Bronwen Marshall makes menswear like you've never seen it before. Glaringly architectural with a sexual subtext, Marshall’s male body is generic, a mere vessel for the visceral pleasures of style and erotica. Featuring geometric shapes and paneling fit together in suggestive patterns, Marshall’s MA graduate collection focuses on the anonymity and the sameness of bodies when driven by lusty desire. Drawing on these basic human desires, Marshall’s work is punchy, daring and completely unique. Stealing the key to our hearts with her brilliantly honest worldview and her gutsy determination, Marshall talks to Dazed about her capitalistic tendencies, her occasional desire for lazy nothings and not letting the bastards get her down…

Dazed Digital: How old are you?
Bronwen Marshall: 27

DD: How long have you been designing?
Bronwen Marshall: Since I was about 15. I 'customised' a lot of perfectly good clothes.

DD: Where are you based?
Bronwen Marshall: London

DD: How would you describe your own style?
Bronwen Marshall:  The man I think about is my ultimate fantasy, or as close as I can get, so he changes and I don't even know how to describe him. The clothes I design are meant to be scary and beautiful. I like them to contradict themselves. If something starts looking a bit too anything, I pull it back the other way a bit.

DD: Who would you like to collaborate with?
Bronwen Marshall: I realised during my MA that it’s a lot more fun to work alongside people than alone. Group projects can be disastrous though.

DD: Who do you have in mind when you design?
Bronwen Marshall: It’s all inspired by sex, but I am imagining the clothes on people outside. Anonymous people keeping warm and having sex!

DD: What inspires you at the moment?
Bronwen Marshall: About 200 records have been donated to me recently and my boyfriend and I are listening to each one in turn. It’s so nice to sit and listen to an album and actually think about it, look at the cover art and read the lyrics.

DD: Who are your favorite designers and why?
Bronwen Marshall: Miuccia Prada because I have worn a watch of hers for about 5 years solidly. It is the most expensive thing I've bought. Walter Van Beirendonck because he's mental. McQueen for the same reasons as everyone else. Luis Lopez Smith, a friend of mine from my class, because his stuff is totally discordant but pure in its sensibility, and funny.

DD: Were you interested in fashion while growing up?
Bronwen Marshall: My mum used to dress me in all sorts of things. Of the four of us children, I was the only one relaxed about going to school in whatever she put me in. Once, the dinner ladies at my junior school laughed at me for my hugely over-sized dungarees. My mum complained to the head teacher. And I learned that a lot of people are fucking morons and I don't want to be the same as them.

DD: What are the difficulties faced being a designer today?
Bronwen Marshall: Money and people who aren't very nice.

DD: If you weren't designing, what would you be doing?
Bronwen Marshall: The idea of living in a warehouse, dossing around and calling myself an artist does appeal but I could never do it. I hate the cold and I'm a capitalist.

DD: What are your plans for the future?
Bronwen Marshall: I want to make music again, make shirts for Nick Cave, read loads of books, see people in my t-shirts. I need to work out some routine where I get to do everything I want but still have time to do nothing sometimes, and sleep 8 hours a night.

CREDITS
Photography Saga Sigurdardottir and Kyriakos + Kolette
Styling Anna Trevelyan
Hair Hiroshi Matsushita using Bumble and Bumble
Make up Thomas de Kluyver using MAC
Model Sam Jadwat @ D1