Creative Networks : Wayne Hemingway research

Background

Wayne Andrew Hemingway, MBE (born Morecambe, Lancashire, January 19, 1961 is an English fashion designer and co-founder of Red or Dead. 

He is also chairman of the South Coast Design Forum. He is also the chair of Building For Life (the national standard for well-designed homes and neighbourhoods forum).

How did he get into the fashion industry?

One day he decided to empty his wardrobe and that of his wife Gerardine and took the contents to sell on Camden Market.

"It was £6 rent for the stall and we took £80 the first day. It just took off from there."

They did so well that by the end of the year they had 16 stalls at the market, with shipments of second-hand clothing and footwear brought in from all over the world. The realization that money could be made from fashion suddenly dawned on him.

By 1983, they had opened a shop in fashionable Kensington, London. Selling Gerardine's self-made clothes, designed by him. That same year, the first Red or Dead collection was also created, inspired from Russian peasant clothing. It was well received and they obtained a huge order from US department store Macy's.

With Gerardine, Hemingway built Red or Dead into a fashion label that received global acclaim resulting in winning the prestigious British Fashion Council's Streetstyle Designer of the Year Award for an unprecedented 3 consecutive years in 1996, 1997 and 1998

After Red or Dead

In 1999, having sold Red or Dead they set up HemingwayDesign, which specializes in affordable and social design. The highest profile project was, The Staiths South Bank, a 800 property mass market housing project on Tyneside for Taylor Wimpey Homes where HemingwayDesign are involved from the master planning, the architecture through to the landscaping and marketing of this groundbreaking project.

Over 400 homes are now lived in and The Staiths has won a series of high profile awards including Housing Design Awards (best large project) and Building Magazine's "Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project" as well as a Building For Life and the highest rating of any large-scale scheme in a recent CABE audit. Other major projects include ‘The Bridge Dartford’, a development of 1000 designer homes in Kent.