're [00:14:00] walking away from the set at the end of the day.

Harris: So no amount of preparation, and he would then just have copious amounts of clothes, which I don't work in that way, but I'm always on the understanding that you've [00:14:15] always got to still keep looking, because even if you think you found the right thing sometimes it's just it doesn't fit or it just doesn't look right for whatever reason.

Harris: So in your head, it looked great on paper or on screen, it looks great. But then when that person tries it on, it clashes with something else that you're [00:14:30] meant to be working with. And so you've always got to be able to be adaptable and willing to let go of your own ego or your own ideas.

Matt: Because people can often get really wedded to a perceived outcome, can't they? And it takes quite a lot of [00:14:45] maturity, doesn't it, to sort of let that go in the interest of achieving the greater goal, as it were.

Harris: I find that a lot now with younger people coming through post uni, that the idea of critique doesn't actually happen in the [00:15:00] same way within the uni setup. And for me, critique, crit sessions, where people would question why you've made certain choices and made certain decisions, is really powerful and really helpful because it allows you to make your [00:15:15] own ideas much more solid and if everyone says well this doesn't work for whatever reason you either know I'm not going to listen to you and do your own thing, but actually starting to understand that actually it can't always just be your way or the highway [00:15:30] because you're not working as an artist.

Harris: You're working as a creative who's part of a bigger team and therefore it becomes less and less necessarily about your taste. It's about what your taste within the remit for what works for that particular [00:15:45] project. And there'll be times where, I remember doing advertising jobs where they need a blue dress and you know it should be green, but because you don't have the say, because it's a top down approach, you just have to deliver what they've requested. [00:16:00]

Matt: So it might be a version of what you imagined.

Harris: Yeah. You have to… knowing that you've, the contract you've engaged with is that they're paying you to deliver a certain particular piece, role, selection, [00:16:15] and therefore within those kinds of jobs, their say wins at the end of the day.

Matt: Can we, I was really interested about what you were saying about insisting on a, an initial conversation with a client or a musician or whoever it is that they're working with. Do you have a sort of strategy for how you manage [00:16:30] that initial conversation?

Harris: I'll have ideas in my head of what I think, but sometimes you can either be off mark because you're going into a situation where someone's seen something or they've referenced something and you're never going to know that till you're [00:16:45] in front of them, and for me it is fact finding. I remember there was one band I was working with called The Temper Trap, this Australian rock band, and the label I'd worked with a few times and they said we think you'd be perfect for it. And I turned up, I think [00:17:00] there's four or five of them, and I said to them… ask them what musicians are they into and could they give me four or five musicians that they're into because so often when you're discussing style for me, it's [00:17:15] way more about something that's very personal and intuitive rather than I'm not a label snob and as much as I like clothes, I don't necessarily really care whether something is 50 years old or whether it was from last week.

Harris: It's about what's going [00:17:30] to be right. We went round and we got to the lead singer, Dougie, and he said, I'm not going to tell you what music I listen to. These are the clothes I like. These are the references, and it literally cut the room, cut the room dead. I'm like, ‘oh, okay’. [00:17:45] And then I think it was the drummer who then said to me ‘well, what musicians are you into’, but at that point there was a real frostiness in the room, right? Their experience of working with stylists was a certain way, and so for them, this is how it's gonna [00:18:00] work. We're gonna tell you what's da da da, and then I then gave them my music, the music I've been listening to at the time, and then I'd said that I listened to remember it really distinctly.

Harris: I remember saying that I was into Bjork, the dub, [00:18:15] I listened to Mos Def and then the room just changed. And this like hardcore rock band from Australia, all mad hip hop fans, and from me saying that I was into Mos Def, then they were putty, you know, it was just like, and you could have never predicted that [00:18:30] in any shape or form.

