Let’s set the scene: Fire Island, New York. A melange of conical sand bumps, white dunes and beaches littered with hot, lithe bodies in trunks. The sand stretches to a palely clear sea just beyond the point of horizon. Some might call it paradise. It’s dusk; or maybe even later. Definitely the sun is still out, casting shadows over the beach and its revellers. It is here, seventeen years ago, that Steven Cox and Daniel Silver of Duckie Brown notoriety first meet. Cox, a designer then working for Tommy Hilfiger, coolly tan and unabashedly stylish with a chocolate brown parting and designer swimsuit, catches the eye of Daniel Silver, and it is here, on the beach, that the now-revered partnership begins. 

Whether they know it at the time or not, this partnering will go on to make headlines in fashion rags, and, despite Silver’s then lack of fashion experience, Cox and Silver’s collected output will go on to be stocked in more than 13 stores across the world including pivotal spaces in Tokyo, Monte Carlo and a section on the third floor of New York Mecca, Barneys. This partnership will even lead it’s two design honchos  to be nominated for an award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, a fashion awards body presided over by industry elite including the likes of Diane von Fürstenberg. Seventeen years from this original meeting on the scenic Fire Island retreat, Cox and Silver’s rebelliously fun Duckie Brown line will turn over a cool average of $500,000 a year in sales, and their whimsically detailed collections will keep the duo as figures of constant herald. 

Ponystep raises its hat to Duckie’s seventeen year reign as one of the fashion scenes most fun and thought provoking brands.



Simone Konu: Hello guys! So, firstly, who exactly is Duckie Brown?

Steven Cox: We are Duckie Brown! We have called each other Duckie for 13, maybe 14 years. I grew up in England, in Hertfordshire and I had a great aunt, Aunt Ett, who used to call everyone Duckie. It’s like an old English term of endearment that old people call each other. We decided that the brand should have an English name, hence the 'Brown', like Steven Brown or Daniel Brown or Derek Brown or Paul Brown. We found that, singularly, Brown is a little bit boring, and it didn’t really tell you what the label was about, so we thought, why don’t we use Duckie? 

SK: And the use of the traditional ‘Brown’ lending a sense of heritage to the brand?

SC: Exactly. The ‘Duckie’ still has a lot of history to it, but it is a more tongue-in-cheek, fuck-you kind of thing. In America it’s quite East Coast Waspy, very Jackie O, but here it means something else.

Daniel Silver: We wanted to come up with something memorable as well. We were quite adamant that we didn’t want to name the line after ourselves.

SK: So you didn’t want the brand to be about you two, as such?

DS: It’s about us, it’s all about us, but we didn’t want to use our own names...

SC: That can come later.

SK: When you met 17 years ago, you both came from different paths, Steven, you used to work for Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Theory, Club Monaco, London Fog… and Daniel, you were in TV production… 

DS: I came to the end of TV and wanted to break out from daytime talk shows. I turned my attention to what Steven had always dreamed about, which was having his own label. So I wrote a business plan, and figured out how much money we would need…

SK: How did you get your line out there?

DS: Well, we just did it. One career I had in the early 80’s was being a glove designer, and I had my own line of gloves which were sold throughout the world, so I had an understanding of what the fashion industry was about, at least from the accessories end. I understood about production and press, stores and buyers.

SC: I enjoyed some of the work I did, but I had always wanted to do my own line. I don’t think I was ready in my 20’s, but for some reason when I was 34 I had had enough of working for everybody else and it was the right time to do it, everything was right and we just did it. We did a collection of 17 pieces and took it to Barneys and got in there, and that was it.

DS: We weren’t in our 20’s when we started Duckie Brown, We were in our 30’s or early 40’s; so for us the message was very clear from the get go. It’s not about second guessing what people want, or what is going to make the press happy, or what is going to make the customer happy, although we consider those things constantly. Though there is the press, the show, giving people something to write about, it’s also about being honest with what is of interest to us. So that’s how the collection has evolved from season to season.

SK: You seem to be very business-focused in your approach. Do you think being in New York has brought this out of you?

SC: I think we are creative businessmen. I think it’s a bit of a myth that London is so creative New York is not. New York is an incredibly creative place. New York feeds me as much as London. I have learnt to be a better businessman by working with great New York businesses like Ralph Lauren. I mean, there isn’t much bigger business-wise. I have learnt to become a merchandiser. I went to college here, not St. Martins, a crazy college in Liverpool, which was considered very avant garde. I had this incredible creative training, and then I went to New York and had this great business training.

