Are you commercial enough? I have a really tight team here and obviously my responsibility as the head of it is constantly worrying about them being taken care of financially. In the economic turmoil, we lost a good 40% of our business. We kept a lot of the same stores apart from the ones that literally closed their doors in Japan, but the orders just dropped. I think, having said that, we do cover ourselves, we live off it, you know. With the new spring stuff, I hope there’s some really buyable pieces in it. I have to sell, I need the bread and butter. But a part of me finds it so difficult to jump on the trend wagon.

One of the things that stands out about Mjolk is shape. The clothes have these really interesting silhouettes and proportions. Years ago I worked for a guy in Japan. He’s traditionally a Japanese costume theater designer. He taught me, in terms of construction, to literally work with fabric like it was paper. He would fold the fabric and construct the garment completely on the dress form. It was phenomenal. And I enjoy doing the same thing. I don’t do it as much physically as I would like to, to actually sit down and fold, because it’s so time consuming. I think about the blocks in male form and then I think about filling them in with shape. It’s a form, it’s a shape. And that is important in two ways. It creates a continuity in the collection. If you’re draping in a certain way and creating certain silhouettes and certain block shapes, that is your collection. You can mix color into it, but what keeps continuity through the range is the actual form. And the other thing is that even if a piece is beautiful and really easy on the eye, in terms of actual engineering on the particular garment, in order for it to hold that shape, it’s got its own secret world.

It’s more of a challenge for you. Yeah, without a doubt. For me it’s always about having a pride in what I do and also trying to create longevity. And I hate to use the word, but there’s a branding exercise going on there as well. You’ve got to show that you’re more than most.

Photography Dorothy Hong. Styling Mobolaji Dawodu. Model Olivier Llouquet. All clothes by Mjolk.