WHAT KIND of man do you need to be to carry off Duffer of St George? It’s something I’ve asked myself quite often in the 20 years since the label was founded by two Portobello road stallholders, Eddie Prendergast and Marco Cairns, because I have long yearned to be such a person and have always failed quite dismally.
A Duffer man, I reckon, knows how to handle himself in a fight (“Bene Pugno”, says the company’s crest). He never has much trouble pulling birds or getting served in crowded pubs. He can stay fit without doing any exercise. He has a large apartment and no commitments. He has a well-paid job, maybe in music, film or design, where you can groove around a trendy studio to the latest recherché white labels and wear a suit only if you want to. He has a short haircut and talks Mockney, even though he’s possibly quite posh. He’s fashionable — but effortlessly so.
Me, I’m the antithesis of Duffer man, although not for want of trying on the part of my wife. “I think you’d really look good in Duffer,” she likes to suggest, whenever I’ve come home with too pink a shirt or a pair of sky-blue three-quarter-length embroidered snow pants. But whenever I’ve gone down to their Covent Garden store in search of an image change, I’ve always emerged empty-handed. Too laddish. Too sporty. Too directional. Too street.
Or, in the case of their famous zip-up top — the one with the hood and the big stitched-on capital letters saying DUFFER across the chest — too bloody obvious.
It was that zip-up, I learn on meeting the drily amusing Eddie and Marco at their Shoreditch HQ, that was very nearly the death of the company. Before they brought out the zip-up hooded top in 1994, they were known and loved by the urban cognoscenti more for their distinctive style (an eccentric, retro-tinged melding of the staid and the avant-garde) and for their fashion savvy. They were more famous for the Smiley T-shirt revival in the acid-house era rather than for their brand image.
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But the zip-up hoodie changed all that. First, recalls Eddie (44, short, receding hair; the duo’s business brains; talks in punchy, Hemingway-esque sentences), things went well. For five whole years the hoodie was worn by cool and trendy people only. Then celebrities started getting on the act — the Beckhams and, most ubiquitously, Jamie Oliver — and within a year, the Duffer hoodie had begun its descent into fashion hell.
“Then it was worn by Sensible Lad,” says Eddie. “Then his mate next door, who didn’t know who the **** Duffer was but knew he had to have one.” “And then,” chips in Marco (longish, pepper-and-salt, combed-back hair, 43; hardly ever speaks except to deliver witty asides or killer punchlines), “it was his fat aunt on the council estate who’d got into it because she’d seen it in Hello!” As if losing its hard-earned street credibility wasn’t bad enough, the pair also had to fork out vast sums in lawyer’s fees to fend off the flood of Duffer rip-offs (“at our peak, we were selling maybe 50,000 Duffer hoodies a year; but the cheap copies were selling in the hundreds of thousands”).
In the process, it acquired an unhelpful reputation as a mass-produced clothing giant to rank with Nike or Lacoste, rather than the more intimate, cultish thing it is and would prefer to remain.
So Eddie and Marco took the radical decision to stop producing any clothing with the Duffer name emblazoned on the front and to concentrate on the pure style (tailored suits; chic knitwear; attention to detail, fabric and finish — all costing a third to a half of what they ought to) that won them their early fans.
It worked, too. After a disastrous 2002, when the absence of all those Duffer zip-ups caused them losses of more than £500,000, they’re now back in the black, their image restored and their financial future assured thanks to a new diffusion range — St George — which, à la Jasper Conran, they’re launching at Debenhams. Moreover, they’re celebrating their 20th anniversary with a series of “20 Ans” collaborations with other designers: jeans with Levi’s, a jacket and rucksack with Karrimor, and some revamped desert boots with Clarks.
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For their 2005 season, spring-summer, they have even decided that after a two-year moratorium, the time is ripe to revive the cursed Duffer zip-up hoodie in a range of new shades, including a fabulous washed-out red. I’m very taken, too, with their line inspired by US Navy uniforms and by their jolly Beano T-shirts. It can’t be much longer before I’m ready to join the ranks of Duffer men.
THE DUFFER BOYS
Trends popularised by the Duffer boys: