Saul Nash Spring 2023 Menswear Collection

Saul Nash has had so much to celebrate in the past few weeks—winning the Woolmark Prize and receiving the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design from the Duchess of Cambridge in quick succession—that the title of his spring collection might easily be Jumping for Joy. “The award was a beautiful thing to receive, especially so close to the Queen’s Jubilee, because a lot of my friends danced in the Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace,” he said at a preview at his studio at Somerset House. Those friends included “the child I cast in my last show,” he added. “There was break-dancing and roller-skating, which really showed the broadness of London, which you wouldn’t expect from the royal family.”

The lookbook Nash has released for spring celebrates the idea of pairs of siblings—a series of photos of the people he regards as family, whether blood relatives or chosen ones found through his interconnected web of relationships growing up in the London ballroom scene, being a teenage MC, becoming a fashion student, a sportswear designer, dancer, choreographer, and movement director for fellow designers and videos.

Besides all that, he cooks! Nash said he’d had everyone—including the child dancer and his brother—around to his house, and slow-cooked them a Guyanese chickpea curry from his mother’s recipe on the day of the shoot. Then they all went out into the summer suburban London streets in his collection and the photographer Ewen Spencer captured them jumping—a device to evoke the sensation of technical lightness in the clothes which also captured something of the gentle unison of feeling that makes Nash’s work so moving. “I’m always conscious of sensitivity.
Sensitivity sportswear.” Nash reflected. “There’s always a sensation of air and a delicate language. That’s really important for me.”

There’s a pixillated blown-up photo print of Nash and his elder brother as children on one of his aerated jackets. “It’s recycled polyester, and it’s based on the AIREX jackets which were really specific to that time in the early 2000s. My brother was really into garage and drum ’n’ bass when I was little, and then in the early 2000s, grime started in London as a street alternative, and he introduced me to that,” he remembered. “Which is why it’s such an honor to work with Ewen Spencer. I came across his books documenting the rave and grime scenes when I was at Central Saint Martins. To have someone like that who really understands my references is special.”