Harris: And for me, it's from that point of view of wanting to build that rapport and if you tell me you're into Andre 3000 or you're into Patti Smith, I start to get a sense of who you are as a person. [00:18:45] And so even if your record isn't like Patti Smith or Andre 3000, but I actually start to get a sense of what references actually you will respond to.

Harris: And therefore we can then start to find a [00:19:00] way of actually building something that appeals to you, not necessarily just specifically around this one moment.

Matt:  Yeah. 

Harris: And so for me, it's fact finding, but it's also, it's a real telltale sign of, and so often when you're meeting with bands, there'll be so many [00:19:15] different reference points of who different people will be into, and it's your role to bring a coherence, but also allow them all to be individuals within that. Because there isn't this idea that there's this identikit thing where they'll all just wear the same thing because of [00:19:30] tastes, shapes, sizes, whatever. It's never always going to work like that.

Matt: Because I think that's really, really helpful [00:19:45] for potential stylists kind of listening is about this idea of having that inquisitive mind to try and get under the skin of the brand or the person. 

Harris: Or the person. 

Matt: Yeah.

Harris: But similarly with brands, when you work with brands, it's for me to [00:20:00] try and understand what a brand's culture is. And so often culture is a word that is often an overused euphemism in today's language, but it’s how do you help a brand either [00:20:15] understand what their culture is or aspire up to the cultures that they want to kind of align themselves with? And so that's also equally important. But yeah, research is also really key for you to have a great wealth of [00:20:30] knowledge of different moments or different people.

Harris: I'm not one who really cares about trends. I don't watch catwalk shows. I'll go to some but on the whole, I [00:20:45] don't really have a big interest in that side, but it's very much about knowing who, whether it's Bowie or Grace Jones or whether it's certain people, it's kind of like starting to understand from your own perspective and what are the things that you like about certain people that helps [00:21:00] inform the way that you look at and what you bring to the table.

Matt: What's the broad difference between the styling and the art direction?

Harris: So with styling, predominantly it's focused around the body. But so often, a lot of stylists do [00:21:15] end up becoming art directors. So from an editorial fashion sense, very often the ideas that you'll go and shoot with a photographer or go and shoot for a magazine will often come from the stylist.

Harris: So it's the stylist who then says, [00:21:30] I wanna do something which is referencing a particular mood or a particular time, and these are the references that are pulled together. And then the photographer will then go and hire in the right lights to be able to shoot things a certain way or, but so often a lot [00:21:45] of fashion editorials that you see in magazines, very often the stylist has been responsible for those.

Harris: And so the idea of stylists transitioning to become art directors is really plausible and it makes sense. But [00:22:00] then as an art director, that role can be very different in certain ways. As in the way that I work is very tactile in terms of the references that I'll pull through whereas a lot of art directors will be sat in front of a laptop and it'll be [00:22:15] very much based on typography or on fonts in a particular way and each art direction studio has their own ways in which they work. As the art director, your responsibility becomes [00:22:30] the overall image and the overall mood. Not every stylist will necessarily be an art director and some people are purely only interested in the idea of cloth and going to get X, Y, Z and putting it in and that's their particular point of view.

Harris: Whereas the art [00:22:45] director, the responsibility for you is what's in front of that lens or what's on screen, because if it's not a shoot based piece of work, it's your responsibility and it's your vision that actually gets…

Matt: So [00:23:00] does the arts director… do they hold the sort of the responsibility for the kind of conceptual, theoretical, what's being communicated through the image?

Harris: Depending on the level of shoot, and when I say level in terms of how [00:23:15] involved it is from a production point of view, it just varies from project to project. I'm doing a shoot this week for a band and so the band met with a stylist pre christmas. I put forward some photographers, the label put forward photographers, [00:23:30] the band have opted for a photographer that I put forward and so we're gonna shoot at my studio later on this week.

