My start in menswear was never supposed to be a career.
The plan was simple enough. I needed a few quid to pay for demo recordings for the band I was in at the time. I was the singer, guitarist and frontman. What I lacked in talent, I more than made up for in confidence and blag.
The Saturday job was at Aspecto on Bridge Street in Manchester. We sold some proper labels too — Paul Smith, Chevignon and a few other decent brands. The idea was that I'd work a few shifts, earn enough money to pay for studio time, become a rock star and disappear into the sunset.
Unfortunately, the road to rock 'n' roll stardom didn't quite go according to plan.
The Saturday job became a full-time job and the band eventually split due to "musical differences".
The fact that we weren't very good probably played a part too.
What surprised me was how much I enjoyed selling clothes. It came naturally. Looking back, I think it was because I wasn't really selling anything. I was talking about clothes I genuinely liked to people who looked a bit like me. There was no hard sell. No sales technique. Just enthusiasm.
Around that time Manchester was changing.
Actually, that's not true.
Manchester was exploding.
The late 1980s saw the arrival of acid house and everything changed almost overnight. Music changed. Clubs changed. Fashion changed. Entire social groups appeared to reinvent themselves every six months.
I moved from Aspecto to the ultra-cool French label Chipie.
And before you ask, it's pronounced *She-Pee*.
Not Chippy. I learned that one pretty quickly.
Chipie was for the more refined raver. The people who looked at the Joe Bloggs flares brigade and quietly shook their heads. Which suited me fine because whilst I was more than happy with baggy, there was absolutely no chance I was wearing flares.
Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.
The funny thing is I'd already been dressing in loose clothes for years.
I was baggy before Baggy.
As I mentioned in the About Us story, tight clothes always felt a bit like conformity to me. Suits, shirts, ties, anything that felt restrictive. It wasn't even a conscious decision. I just never liked the feeling.
Movement mattered.
Comfort mattered.
Freedom mattered.
Those ideas would eventually become the foundations of LOOSE, although I didn't know it at the time.
In 1990 I took what sounds much more respectable than it actually was and embarked on a year-long sabbatical in Glasgow.
The truth?
A mate lived there.
Glasgow had just been awarded European City of Culture.
And more importantly, the clubs stayed open until five in the morning.
Needless to say, my memories of 1990 are a little patchy.
Back in God's Own Land in 1991, I became manager of Life.
At the time, Life was probably the coolest menswear shop in Manchester.
We stocked all the good stuff.
Stone Island — back when it was still a secret.
CP Company.
Polo.
Rockport.
The lot.
Manchester in the early nineties sat right at the centre of a fascinating cultural collision. Football casual culture, terrace fashion, acid house, indie music and the whole Madchester scene were all bleeding into each other. Everyone was borrowing ideas from everyone else.
Fashion wasn't being dictated from London or Milan.
It was happening on the streets.
And Manchester was leading the charge.
Around 1993 I became a full-time house music DJ.
The records got deeper.
The nights got longer.
Eventually I landed a residency at Flesh at the Hacienda.
For a few years Flesh was arguably the hottest club night in Europe.
Managing Life during the day and DJing the Hacienda at night wasn't a bad way to spend your twenties.
For a little while I genuinely felt like the King of Manchester.
Well...
At least until the good times turned bad.
But that's a story for another blog.
A few years later I found myself back in menswear when a few mates and I launched a clothing brand called ELK — Desert and Forest Clothing.
DJ Mike Pickering once described it as "beautiful scallywear", which is probably still my favourite description of anything I've ever been involved with.
For a brief moment ELK was everywhere.
We got into Selfridges.
We got into Harrods.
We got into Harvey Nichols.
Which, considering the absolute chaos happening behind the scenes, wasn't bad going at all.
Imagine Fawlty Towers running a fashion brand.
That was roughly the level of organisation.
Despite ourselves, things were actually going rather well.
Originally all of our production was done in the UK. We could visit factories, keep an eye on quality and generally know what was going on.
Then, on the advice of a friend, we brought in a production company who moved manufacturing to Portugal.
At the time it sounded brilliant.
Professional.
International.
Sophisticated.
What actually happened was that everything arrived late.
Very late.
Orders were missed.
Retailers got frustrated.
Harvey Nichols cancelled.
Selfridges cancelled.
And just like that, ELK was gone.
Lesson learned.
Fast forward to around 2016.
By this point yoga had completely taken over my life.
I'd spent years practising, teaching and travelling between the UK and Mysore, India.
One day, whilst looking around at what was available for men who practised yoga, I had what can only be described as a spiritual awakening.
Or possibly mild irritation.
Either way, a voice from somewhere announced:
"Matt Ryan, mens yoga wear needs you to save it from MC Hammer pants and man buns."
And honestly?
It wasn't entirely wrong.
Everything was either overly spiritual, ridiculously technical, skin-tight Lycra or looked like you'd joined a travelling drum circle.
There didn't seem to be anything for people like me.
People who liked clothes.
People who moved.
People who practised.
People who wanted something comfortable enough to wear on the mat but good enough to wear to the pub afterwards.
So here I am.
Thirty-odd years after that Saturday job at Aspecto.
A lifetime of music, menswear, yoga, Manchester and making it up as I go along.
And somehow it all led to LOOSE.
Funny how things work out.
