Fig 2. Photos of models from Frederic's 'SAINT-PARCK' brand.
KEEP: Are there more things coming for your personal brand, and what are your plans with it?
FREDERIC: There are definitely more things coming with my personal brand.
I'm really not doing anything until I feel inspired about my personal brand.
From a 60, if Mowa will ask me for stuff, any other things I'm doing, I always have time for that.
I'm always thinking about that, always have ideas. But because from my personal brand I'm a bit more delicate, I want to take my time.
And I don't want to just force myself to release like a collection a year or something.
I do want to take my time with it.
KEEP: Frederic, you’re super young and have worked with the likes of Mowalola and are now steering the ship at Miss Sixty as Artistic Director.
Do you feel like your success is almost fetishised at times.
FREDERIC: I think there's aspects of my career, my title, or or being fetishized.
Everybody wants to have that title. Everyone wants to have director in their title.
Everybody wants to be, you know, the creative director of this art director of this, fashion director of this.
I think you have to really work to do it.
I know I am pretty young, but but you know, I was working at Mowa since I was like 18. And grew from that.
And when I met Ye, working at Yeezy, grew from that.
Like there wasn't any baby steps.
It was really like Ye or Mowa saying, this is what we want.
Here's a budget and like let's do something. Renting out, you know, renting out a whole desert in the U.S. for this Yeezy campaign that never released.
It's really like throwing you into the deep end. And it can get scary.
So I know a lot of people fetishize the titles, fetishize where some people are, but you do have to like, sink or swim to be able to get there.
And not everyone can do this. Not everyone can play football.
Not everyone can play, you know, not everyone can be a dentist or a scientist.
You really have to, you know, work hard and then you get to be called doctor, whatever, PhD, whatever, Mr. Astronaut.
Like you need to really put the work in before you can get accomplishments, you know.
And I think that's really, a lot of people forget that.
A lot of people don't really want to work that hard to get to certain places.
You also don't work hard so your kids can inherit it. So what I'm saying is in against nepo babies.
I have nothing against Nepo babies. I love Nepo babies. I wish I was a Nepo baby.
You know, so also when you work, you're not working for yourself. You're for your future.
If you have it, you plan on having a future like that.
KEEP: This is a personal one for me, but I’m sure it applies to many reading this.
As someone trying to make their way into certain design spaces, I’m sometimes hesitant to reach out to people because I don’t think it’s the right time just yet.
Like maybe if I work on my portfolio a little more I’ll be more confident reaching out.
Is this a false notion? Is there a right time?
And what should you have ready to show before reaching out to the people you admire or want to work with?
FREDERIC: I think you should always be reaching out.
I think the one thing you can always do is ask for advice.
I understand why people are like, let me wait, let me be patient, but if you keep waiting you will be waiting forever.
And sometimes I'd rather hear someone say no, than to keep waiting and the opportunity passes by and I never really got my answer.
The one thing we need in this life is mentors, guidance, role models, someone who has been in your position that can give you their experience.
Because experience is one of the most, knowledge is the most important thing in the world.
And if someone has made mistakes before you, it's always good to ask them and never be shy and never wait to ask them, just ask them.
If you questions already ask them. It's always good to be patient, patient is a virtue, patient is very important, but don't, never, never over wait.
If really want something to happen, you do need to go for it.
KEEP: A lot of designers your age are scrambling to be heard or gain any position that grants them recognition and credibility.
You talk about wanting things that are “ahead of their time.”
What’s something you’ve made, or an idea you’ve pushed, that people aren’t yet getting but you know they will?
FREDERIC: One thing that I'll say, I wouldn’t say is ahead of my time because I think that sounds a bit cringe.
But one thing I really did want to do and I feel like I'm seeing it more is my love for China.
I just remember seeing a lot of, you know, a lot of people are very proud to wear like a Union Jack, like a British flag, an American flag, but I never used to see a Chinese flag.
I think, you know, Americans in the Americana and the global west, the political west is very like anti the second world.
And, you know, they're very anti-Soviet. You know how many James Bond movies or World War II movies where people are portrayed as like a Soviet or like a German, old German Nazi type of character.
And I really wanted to, you know, I grew up on Hong Kong in Chinese movies.
I grew up on, you know, getting Pirates of the Caribbean and then putting it in my DVD player and it happened to be a pirated police story movie with Jackie Chan in it from like the 80s, 70s.
So I really grew up, I really grew up on like a lot of Chinese culture.
So I designed that like I put the Chinese flag on a hat for Mowa and on a skirt and I really did see that go off.
And now everyone wants to be Chinese. I think that was really, really cool.
I didn't really, I don't think I saw that much going on before that.
KEEP: You grew up in London, lived in Paris, New York, Milan, and now China.