Matt: Right? Yeah, 

Harris: I put the mood board together, I put the references together and I put the direction together and then you pick [00:23:45] the teams accordingly that can help bring that vision together, but it's not only the output aesthetic decision, it's also people that can also work very well with the artists, cause I've [00:24:00] been in situations where sometimes that marriage hasn't really necessarily worked. 

Matt: Yeah, that clash of personalities is very difficult to manage. 

Harris: Sometimes you can foresee that happening, and then you’re just a fool for having gone through with it, and I have been that fool at times. [00:24:15] But if it works, it will be magic and sometimes the magic just doesn't happen.

Harris: And yeah, there's that point where I always still believe that you've got to work of instinct and if you, you have a strong conviction about something that you're trying [00:24:30] to do, I feel to do that rather than a going a safe route, or a lot of people will work from a point of view of maybe it's more business focused.

Harris: I want to work with so and so, so they'll call in people to work with because of how it will help them leverage [00:24:45] their position further down the line.

Matt: working towards perceived goals. 

Harris: Yeah, working towards, rather than actually what's gonna bring the results that we need. And I think that's what makes it interesting, by willing to work with new people, by willing to push yourself and [00:25:00] by willing to allow different kinds of alchemy to take place.

Matt: You now teach alongside your practice. How do the two things inform one another? [00:25:15]

Harris: My teaching route started out of necessity and then I stopped for a while. When Zoe Brookes took over at the Royal College of Art, she'd invited me to the first show that she was staging for her end of year. Zoe [00:25:30] Brookes was one half of Boudicca, who I'd originally made these metal helmets for.

Matt: Oh, right. Okay.

Harris: Introduced by Judy, but I hadn't seen Zoe for many, many years. She would invite me in from time to time in these crit processes, [00:25:45] and then I remember one particular crit, I questioned a reference that one of the designers had put in and it was from that that she said, she rang me and said, could you come in more often because you [00:26:00] spotted something that none of the other staff members saw and think it was really important that you were willing to ask the question that you asked.

Harris: This particular student had designed an outfit and the headwear that she'd chosen [00:26:15] was off of an SS, well, German SS helmet. That was the shape that she'd used. And so I was just questioning, are you aware of the references that you've used? Even though it didn't look like that because it was whether it was covered in felt [00:26:30] or something else.

Harris: But I said, you just need to be aware of culture and cultural references. If you've chosen to use that for, and you've got a really good reason for why you use it, that's completely fine. But you need to be aware 

Matt: You have to have that rationale. [00:26:45] 

Harris: Yeah. We can't just dip in and take what we want from culture because it can be very offensive in certain ways.

Harris: And so the idea of teaching for me, largely through there, has been from a mentoring point of view to [00:27:00] question. And very often staff would say, you asked the kind of questions that we often overlook because we're so busy focused on having the pleats, the finish, the disc become a certain way, but actually I'm able to look in objectively from an outside point of view.

Harris: [00:27:15] What is it that makes you particularly tick as a young designer and then what is it that you're trying to say? And then, how do we help you develop that narrative or that language to be resonant to who you are without it being either [00:27:30] appropriative or being not the best that it can be or not as research as it can be?

Harris: Because again, research is really key. And so, if it's a little bit light touch, I'm like, you need to go back and rethink this.

Matt: And so do you find that [00:27:45] students struggle to develop some of those skills?

Harris: Definitely. But I don't blame them, I blame the internet. I blame the fact that we're expected to be able to make decisions or [00:28:00] have decisions made for us within the touch of a few seconds.

Harris: The idea of some, a piece of pottery going into a kiln and then breaking, if you've not gone through that process of falling over and understanding that actually falling over means that [00:28:15] I'll need to avoid certain puddles or this thing that's gone wrong. How do I rectify it? And also, how do I not take myself too seriously so that if something has gone wrong, how do I pick myself up again?

