It Takes a Village: Sam Nowell’s FETE Gets Best in Show
By Osian Williams
Does everyone feel homesick in London? Like a man missing blue top on his Mornflakes, I was yearning for Cheshire: where village life persists to rule the roost. So imagine my glee when, like a milkman leaving a pint on my doorstep, an invitation to Sam Nowell and Edie Owens’ show, FETE, landed in my inbox. It was an evening which promised parochial daydreams in a parish hall. What else could cheer up this mardy bugger? It must have been fate.
Following on from Sam Nowell’s debut 2022 collection, 'Am I the It In British?', FETE continues its over-the-shoulder portrayal of modern village life from the perspective of someone who has left for the city. In collaboration with Edie Owens, another young designer, whose 2021 graduate show ‘Handle with Care’ explored masculinity through silhouette and symbolism, the twenty-look collection offers a distillation of Sam’s initial examination of rural identity into something more comprehensive.
Over the course of the evening the audience is introduced to the young inhabitants of an anonymous, northern English village, who wish secretly to break out from the ennui, and absurdity, of country living.
‘There's a lot of frustration from people in villages, I think,’ Sam explains. ‘People who have settled down rather early in their lives and gone after this dream of village life eventually get quite bored and restless, living somewhat in a groundhog day situation. There's frustration from teens too, which I really can relate to, this idea of having to make your own fun, and being sneaky and mischievous because of the mundanity of it all.’
This exact spirit of ‘making your own fun’ infuses the homegrown show. With fewer and fewer London shows appearing in extravagant venues — Gucci’s Cruise 2025 runway show in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall a recent exception — the choice of St Paul’s Parish Hall in New Southgate is a masterstroke. The whitewashed walls, dark oak beams, slippy parquet flooring; it’s the sort of honest, do-it-yourself, give-your-mother-a-kiss approach which better reflects how twenty-somethings interact with what they wear today. That is, a turn away from the trend-driven supply chain towards an emphasis on craft, individuality, and a vernacular aesthetic. The decision to have all the models wear George Cox shoes, handmade in Northampton, is a fitting semaphore to this end.
Institutional chairs are ordered into parish-perfect rows as if by a scrupulous church warden. A maypole made by Isabella Furness placed centre-stage reaches almost to the rafters, its ribbons providing a technicolour canopy to the drama playing out beneath (also reminding me of those primary school parachutes we used to duck under at sports day). Bunches of ivy deck out the pole, which nestles into a clutch of canterbury bells and delphiniums. It’s a lovely touch and Sam and Edie obviously revel in the tug-of-war between the sentimental versus the sincere.
Although this is only his second collection, Sam has already built a language around British iconography. With her atelier experience, Edie Owens has streamlined Sam’s earlier efforts into cohesive motifs of ginghams, pencil stripes, and windowpanes in wool and cotton poplin. Despite swinging from, for instance, a prim miniskirt to a slouchy tracksuit, via a deconstructed yet still preppy Harrington jacket, all of the looks form a tightly curated ensemble and modulate within a 1960s-1980s timeframe of reference.
But a Sunday roast is only as good as its trimmings, and a constellation of characters have duly been roused to life through accessories crafted by a bevy of proverbial butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Parish paraphernalia can be spotted everywhere: hand-embroidered church kneelers by Neve Trinders are bundled under arms; two-dimensional milk crates by Charlie Boyden and Furness are nonchalantly swung about; and bijou ceramic charms are affixed by silver kilt pins. These earthenware pendants are made by our kid over the water, Scouse-and-proud Maeve Thompson. She describes the process of working with Sam to create these pieces as ‘a back and forth of horse brasses, church keys and medallion shields. I then took to the library, researching vintage paper cut instructions and English motifs — an interesting collection to be working on from my own diasporic perspective. What emerged through the making process was a playful take on ironmongery if it had been earthenware; the monochromatic colour scheme an intentional nod to the wooden gates and fenceposts thick with paint in the heart of a parish.’
The shirts, reconstructed with Morris dancer-esque ribbons and tie-fastenings, call attention to the romance of ephemerality in a traditional, folk context. Indeed, this whole show feels like the reconstruction of a country life lived both yesterday and long ago — and therefore one that never truly existed. Through the characters who seek a more fantastical version of their own lives, Sam is perhaps reimagining the village life he left behind. He seems to be asking us, ‘Is our vision of rural living any less of a fantasy than yours?’ That’ll learn these London folk, I think. In tune with the heavily 80s-coded soundtrack — a reworking of New Order's song 'Lonesome Tonight' courtesy of artist Happa — a T-shirt is emblazoned with the slogan ‘Jumped Up Country Boy’. You can almost hear Sam and Edie wilfully singing the wrong words to ‘This Charming Man’ in their local boozer; reinventing a song that was already old.
But that’s not to say the collection falls helplessly into nostalgic preppiness; there’s some sexiness to boot. One topless model wears high rise trousers with a fishtail back, a bouquet of wild flowers and bag of gourd seeds (only 99p!) slung under his arm. Another has a ciggy box stuffed cheekily down her knee-length sock. She looks like she’s had a roll round in the grass (with the gardener?); her blouse is tucked into her knickers (ey up!). Two similar wardrobe ‘malfunctions’ occur again when the effect conjured by demurely sophisticated ponchos in subtle windowpane patterns is shattered by playfully leaving the backs open to the elements. As well as a nod to the voyeurism of paparazzi celebrity culture, Sam and Edie seem to be commenting on the stifling nature of living in a place where everyone knows what everyone else did last Sunday evening: prudish primness which threatens to come apart at the seams.
A healthy dose of daftness is on display too: blousy rosettes; 60s-style cloche hats; and is that a giant, foam noticeboard strapped to someone’s back? The answer, by the way, is yes, and it’s upholstered in the same fabric as the jacket she's wearing, of course. It all feels like a loving send-up of the superfluous traditions and aesthetics which some rural communities cling on to, or have lost. It’s not just the silhouettes that are silly, either; sneaked into the New Order soundtrack is a YouTube compilation of every time a Coronation Street character has uttered the word 'London' (invariably in disgust).
Interweaving staggering detail and balancing the provocatively anachronistic with the urgently contemporary, FETE is a ‘Best Kept Village’-worthy collection that is best not kept a secret.
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