Folk SS11 – Cathal McAteer: Full Interview

CONVERSING WITH CATHAL.

An informal conversation with Folk founder Cathal Mcateer.

We sent our intern, Sam, down too an icy cold London last week to chat to Folk founder, Cathal Mcateer. Sam returned with only good things to say about the man behind the brand and this great little interview...

Here at End we want to allow the customer to be able to interact with the brands we stock, allowing them to gain as much brand knowledge as possible, as we believe that will have a massive bearing on how they shop. It’s important for the customers to know and understand where a brand is coming from in terms of vision and ethos, and also to know the back-story of brands. So, starting at the beginning, tell us about yourself, where are you from?

Cumbernauld, about 14 miles from Glasgow, it’s a new town. A little like Milton Keynes, built in the last 30-35 years for the overspill of Glasgow. Everyone that was living in the housing estates and they were getting too crowded, so they (the Government) made a new town for them. Actually when it’s brand new it looked quite nice, because it’s new, well thought through, and modern, there was some good architecture there actually. The reality is if you take 50,000 people from working class and non-working working class then it’s going to be a bit nuts. At the same time though, some of my family and good friends still live there and it’s served them quite well.

So in regards to your family, what are they like, what did your parents do career wise?

Mum’s a teacher, Dad’s a computer guy but he was also an ice cream man, copper, TV technician…bigot. My family’s half Irish, half Scottish, so I’m from an Irish, Catholic background where a lot of people were brought up one-sided, pretty narrow minded really, but that’s just the way it was back then you know.

How about the influence your parents had on you, not necessarily career choices, but in terms of mind set?

My parents were pretty mellow, basically, they let me do whatever I wanted to do. I wasn’t very studious, they just pretty much said “That’s right, that’s wrong”, I wasn’t a bad kid but I wasn’t a big studying kid either, so I just did what I wanted to do. I pretty much played football night and day, amongst other things.

Football was obviously a big passion of yours as a boy, how come you didn’t pursue that avenue?

Well I got dropped from my club, I was disheartened. I was semi-pro up until I was 18 or 19. By the time I got dropped though, I was already working in a clothes shop so I just continued doing that-

And this job, was it your introduction to fashion?

No, I was always into it, I took a job as a milk boy when I was 12. I used to save and go to my local (shopping) centre and buy new gear. I think that’s what got me into it. I always had to have great shoes, I think that’s quite common though, ‘never skimp on your shoes’, I just seemed to be more into it than most around me. Even if it was football, they had to be the right ‘footy’ shoes. I got a job in Glasgow, in the ‘coolest shop in town’. They stocked ‘Helmut Lang’, ‘Costume national’, ‘Vivienne Westwood’ those sorts of things, probably what ‘End’ would be in yesterday’s terms. It was an independent; it wasn’t one of the big guys selling the mega brands. It helped that my bosses were good people that treated me really well. I worked as the ‘Saturday Boy’, and then I went to college, always working part-time for years. As time went on they made me store manager and then co-buyer with them.

So they gave you a platform to grow massively, without them you could be in a different place right now.

Totally man, they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted. Well, not whatever I wanted, they were strict, but they gave me opportunities. They were just happy to stay back home and let me go buying with a partner. It was good, a really good introduction.

Was there a moment when it all clicked, realizing you wanted to be in fashion?

Well yeah I liked the idea of it but it wasn’t probably until I kind of woke up at maybe about 20 and went “Fuck, I’ve got to do something with myself”. I spent most of my time working in the shop and going to nightclubs and getting high. I realized, I have to wake up. I looked around my city and decided “Can I get a job here and be happy?” and I realized there was nothing for me unless I had money to open my own store. I didn’t have any money; so I came to London, to work my way up in my chosen industry. It was a point I said [clicks fingers] “Fuck I’ve got to sort myself out”. Just came here [London] and worked my nuts off.

So, the brand, we’ve stocked Folk for four or so years now. When Folk started, the branding, or lack of branding was a noticeable difference in comparison to other labels on the market. Was this ‘unbranded brand image’ intentional or did it come about naturally?

Well we find it very difficult to brand something, when you spend so much time choosing the; fabric, the buttons, the thread colours, even our own labels. There’s no font, just Arial size 10, we put all the effort and time into the garments and the fabric and the buttons, the twine. Actually, to stick a fucking name on the outside feels like we’re spoiling it. Every single thing is thought through. We consider every single design option, all the thought processes are so pain staking and laborious that when you get to branding something it feels so difficult. It doesn’t sit well with our company. Especially in the beginning, it wasn’t even thought about. We came about in a time when clothing was very over branded. We’ve been doing this for ages now; it’s become second nature. However, in a time where minimal branding is in trend we’ve got to be careful. We’re not pretending we’re insular people, we’re aware of trends because we want to be good at our jobs. I’m in business to sell clothes in a popular way.

You mentioned the back labels, is there any reason why you’ve used numbered sizing as opposed to a more traditional letter system?