Which city has stripped you down the most, and which city has given you the most back?
FREDERIC: London has definitely built me and stripped me the most. Definitely. It's my hometown.
I'm born in London.
China showed me a whole new perspective on people and perspective on the world and how people perceive art and how people digest it.
Just like some places create art, some people reference it, some people copy it, but yeah, definitely London for both answers.
KEEP: What’s the most reckless decision you’ve made that actually worked?
FREDERIC: Most reckless decisions I made that worked.
Initially moving in with Slawn and the Motherland guys. That changed my life. Maybe skipping school to work for Yeezy.
That also changed my life 100%. 100% skipping school to work there, work with Ye. Damn, I don't really know.
I don't know if I can call it a risk.
Because I feel like I'm not, again, it does sound cliche, but I feel like I'm trying to live life as a risk all the time.
I don't even know something that's a risk anymore. I just think, oh, this has high gain.
Let me just do that. I don't really think about the negative side of it.
KEEP: Why are you always dancing to music? When did you start dancing?
Will you ever stop dancing?
FREDERIC: Why do I keep dancing to music?
I love music, man. I don't know, I love music.
I used to be really like insecure about my body and stuff.
Whenever I, for some reason, I just think the Instagram camera is better quality than the normal one.
So I always just record myself dancing and then I happen to post it.
So it's not really me posting myself dancing.
It's more like I just love to dance. In life I really feel like I cater to other people a lot.
That's when I'm dancing and the camera's on me. I feel like the main character sometimes.
And I really just want to be like, yo, listening to carti or listening to someone just playing my music.
I don't know if that makes sense. It might sound a little bit corny though.
KEEP: You once said Mowalola took you in when you were basically homeless.
What did those times of survival really feel like in that moment, and how did that shape the way you work now?
FREDERIC: I mean, Mowa taking me in when I was homeless was very like, obviously it shaped me to who I am today, because everything shaped me to who I am today.
That moment was definitely, it really added pressure to me to really make the really like kickstart myself going somewhere.
And it wasn't just me, it was like several of us who just had no place to sleep genuinely.
It would have been the 24 hour McDonald's, you know.
And so Mowa like was a gift from God in that aspect.
And yeah, like I don't want to say the way I work, you know, I work as if it's survival, because at the end of the day, you you it probably isn't.
But there's a level of survival in it in terms of, I feel like I won't survive this unless I try my hardest, if that even makes sense.
So I'm not doing this fashion stuff or creating and doing all this art stuff, because you know, I need it to put food on the table.
You know, if I really needed to do that, you can be a janitor somewhere, you can work in like a test goal or something, and respect to people who do that, who do those jobs.
But I feel like for me personally, if I'm not trying my hardest in this aspect of where I'm putting my career in or my lifestyle in, I feel like I won't be able to live with myself.
So it's almost a different sense of survival.
KEEP: I saw on your story a while ago you posted about an opportunity offer you got from Saint Laurent.
Who else has contacted you that we don’t know about? Maybe anything in the works right now?
FREDERIC: Um, you know other brands really hit me up like that?
I did get an offer, like a offer at Balenciaga, but that was more because I applied there.
And I applied a long time ago and they rejected me.
And then it was only like a year or two after that I feel like they missed.
And I still like looked at me, looked at me personally, and then checked their files and they were were oh, you actually applied for like an internship.
So they offered me like a graphic. It was like a, I don't know what it was.
I think it was like Jersey design, like Jersey design with graphics and all something like that.
Like I thought they wanted me to make their graphic t-shirts.
Um, and so I also didn't approach that. I didn't take that further.
I was very close to joining Vetements in Switzerland a long time ago, but I also didn't do that.
Mowa kind of persuaded me not to do that.
I was learning German for that. And I realised in Switzerland, um, they don't really speak German.
They speak like Swiss German. Its just slightly different. So I didn't go there either.
KEEP: Lastly, What keeps you going?
FREDERIC: What keeps me going?
Man, I don't even have kids and it's definitely gonna be my future kids. It's definitely my mom.
Definitely where I, where I, where, how I came up and the fact that I'm here, it's makes me want to double it, you know.
Have you seen those, there's memes of like, oh, do you want to take one dollar or give it to the next, or do you like, do you want to, do you want want double it or give it to the next person?
Like something like that. Like I feel like that's how I'm kind of living life at the moment.
Each time I do something, I'm like, okay, no, let's double it. Let's double it. Let's double it.
And I think that's what keeps me going. It's not the money.
I don't think, I don't think it's the money necessarily at all, actually. But yeah, I think, I don't know.
There might be some stuff that I want to keep to myself, but there's definitely something.
I really don't really, I don't know how to put it in words though.
