It’s hard to look Rhiannon Jones in the face when you speak to her. It’s not that her features are particularly fearsome, just that there are more interesting things to concentrate on – the disembodied Barbie dolls around her neck, for example, or the artful frizz of stark white hair. In her fluorescent garb, she looks almost like a hazard sign come to life.
The 18-year-old Hull-born designer was first acknowledged by the fashion industry this time last year at London Fashion Week (LFW). In a Somerset House foyer she was quizzed incessantly by the broadsheet and fashion press on how she made her outfits; on how, in fact, while wearing something that resembled a traffic cone, she even managed to sit down.
In just one year, her label, Bolshie, has become a wardrobe staple for adolescents in Japan and Korea. Jones was so busy taking orders for her business this February that she had to miss the bi-annual LFW.
“It’s quite tiring, my life,” she says. “There’s no time for fannying about.”
For Jones, education was just another form of ‘fannying about’. She claims that the teachers did not encourage her, and squashed her creativity. At 14, she was expelled, but wasn’t too badly behaved. “They didn’t like what I wore,” she says proudly, “and the outfits weren’t even as extreme as the ones I wear now. I had my hair really big and crazy – like really big – and I customised the uniform with skinny trousers and lots of make-up.”
Leaving school with no qualifications, she worked in an Indian restaurant for two years in her “depressing” hometown. After saving enough money, she moved to Shoreditch at 16, but still retains a high-pitched variation of the Humberside accent.
Getting to London was a long-held ambition for the young fashionista. “I didn’t give my parents a choice, I just left,” she admits, with no hint of sadness. “I still go up to Hull once a year for Christmas. You might think my family and friends would be shocked by how I look but they’re used to me now.”
For someone so young, she’s remarkably driven. Unnervingly so. She won’t go out unless she knows she can speak to a fashion contact. Alongside another mainline collection, she is producing a high street range in collaboration with the Sex Pistols.
Every so often, however, she betrays a certain naivety. When asked about ex-Dior designer John Galliano’s anti-Semitic remarks in a Parisian bar, she says, “It’s funny”. And by that, she means she finds it genuinely amusing, like ‘lol’ funny. “He was saying bad things about Jews wasn’t he? But I’m white, so I don’t think I can comment. He’s obviously out, drunk, but you’ve still got to be careful what you say if you’re that famous.”