Probably because we had our first collection in Japan yeah, so a Japanese small and a UK small are very different. Also, when I was in Glasgow, selling a guy a small and he’s going “I’m not a fucking small”, you are mate, in fact you’re an extra small but you know. Letters were just a bit ‘sizist’. It just means it’s a number; it was a bit more global. Mainly, from working in shops in Glasgow, guys not wanting to be called a size small … short arse wee gee guys.

Brilliant, it seems that a lot of the small details have been produced for real reasons. As opposed to manufacturing reasoning behind things-

-We hired a very expensive company, not paying them, but doing a deal with them, to redesign the whole Folk branding five years ago. I had so many meetings and just, no, everything was trying too hard and actually I think the hours were fucking wasted. Wasted time talking about a label, when in actual fact, what matters is this beautiful shirt that you have on or I have on, [it’s about] what a guy wears.

Looking at the growth of the product, from when you initially started, for example the rain mac, there seems to be a slightly more technical approach. You’ve always said you want to improve on current designs but do you think your becoming more technical with the brand?

There’s always been a desire to create a technical garment, the problem is when you’re small, no-one wants to work with you. The factories making technical garments are so hard, super specialist, they tend to work with the really big guys. For Winter ’11 we’ve knitted our own Polar-Fleece, in our own colours, so that’s exciting, it’s a big hairy thing too. We’re also trying to make an all in one bear suit for Bestival too. Things like that, we will make technical, as long as we find the right factories. I could produce a technical jacket, probably at the same price as a Visvim one but that wouldn’t be a very Folk thing to do. I’ve owned Patagonia technical jackets for years; it would be much nicer if I had my own Folk technical jacket, just to say, “I made that one”.

You said there, “not very Folk”. Your collaboration with Edwin, that didn’t seem very in keeping with Folk’s ethos. Folk, as a brand is very natural, it’s ironic that your collaboration with Edwin felt relatively unnatural-

As a rule we tend not to do them, we did one before, as a favour to a toy company, just a shoe to stick in their shops. With Edwin, we did it because I knew some people over there. They called us and said “can you do some shoes for us?” and I said, “Funny, because I want to make some jeans”, it was just a sharing of resources. It was marketed differently, but if you read the official release we’re just sharing each other’s resources.

It brings us back to what we mentioned about the more technical garments, collaborations are also causing you to evolve as a brand. Even though it may be small lessons, do you feel your learning on your feet all the time?

Yeah, that’s why we haven’t launched women’s yet because we’re taking our time. It’ll probably be winter ’12 [when we launch]. We’ve got the designers, and we have enough ideas for many collections, it’s just about balancing these collections, putting them out at the right quality, at the right time and servicing the people who got us too this stage. It’s a cliché to say “we must service our customers” but if we don’t do that we’re fucked. We’d love to do everything all at once; if that were the case we’d be designing houses next week. It’s a long, laborious process that takes patience-

So you understand patience is important then?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Even though I don’t really have it.

I wanted to ask you about the ‘People’s’ collection, did you leave that out this season?

No, no we rarely leave it out actually-

Is it important for you, ‘People’s’?

It’s become that, Elbe, Folk’s designer and I really like it. It’s fun and light-hearted. It’s mellow, you know. I remember when we did it for Bestival it seemed really apt. We’ll keep it in there for sure. It’s in again strong actually for next winter; we’ve done a fantastic shirt, with a big ‘People’ embroidered into in. Not embroidered onto it, but part of the weave. We’ve actually seen others release similar pieces, which is a bit of a back handed complement but we really like it. There are always pieces in our collections, season after season, we want to reinvent, make them better. There’s no point changing too much, how many times do you want a new version of something you love. How many times have you said, “I wish I’d bought two of those”, it’s fine to say but you’ve never got enough fucking money.

So the growth of Folk has been a natural one, a natural process. Do you see Folk exceeding you?

I haven’t got a clue, it might do. There are many people involved in this business now and that’s exciting. I have a family, a growing family. My priorities will inevitably change just as everybody else’s does. I might want to take it easier but I doubt it. I might want to do something else, but the opportunities a business like Folk can give myself and the other people involved are exciting. Projects such as the new shop we’ve just opened in Munich, like the shop we open in the next chosen city, travelling around, making new categories, there’s loads of fun to be had.

There’s so many wicked people working here, it’d be stupid of me to think Folk would die without me.

So, from being a Saturday boy up to now, has your initial view of the fashion industry been in any way dampened by a harsh reality or has your seemingly natural growth as a brand caused you too side step that cut throat nature of the industry?

No it’s different. I think I’ve been through all the stages. First all the birds were hot and all the guys hit on me, it was a really exciting industry, but it was full of wankers. It’s like any industry though, first you’re young, going at it hammer and tongs then you get a few disappointments, you meet a couple of cocks, it drives you nuts. I realized that all that’s important is me my family and my pals, and actually I don’t have to be pals with everyone. I love dreaming, designing, getting product made and putting it on the market place. It’s very fulfilling to me, but to some people that would be so dry, such a boring job, I think I just got lucky.

Sam Smith