Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Simon Ward, the Chief Operating Officer of the British Fashion Council

Simon Ward

Simon Ward is the Chief Operating Officer of the British Fashion Council and Director of the Fashion Arts Foundation. He's also recently become an author, publishing his first book 'Riding The Tide', which focuses on the Psalms in the Bible. Jonathan Bellamy spent time with him chatting about his career, God and fashion, ethics and his new book.

Jon: So tell us how did you get into the fashion industry?

Simon: I never really intended to get into the fashion industry. My parents were in the navy and I decided I wanted to go into the army, but they didn't want me. I did a geography degree, because that seemed a fairly general thing, because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I met an Italian girlfriend who led me into the wonderful world of opera singing, which I tried my hand at for a number of years. I then moved on to lead the children's work in my church and persuaded them to employ a director of children's ministry and thought they'd appoint me - they appointed somebody else. Meanwhile to pay the bills for all this, along the way I'd got a job working in the organisation that looks after the fairly big clothing manufacturing industry and then I found myself moved on to working for the British Fashion Council, which amongst other things runs London Fashion Week. So, I never really intended to be there, but there I am.

Jon: How would you describe your measure of influence within British fashion?

Simon: What I don't do is influence the length of hemlines, or the particular pattern and suits, or whatever might be coming up for the next season. But at the British Fashion Council it's a very influential organisation in terms of putting on London Fashion Week. Those are all the top designers who twice a year, both for men's and for women's, will set the trends as to what we're all going to be wearing. Then also in terms of some of the big issues around: in terms of ethical manufacturing, in terms of skinny models, in terms of unpaid internships - some of the issues that rattle round the news-pages. The British Fashion Council's the first point of call for both politicians and media, so to that extent it's quite a privilege to be working there.

Jon: You say you fell into fashion, would you say fashion is a passion for you then?

Simon: A few people ask me that and I just wish I could show down the phone my first passport photograph. It had a picture of me in a brown demob suit, with a haircut that looked like a Nazi war helmet from the Second World War. I certainly didn't start off with fashion at the forefront of my influences. Have I got a passion for fashion? I don't lie awake at night thinking, wow, all about the nitty gritty of fashion. I like clothes - I've got a wardrobe that's probably far too big and I love seeing people dressing well, not just in grand stuff - in stuff that suits them. So to that extent, yeah I think it's a great industry and it's a big industry, which is really important to the country as well. So again, I think it's a really great place to be.

Jon: If you had to pick out one highlight in your career so far, what would be the first thing that comes to mind?

Simon: It's probably not what you'd think. In one sense, being in the sort of position I've got there, I meet an awful lot of VIP's in all sorts of grand places and all that sort of stuff. That all sounds great, but actually that's not what particularly turns me on. The sort of thing I really love, and I'll just pick two small examples of things recently - meeting up with a designer, a young designer who's got a head full of ideas and they tell you a story about what's influencing them, and then they whip out some mood boards that say how they interpret that into a range of clothes. That creative process is something, which every time I come across it, sort of face to face with the designer, I find really stimulating. I guess it takes you back to how God looks down on the world. He created the world and all its creativity and you're encountering that creative process.

Then the other thing I've got, I'm particularly responsible for looking at education and careers and passion. We put on an event in Hackney a few months back, for about a hundred or so schoolchildren there across all the schools in Hackney. And to watch their faces, they came in looking rather teenager-ish, and "urgh what am I here for?" and within an hour or so of introducing them to all sorts of different people who work in fashion - it was such a stimulating exchange of views and discussions, looking at opportunities for their careers. So it's that sort of thing, which really is the highlight of my day as it were.

Jon: When people think of the fashion industry, if they're looking for a negative, one of the frequently conveyed concerns would be the airbrushing of models in magazines, or the impact on young girls self-image - do you carry similar concerns?

Simon: Yes, it's a complex area that. About six or seven years ago a couple of young girls - models sadly died in Brazil due to eating disorders essentially. There was a big hoo-ha around the world, and particularly within the media, but also within the political circles here in the UK. At the British Fashion council we found ourselves very much at the forefront of responding to that, and some of the other countries said, 'oh we're gonna do this', 'we're gonna do that', but they did nothing, because what they were saying was really quite impractical. What we tried to do, and I think this is a rather British approach to things, we said right, what difference can we practically make to help young girls in particular who have eating disorders, who have image problems and all that sort of thing. And we did a range of practical things to do with London Fashion Week, where we had complete control, in terms of models under 16 had to be properly fed and so on. We don't control magazines and therefore we couldn't say, right, 'don't do this', 'don't do that', but we did get in touch with them to say, 'look this is an important issue'. One of the most interesting things, we went and had a chat to some of the experts at The Priory down in South West London and asked them what are the real causes behind this? Clearly what people look at in magazines and online and so on is an influence, but what else is there so we can understand it better? And they said 'yeah that is a factor, but to be honest a far bigger factor is some of the psychological issues behind that in terms of young people's upbringing, in terms of, quite often, absence of parents and things like that, and they find themselves going in totally the wrong direction'. So it's not an easy one just to say stop airbrushing models and everyone will look beautiful and we'll all live happily ever after; there's a lot of complexity behind it and that's, again why I find it a privilege to be in a place where you can really try and explore the complexities behind some of these issues, to try and make a real difference rather than just a sound bite.