Harris: And going wrong could be I've gone [00:28:30] down this tangent or this rabbit hole. But often there's a lot of fear or reticence, and again, I think it's because so much of society is defined by a thumbs up or a thumbs down. And so therefore, if I don't get a thumbs [00:28:45] up, people then are easily riled or crushed within this process and people take things really personal and it's not personal. It's the idea that it doesn't meet the brief or it doesn't meet their vision, [00:29:00] and it's not necessarily that you've done something that's wrong. It's just that you need to, the word that doesn't get used enough I feel, is that people need to interrogate their own work and they need to dig deeper, they need to archive, re-reference and sometimes people [00:29:15] only have one way of looking at the world and some students I've seen, project after project, they're just still coming at it from the same point of view.

Matt: So you mentioned the impact of the internet on students and maybe young artists and designers now. [00:29:30] How do you yourself counteract some of those influences in your own work?

Harris: I mean it does affect all of us. Usually a cumulative effect of how ideas come together but I try and, I'm not saying I [00:29:45] don't get ideas from looking online because I'd be a liar if I said that was the case, but it might be that I see something and then how could I then funnel that through the ways in which I would look at something, rather than let me try and [00:30:00] replicate that or keep looking in the hope that's going to be what provides the ways in which I'll choose to see stuff.

Matt: Well, that also feels like that sort of dialogue driven research process aligns with the way that you [00:30:15] describe your creative processes as well as in terms of tangible, looking into the real world, seeing objects, materials, touching things, feeling things, absorbing things.

Harris: Definitely. And it leads on to things like the Le Tings [00:30:30] which is the platform that I started five years ago, and that came about from the things that I see around me.

Harris: And then, so now I choose to [00:30:45] use that even more intentionally rather than just accidentally. A friend of mine who used to work at Margiela, she was their set designer, and she said that they had this theory which she then used to bring into the Royal College called accident training. And so [00:31:00] where they've created this, she said, can you have a spontaneous accident?

Harris: And you're kind of like, what? Well, surely they're only not one and the same thing is an accident, not spontaneous. And the idea of this theory that they had [00:31:15] developed of starting to see glitches in society and how do you start bringing those glitches together. And whether that's cracks in pavements or whether it's shop signs or bus stops or something seeing things that are slightly [00:31:30] misregistered but using that as a means to start developing visual and tangible narratives. And so, now as a result of Le Tings, that came about from me driving home one night seeing a residential Lettings agency in Old Kent [00:31:45] Road with the first T missing and then seeing le and tings together thinking this is a genius like juxtaposition of words.

Harris: And from then, not instantly, it was probably about a year or so later, I knew that I just loved that as a phrase. The idea of [00:32:00] bringing French and Jamaican together, which make no sense because Jamaicans don't speak French, but the idea that my heritage is Jamaican, that the idea of this kind of being quite bougie in the way that we would think about things [00:32:15] naturally or how the culture itself runs, using that to start thinking about language in that way and how a lot of language has been eroded through the things that I grew up hearing through family and parents. And as [00:32:30] culture changes, language changes and things and how we look at references change. Then seeing the power in the graphics and the symbols and all of the local elements and how do you start telling stories through the things that, not the broken [00:32:45] things in society, but they were never the things that you would present at the table.

Harris: Those aren't the best cutlery that your parents bring out at that point. Those aren't in the preserved room. Those are the things that we just do day-to-day. How do I look for the blemishes and [00:33:00] the cracks in the day-to-day and bring those things together? So now I intentionally do look, or maybe because my antennas are out on that, I absorb those things more because I'm more attuned to seeing those kinds of [00:33:15] things.

Matt: That's just, I think that's so brilliant that it totally encapsulates the energy and the sort of spirit of what you're talking about through Le Tings, but the fact that it resulted from, you know, you just observing a [00:33:30] defunct bit of signage on the Old Kent Road. It's just brilliant. 

