November, 25th, 2012

MARTIN GRANT | Paris 2013

“I ended up in London, where I knew people, and started working for different designers including Koji Tatsuno ( under whom Alexander McQueen worked a long time. 1990 was the year Koji went on to create his own line of garments which earned him the reputation of a “an un-conventional designer, whose clothes are the complex, intelligent constructions of a disciplined subversive mind”, these, he worked on for an intense 12 years. in 2002 he accepted an offer to be Creative Director, of the couture house, Madame Gres in Paris from 2002 untill 2005, where he now continues to work and live.). I went with him to Paris when he showed his collections and got a job in Paris with a German designer called Anne Schramm. That lasted for one-and-a-half years until she stopped designing (Anne later got back to it and founded in 2008 Wommelsdorff’s hand knitted and crocheted hats in Berlin.) and I found myself without a job or anywhere to live, because the apartment went with the job. I went back to London because I had work there and then decided to come back to Paris to make a go of it and do something on my own. I think I’d fallen in love with Paris and I thought the time I’d spent here had been too short. I didn’t want to give up on it so quickly. I knew it would be difficult. The difference between London and Paris is that Paris, even when you don’t have any money and you don’t have a job, is still a really nice place to live. You can go out to a nice cafe and have a coffee and it doesn’t cost you a fortune whereas in London it’s a different story – if you haven’t got money you end up living in real poverty.”

Martin Grant grew up in Blackburn and left Melbourne in 1991. Five years later he set up shop in the Marais district of Paris, where his creations entice celebrities such as Naomi Campbell, Cate Blanchett, Lauren Hutton and Lee Radziwill.