Jon: What about the issue of identity and people's value, because a lot of people - not just with clothing but a lot of consumerism, they find their worth and identity in looking a certain way, or identifying with a certain celebrity, or that kind of thing. What are your thoughts on the levels of consumerism in the UK?

Simon: I think fashion is an important element of modern society, not so much for the clothes themselves, as you say, because of identity. I was brought up in the 60's and 70's and there were mods and rockers and skinheads and all sorts of hippies and all that sort of stuff, and a lot of the identity was by what they were wearing - it gave them a sense of belonging. A lot of the phrases we take for granted, you put on your Sunday best, or you dress up to go out to a party or dress down Friday, all these sorts of things. And the clothes you wear, fashion, if you want to put a word around all of it, it is quite important on how we can influence our mood and so on. So to that extent, we can either work with that or play against it, and I must admit I get rather irritated by, I think particularly people of faith who can sit there and say we should all be walking round in sackcloth and ashes sort of stuff. I don't see that, a God of creativity who I'm looking out of the window here across some beautiful trees in the autumn colours and so on, and I look at the seasons as they pass - God made an extraordinary creative and varied world and it would seem to me to be rather turning our backs on his creativity if we were just dressed up in the same white t-shirt every day. So I don't think there's something intrinsically wrong with having a variety of clothes to express ourselves, but and it's a fairly big but - obviously people can be controlled by what they wear, and they try to pretend they're somebody they're not simply by dressing up in a certain way. As you touched on, the whole celebrity culture where you know 'wear this and you'll be like me' type of thing is completely false. So as with a lot of these things, they're complex issues, but that doesn't mean we run away from them. I think fashion has a great power for good, but it can also be distorted and be quite destructive as well.

Jon: You say in your new book that you've longed to better integrate your faith with daily life. What have been the challenges you've encountered in trying to do that over the years?

Simon: I always imagine, and maybe I'm wrong, that if you're working in things like the health service or in education - it's a rather easier sort of environment for expressing faith virtually, if I can put it that way. Because I guess the sort of people that work and occupy those sort of areas, maybe that's the way they think, I don't know. Certainly the creative industries, with fashion being one of them - it's quite a driven place; people get really focused on what they're doing, and to that extent it's not a place where one can easily chat about one's faith. I've always been frustrated over the years with myself, I sit there and say, 'okay Simon, how many people who don't know God did you talk to about it today?' and the answer is fairly infrequently if I'm being honest. I was really encouraged about four or five years ago when I met one or two Christians within the arts generally, but in fashion in particular, and 'Fashion for Christ', which is an organisation with several hundred people belonging to it now. It is an organisation that tries to bring together to encourage people working in the industry that a) you're not alone and b) we need to pray into some of these issues, because there's a lot of dark areas around the fashion industry, spiritually dark I should say, not fashionably dark. We all need to encourage each other and find out ways to express our faith. I've actually found that writing a book - there's a lot more in the pipeline - provides a vehicle to try and express how I see the relevance of God, of Jesus, of the Bible, of my faith, to everyday life, and actually having disciplined myself to write down some of these thoughts, I now find it a lot easier chatting to people. Not 'I may hit you round the head with a Bible' type of witnessing, but just sharing everyday stuff and how I perceive it from the angle I'm coming from, which is based on the Bible.

Jon: And I was going to ask you something like that, in terms of how can faith express itself in fashion. Do you have any thoughts that you've not perhaps been able to implement, but they're things that you feel where that could be a way that I could express faith a little bit more directly perhaps?

Simon: There's two angles on that, there's what I'd call the small personal picture and then the bigger sort of sector picture if I can call it that. From a personal point of view, I think a lot of people - not just in fashion - we tend to think we need to preach the whole gospel to everyone we come across - 'I'm not an evangelist' and 'help!' and we end up lying down in a dark room thinking, 'oh I'm a failure' sort of stuff. Actually we're called to witness to people, which is tell them our story, and I think that we need to just think through our story, not just our life story, but how our faith applies to all the different issues we come across in our everyday life and how would we look upon that differently as a follower of Jesus, as opposed to just somebody who's looking after number one in life.