Harris: I mean, that was pure chance. I was sat at the traffic lights, turned to my right and I started laughing. I was like, this is just, and I grabbed my phone, took a picture and was like, at some point I want to use this. But I didn't know for what. [00:33:45] At that point it was like, I just loved those two words coming together. And the first few years I would just call it a conversation, I wouldn't call it a brand because it was very much about, you know, oral stories and oral accounts of the things that people don't normally talk about when you go on podcasts. You don't [00:34:00] talk about actually those kinds of things or yeah, being at home with your mom, your nan. But actually these are the things, these are the wisdom keepers that actually define who people are.

Harris: And actually there's a lot of resonance [00:34:15] importance in those things. And it's now actually evolved into having an aspect, which is a brand, but yeah, it's a, for me, it's very much a form of cultural communication.

Matt: Totally. And that work, having that sort of like [00:34:30] personal investment, do you find that that's incredibly motivating to keep that work going?

Harris: Well it’s what fuels me alongside the other projects that I'm commissioned to do. How do I work with Le Tings and create something for Le Tings, but without the restrictions [00:34:45] that I would have for another brand. And so it's definitely allowed me to be able to explore culture in a way that also isn't scripted, because so often people I think, think, [00:35:00] you know, a black British designer, you've got a certain kind of heritage and so culture and referencing need to be a particular way. And I'm like, yeah, they not, not, not, not, not really. I'm as much a Londoner, as much as I am. of Jamaican heritage as much as I look at [00:35:15] African culture and I spend loads of time in Japan and so all of these cultural influences play a huge part in how I work.

Harris: I've just not seen anyone play with the media and imagery and the audio [00:35:30] accounts in the way that we're doing it and so it, for me, it fuels me because I'm actually, I'm able to just create these narratives and these stories.

Matt: Brilliant. Harris, thank you ever so much. This has been wonderful. I've learned so much just from listening and I've…[00:35:45] yeah. You really made me sort of think about certain things in different ways about how I kind of maybe approach some creative ideas. What we do at the end of the podcast is we ask each of our interviewees if they can offer a creative [00:36:00] provocation to our listeners. Do you have anything that you might like to pose the listeners?

Harris: I guess based on the conversation that we have, I would encourage or challenge the listeners to try and spend a day, [00:36:15] if it could build into a day, a week, but at least try for a day where you don't go on social media, you just go out, still can take your phone, but actually just observe the world and see what you take in.

Harris: And if [00:36:30] that means using your phone to document things and that documentation could be sound. It doesn't necessarily have to be visual. Often I've given workshops where I'd encourage people to go and record sounds, whether it's on the bus or in stores, but observe [00:36:45] things, but without the need to actually process that thought through an app.

Harris: Or if you're documenting something, it is without the idea that you're going to then utilize that image to be able to then put it on to social [00:37:00] media. It's purely for you and how you would choose to use that. And then once you've collated those images or those sounds, try and combine them in a way and see what the outcome would be, even if you then end up using an [00:37:15] app to be able to filter that through.

Harris: But the process should start purely from an analog and a personal visual point of view.

Matt: Brilliant. We'd love to see some outcomes if anyone ever shares that with us. So, Harris, look, [00:37:30] thank you ever so much, it's been wonderful.

Matt: Thank you for listening to this episode of Teach, Inspire, Create. A massive thank you to Harris. Such an interesting and insightful interview, so much in there for any budding [00:37:45] stylists and art directors out there. Particularly his work on Le Tings, I'm very excited to go and investigate that some more. If you want to know more about Harris and his work, you can go to his website, harriselliot.com or follow him on Instagram at Harris [00:38:00] Elliott Studio.

Matt: You can also find out more about Le Tings through the website. Letings.co, L E T I N G S dot C O. You can find links to these in our episode description. We really hope that you've enjoyed this podcast [00:38:15] and that you're continuing to subscribe and share with friends and family. Please rate us and review us wherever you do get your podcasts.

Matt: It's so important to us to understand what you think of the show. So thanks again for listening and until next time, take [00:38:30] care.