Brad Pengelly’s menswear label, Jamie Fame, is variously inspired by gothic love songs, dark nights and vampire love, so it’s a bit of a surprise that Brad’s disposition is at the other end of the scale. The 25-year-old self-taught designer is breezy and bright-eyed, likes to surf and is happy to be based on the Sunshine Coast and geographically removed from the heady world of fashion in other cities. His uncomplicated character also informs Jamie Fame’s aesthetic, which is all about clean lines and pristine tailoring, muted palettes and sombre styling. As Jamie Fame secures its 17th stockist around Australia and releases its sixth collection, Brad is finding all the pieces of the puzzle are starting to fall into place. Must be time to launch a new label then …
Jamie Fame’s sixth collection, Shedding Skin, is hitting shelves around Australia as this story goes to print. Brad explains the range is inspired by its ‘disgustingly wearable’ ethos. “We took Shedding Skin back to our whole idea of disgustingly wearable – that’s what we have on our wall and that’s what we want to be. We don’t want to be a catwalk label; we’re wearable. I think we’ve really nailed that this season.”
The new range features oversized tanks and soft-as-silk tees, floating cotton shirts and cropped dinner jackets that are so feathery light and so carefully tailored that they fit like, well, a second skin. There are also dirty denims and signature leather pieces – shorts, jeans and waistcoats.
You won’t find the garment colours anywhere else because Jamie Fame’s colour palette is custom-dyed, which gives Brad and his team the freedom to be alchemists of sorts and experiment with pared-back colours in the faintest of tones. This season they’ve created off-white, black with olive green undertones, pale skin, worn navy and old grey.
“We’re not showy people,” Brad explains of his team’s approach to Jamie Fame (he collaborates with a pattern maker, and his friend and stylist Aian McLennan, and also called upon local Sunshine Coast photographer Ben Markey – who also shoots for Stab Magazine – to contribute to the Shedding Skin look book). “Subtlety is our aesthetic,” Brad continues. “We’re into muted colours rather than outrageous prints. I think a garment is great if you can wear it over and over again and that’s what we’re working towards.”
All Jamie Fame pieces are made in Australia using premium organic textiles sourced from Sydney and Melbourne, although the cashmere is from Nepal because it’s not available here. “Initially I was just buying t-shirts and screen-printing on them,” Brad shares of his naive entree to fashion, which shows just how far he’s come in six years. He goes on to explain that his label started as a happy accident.
Brad was studying marketing and business at the University of the Sunshine Coast when he began screen-printing t-shirts for his own wardrobe. At first he designed his own patterns and printed them onto bought shirts. Then he got curious about what makes for quality tailoring so he pulled garments apart to read how the seams aligned and patterns were cut. For advice, he often called upon his mother, who had created her own fashion label just before Brad was born.
He can’t remember his childhood dream but says fashion definitely wasn’t in the picture. “I wasn’t the creative one in the family but now I love being creative and the business side of things.” He was 19 when he launched Jamie Fame as a casual clothing range of tees, singlets and hoodies for lads 15–35 plus.
“I had every intention of going into an office job after uni but then I decided to pursue my own label instead,” he says. “I was living at home with my parents and worked in a surf shop, at a friend’s parents’ warehouse, and as a removalist for a while. I had a couple of different jobs to fund each range.”
Brad set about building Jamie Fame slowly, collection by collection, learning business, fashion design, manufacturing and distribution all at the same time and by trial and error. He recalls keeping a close eye on the financial side of things. “I was very conscious of cost and profit from day one, so we were making money, it just wasn’t a lot. I keep a very close eye on profit margins because I know it’s very easy to go bust.”
He muses that starting out at such a young age perhaps gave him a fresh outlook, but in some respects also worked against him. “I was young and I wasn’t as dedicated at the start – and my timing was out. Timing matters a lot in fashion; it makes a huge difference to sales.” Brad is pleased to note the new collection is one of the first that has been designed, sold and distributed perfectly to schedule.
Today the label is stocked in 17 boutique stores around Australia, including Brisbane’s Angus Black in The Valley and Dirtbox in the CBD, as well as Alterior Motif at Cotton Tree on the Sunshine Coast. This is one of the greatest achievements for Brad – the fact that orders keep coming and stockists stay true to the label. “I’m really proud of the fact we’ve had stockists come back year after year and that the orders are getting bigger, which means people like it and it fits correctly, which is nice.”
While other designers might set their sights on promoting their labels through fashion festivals and runway shows, Brad isn’t one of them. “We haven’t done many festivals or fashion weeks. I’m not sure if it would represent what we do 100 percent the way we wantit to.” Instead, Brad is keen to start collaborating on film and photography projects with other creatives.
Being a self-confessed workaholic helps keep the label moving in the right direction and Brad says this is probably one of the reasons he’s still in the game. “When things are tough you work harder and when collections are due you work around the clock if you have to.” His advice for other young designers is not to be disillusioned if they aren’t an overnight success. “Stick with it,” Brad urges. “That’s the only reason we’ve gone anywhere through the tough times. And learn about textiles and fabric – you learn through trial and error. Some things go right and some go wrong. We were lucky to be able to keep some credibility in the industry because we did make some mistakes along the way,” he admits of the very early days. “But in the last two years we’ve picked our stockists, suppliers and fabrics really well.”
Brad has also recently found time to launch an androgynous jewellery label, Burn, with Teagan Barr. It’s been described as ‘geek meets goth’, which he thinks is pretty spot on. The handmade collection of earrings, pendants and rings is an ode to the perils of teenage romance and draws upon heartbroken Shakespearean characters to tell the story. It’s a bit exciting that Australian Vogue’s September issue features Burn earrings on the front cover. Brisbane stockists include Fallow and Dirtbox. Brad says Burn has definitely been easier to launch than Jamie Fame. “Burn has had a good leg-up because it took me a long time to get Jamie Fame up and running – knowing the seasons and how to manage production; it was a long time coming for me to figure all
of that out. Now we start with that experience.”
There is still much Brad wants to achieve with Jamie Fame. “We definitely want to take the label international. And we want to do tighter collections – less pieces, less colours. We want
to trim the fat and go forward with perfectionist pieces.”
With big things ahead it’s lucky, then, that Brad finds peace in being on the clock. “I love surfing and being at home, but my job is extremely peaceful … I’m happiest when I’m working and creating new things.”
Interview by Frances Frangenheim
