Richmond, John
John Richmond (1961), British fashion designer. Inspired by the 1950s, body culture and hard rock. After graduating from Kingston Polytechnic, he started working as a consultant for other brands in 1982. In 1985, he partnered with Maria Cornejo. In 1987 he set up his own business and, two years later, created the brand Destroy.
In 1996, he debuted with a women’s collection, which was joined a year later by a men’s collection. He paraded in a small church in Via Daverio in Milan. This is not so unusual as the designer, season after season, makes an appointment with the staff in this delightful “house of God”. What is striking is the contrast between the frescoes on the walls and the particularly strong collection. This time Richmond really provokes: one of the main themes of his collection is religion. T-shirts with applied crosses, necklaces with glittering crosses, jeans and T-shirts with the image of Jesus applied and a white cape reminiscent of a priest’s stole.
After a fairly successful presentation of his collections in Milan, he got in touch with the entrepreneur Saverio Moschillo, who had his collections produced by Falber in Forlì. Thanks to an extraordinary distribution network, the Richmond brand was a huge success. There are three collections, the John Richmond, the ready-to-wear line “Richmond X” and the jeans line “Richmond Jeans”. More than 100 shops are planned to open worldwide by 2011, as well as the launch of a perfume and watch line.
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