Q & A Gareth Pugh


In 1991, Gareth Pugh and Katie Shillingford were ten years old. They’re a bit older now – one is a successful fashion designer, and the other works as his stylist and senior fashion editor of Dazed.

Graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2003, Dazed was the first to celebrate his work, featuring the red and white balloons from his BA collection on the cover in April 2004. Here, Shillingford talks to her friend about life in 1991, and how the past 20 years have shaped their worlds.

Dazed & Confused: Do you have any specific memories from 1991?

Gareth Pugh: For my tenth birthday, my mum took me down to London to see Phantom Of The Opera.
I remember walking down Old Compton Street, and compared to what it’s like now, it was dark back then. There were dirty little bars and lap-dancing joints with women sat outside on stools trying to draw people in. London just seemed really big and scary, but very exciting. That was the first time I had been and the first time I saw what else was on offer. You’re lucky, you grew up here, but for someone from where I’m from, it was like coming to another world.

D&C: Were you reading magazines then?

Gareth Pugh: My mum, my aunties and my nan used to swap Good Housekeeping, She and Bella, so I was very unaware of things like i-D and The Face. When I was 14 or 15, I was hunting out other things, but there are very few magazines available to you in Sunderland. OK! Magazine used to do a catwalk supplement, it was really good though, I’ve still got them! It’s kind of amazing, they had all of McQueen, also Philip Treacy, Julien Macdonald and Galliano when he had just started at Dior. It was my only little glimpse into that world.

D&C: What do you think defines an era?

Gareth Pugh: I don’t know, lots of things. The 90s was perhaps very difficult to define in terms of style! To define an era entirely there are so many things – art, music, fashion, technology… I suppose that was one of the big things of the 90s, the opening up of information to a broader audience.

Read the entire interview here on Dazed

Gareth Pugh is exclusive to 4.

Read the original blog post here on Dazed.