DS: The impetus for us is always the creativity, but at the end of the day, you can be as creative as you want, but you have to make money out of it; without that you are going to die. There are lots of ways to be creative, the business side is an adventure as well. For me it’s the game – how do you turn something that is creative which you love to do into something that makes enough money that you are able to continue to do it?

SK: You were nominated for a CFDA award alongside Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein for Menswear designer of the year...

SC: We knew we didn’t have a chance in winning when up against Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein.

DS: We were ecstatic because we saw it as a press opportunity, and were very thankful. But these are companies worth $10 billion with 10 million employees. We are a company of two people with a bunch of interns running around; who do you think was going to win?

SC: It was also Ralph Lauren’s 40th anniversary and Oprah Winfrey was there to present the award. So we knew we didn’t stand a chance. But the nomination was incredible for a small company like ours - to be with these two huge power houses of American fashion. 

DS: We, as Duckie Brown, have no desire for world domination, we have no desire to be a global brand, and take over the whole world. We want to take over the neighbourhood!

SK: Tell me about your involvement in the V&A’s exhibition ‘New York Fashion Now’ in 2007, you were showing alongside some great names in American fashion.

SC: That was bigger for me, being from London. The CFDA award was great, but when I got the phone call - we have caller ID and it came up ‘V&A museum’ - I thought ‘what the fuck do they want?’ I had no idea why they were calling. It is such an incredible institution, and somewhere I had been as a child on school trips, and they had phoned up and asked for 3 of our outfits. When we came to London there was a whole case with our pieces displayed inside, with a small amount of other New York designers in the exhibition. It was an incredible honour. We have actually become good friends with the curator of the exhibition and we see her every time we come over here. Every time we go to the V&A she takes us behind the scenes and uses her keys to open up these treasure troves of rooms for us. 

SK: Do you resent your tongue-in-cheek reputation?

DS: We have these beautifully hand tailored jackets with the most incredible hand stitching and detail, so there is a very serious side to us that is very respectful of well made garments. 

SC: I was asked the other day, and I often ask Daniel this, ‘Why do we do this? Why do we do all this colour? Why do we do these clothes that come away from the body?’ For me it goes back to my college days of trying to do something that didn’t really exist. You cannot reinvent the wheel, but some of what we see from the schools in New York is about churning out what has already been done. Why can’t we do corsetry in menswear? Why can’t we do a third arm? Why can’t I put a door handle on the back of a jacket? 

DS: If you want a black T shirt, go to Marks and Spencer’s. 

SK: It seems you are both quite rebellious!

DS: Within a certain structure we are all trying to push the envelope, and if we aren’t pushing it then what’s the point? We might as well go and work for Primark. Last season we did a collection with a bow, and the New York press was excited because we gave them something to write about, because god knows they aren’t going to write about a pair of black trousers. Having said that, you would we think we had sent a naked child down the runway - a bow on a shirt is not the end of the world!

SC: It’s funny how people read into it. I wanted to do a bow, that’s it. Full stop. I like bows, why can’t I do a bow? There is not a philosophical reason for it. 

SK: The high-waist swimming trunks from your SS10 collection caused quite a stir with the press...

SC: The ‘Nappy’ or ‘Diaper’, as they are known in America. That was something very beautiful. Daniel Storto had done gloves for us for the last two or three seasons - so nutty but we love him - and when we first met him he was designing swimwear, so I asked him to do swimwear for us. When you work with Daniel you just go with him.

SK: For SS10 the fabrics are light, sheer, and transparent in some cases. Are you trying to expose the body beneath the clothes this season?

SC: We wanted to be a bit sexier. Duckie Brown hasn’t really shown a lot of skin, we show a lot of structure. Last fall the collection was about the eyes, we just showed the eyes. We had covered up, and with this collection we felt light, sexy. 

SK: I understand you have collaborated with legendary American footwear brand Florsheim. Tell me how this came about?

DS: A high school student wrote to us and asked if we could dress him for his prom. To make a long story short-er, we invited him over to the studio and we were lucky enough to get someone from the New Yorker to write about it. As we dressed him, we had an extra pair of Florsheim shoes from a previous show, and the reporter wrote about it. Florsheim read it and got in touch and that became the beginning of the relationship. We did a collection for them and it is called Florsheim by Duckie Brown. And last month we won best new launch of the year by footwear news, which I understand is the academy awards for footwear in America.

SK: So what can we expect from Fall/Winter 10?

SC: England, England, Scotland, and England. I spent a lot of time here and I wanted to do a collection about England. It’s about the boys I went to school with in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, lads at school, done in a sophisticated way. School days, but better.

DS: And, of course, the unexpected!



www.duckiebrown.com