Then the bigger picture, again being rather privileged working for an organisation like the British Fashion Council I do have an overview over a much bigger sector that employs the best part of a million people. A couple of years ago I was sitting down one Saturday morning and this thought just came to me, 'if God was in charge of the fashion industry, what would be his priorities?' and I started jotting down some of the things I thought he might want to change. Entertainingly, when I looked back over it - it came to ten, so maybe these were his ten commandments for fashion. They included some of the stuff that was very much what I was engaged with and I think those are areas he'd want to deal with, like the whole skinny model thing - he'd want that to be dealt with from a godly perspective. The area of unpaid internships was something that has been around over the last few years and is particularly prevalent in creative industries including fashion and to try to look at different ways for young people to get into a workplace where they had real skills. Since that time I've been privileged to be at the front of creating a fashion apprenticeship, which I know will be of interest to a lot of people, and that's the sort of thing that God will be interested in - to give young people with talent the opportunity, not just a question of who you know. So that was another thing. It goes to a lot of different areas, one of which is all about Sunday trading - that was largely led by fashion retailers. While Sunday is pretty much a day of shopping for a lot of people, I don't think that's the way God made it. Now, do I have the power to influence that? No, but I've certainly got the ability to think about it, talk about it and pray into it, and I think that's again where our faith can be relevant, because we have the armies of heaven behind our prayers and who knows when an opportunity is going to pop out from behind the bushes where we've been praying into something, we've an opportunity to say something and to do something - which can make a difference.

Jon: Your book is filled with reflections on the Psalms, what do the Psalms mean to you?

Simon: As well as playing around in fashion, I'm also a guitarist and a singer, from the opera singing that I did for a number of years. I've always loved the Psalms in general, but when I started thinking about them a couple of years ago - I'd had a day on Holy Island in Northumbria and I picked up a book all about the Saints; Aidan, Bede and Cuthbert who set up a monastic community there. They used to go around day by day round the North of England whilst they were walking, encouraging each other by reciting to each other all 150 Psalms. That amazed me and I thought there's no way I'm going to memorise 150, how about memorising 10% of that, or 15%. I set about doing that and as I memorised them, of course you start thinking about them, pondering them - and they became notes and discussions with people. A few people said, look why don't you write them down, there's a book there, and that's where they came from.

Why I love the Psalms is when you look at most songs that are written, they only take little chunks of the nice bits on the whole, but actually the psalms really do go from one extreme to the other. One minute we're praising God, the next minute we're cursing our neighbours, sort of thing. Now what's that all about? These are godly people who wrote them, and I think they reflect human experience that's common to all of us, and if we learn how to grapple with the light and dark, with the good days and the bad days, the challenges and things that go easily and so on - I think we start to engage the way King David did of old. We engage with God, grappling with him, how do I be a Christian in this context, and I found that really encouraging and that's where the book came from. Certainly talking to a few people I think they've found it had helped to apply scripture, which can sometimes seem a bit academic and dry and historic - how does that apply to Monday morning and so on?

Jon: How has the book been received generally, but also within the industry and amongst your peers?

Simon: I've had a variety of feedback from different people, which is always good. So for example I was talking to somebody who had been going on an Alpha course, they were potentially a Christian, if there is such a person, and they said 'look, I could see it wasn't specifically written for me', but they found it really interesting because it gives me an insight into what it might be like being a Christian, and how some of the issues in the Bible... the way God sees the world - how this is relevant to little old me in my day to day life.

There was an older lady who had been in hospital for a few weeks, she said 'I'd flicked through it, cause I'm a friend of yours, Simon, I took it with me into hospital and actually going through those day by day and reading them several times over and allowing it to stimulate my own thoughts, which in turn can turn to worship and to prayer, they really did help me through that difficult time.'

There's been quite a lot of people who have given the book to their friends saying, 'why don't you have a read about this, you might find it interesting even though you don't read the Bible yourself' sort of thing. I think writing this book hasn't been to show that I'm a great writer, or anything like that, because I'm not particularly, but I'm very much an everyday person trying to grapple with scripture and grapple with God in the every day. I think it can be a helpful tool to people to do the same themselves.

Jon: It's been great to talk to you Simon, how can people find out more about you?

Simon: My website is www.simonwardlondon.com where I have a blog and other writings too.

You can buy Riding The Tide from Cross Rhythms Direct for only £7.59 + p&p.