For five years S.S.DALEY has existed largely at a remove from the people following it, built through shows and lookbooks and stockists in cities we had never set foot in, with an audience gathered in dispersed pockets rather than any singular place. A physical sale felt uncertain before it happened. I wasn’t convinced there were enough of those pockets in London.
At 9AM on Friday 15 May the doors opened to a queue running the length of Redchurch Street. People had apparently been there since early morning. We had three members of staff on the floor, which proved a considerable underestimation. The same happened on Saturday and Sunday. By Saturday morning the operation had been recalibrated.
It was great to meet people whose names we had previously only known through ecommerce orders. Names that had appeared repeatedly over the years suddenly standing in front of us. People travelled from Scotland, Somerset and Ireland. Parents arrived carrying instructions from sons and daughters regarding motif knitwear and very specific colours. One person bought the trench coat in every available colour. For something that had largely existed remotely, it was good to see the community on the other side of it.
In the preceding week stock returned from wherever it had been sitting: early samples from my parents’ house in Liverpool, surplus from a treasured maker in Portugal, boxes from our warehouse in Italy. When it arrives back simultaneously the effect is a little overwhelming. Five years of work that had largely existed as images on screens became objects occupying three rooms.
Collections tend to stay in my memory through peripheral things rather than the work itself. Music. Smells. Objects. Whatever happened to be repeatedly present during that period usually survives longer than the images. Gypsy Water by Byredo returns me immediately to Paris and the LVMH Prize. The Big Sky and Laurel Halo’s Moontalk place me back in the direct aftermath of my graduating year in Liverpool, when most decisions were being made via text with my partner Leo, or then with Harry Lambert who I was working with for the first time on my AW21 Lookbook 'The Robe Room in becoming the Garden'.
Welsh cakes place me in a dressing room at the Outernet where we had a plate waiting for Sir Ian McKellen before he read Tennyson at AW23. I had asked his assistant what might make him comfortable. She was gracious and firm: he needed nothing, he was perfectly unfussy, please don’t go to any trouble. I persisted across several emails until she mentioned Welsh cakes.
The plate came back empty.
He arrived on a motorbike and removed his helmet at the door.
A passing tourist said Gandalf.
A couple of years ago, through a friend, I met Nikki Tibbles of Wild at Heart while I was spending time looking at the work of Constance Spry. I had become interested in the way Spry approached flowers less decoratively and more structurally.
For SS25 at the Royal Academy, Nikki and the Wild at Heart team put together floral arrangements loosely informed by Spry which sat upon chair plinths made by a sculptor friend, Louis Gibson. It came together very late, I sprung this onto Nikki and Louis only a week prior.
When we spoke about the archive sale and wanting to make it feel like a flick-book of different moments from the last 5 years, Nikki got it right away. Their team built arrangements throughout the space. Upstairs. Downstairs. She had threaded the space together with these moments, flowers dotted across the room that recalled our work on the show.
Live flowers sat amongst rails, old samples, studio objects and work pulled back from different seasons.
We dressed the space to resemble less a sample sale than the possibility of a store. Show props. Studio objects. Things found in Paris flea markets at indeterminate moments.
Working with Dham Srif on the SS24 lookbook, we wanted to shoot a life drawing scene, boys drawing in dormitory rooms. We found Craig Donaldson. He came in, sat for us, and became our life model for the shoot. For the archive sale we asked him back. Not to be photographed this time, but to actually sit. On Saturday afternoon he did: for a room of artists and non-artists alike, in archival S.S.DALEY and then without.
On Friday evening Olivia Laing joined Barry Pierce for a conversation. I have been reading Laing since The Trip to Echo Spring. Barry took the conversation somewhere specific. He found the moments in their work where clothing appears, and in Laing’s writing those moments are never incidental. Neither of them needed the room explained to them.
I rarely look backwards at collections once they are finished. It was useful to do it once.
Basil had his own thoughts on the space. His version is below.