Exclusive: Alister Mackie Debuts a Collection of Shirts

Another Man’s Creative Director, Alister Mackie, has held consultancies at some of the most prestigious houses in fashion: Louis Vuitton during Kim Jones’ tenure, Marc Jacobs for ten years, Lanvin with Albert Elbaz for 12 seasons, Fendi with Silvia Fendi, Dunhill, Roberto Cavalli and Gucci; as well as Alexander McQueen, where he continues to style and consult on the menswear collections. But, despite feeding into the collections of these brands, he’s never designed one of his own – until now.

On February 26, Matches Fashion will launch an exclusive range of shirts designed by Mackie. Cut from a particularly luxurious heavyweight silk twill, these shirts are inspired by the idea of a ‘collector’ and feature imagery of leopards, mushrooms, butterflies, men on horseback, framed portraits, and flowers – each evoking a different character.

But although this collection marks Mackie’s first official foray into fashion design, he has previously made garments, learning how to do so while he was still a student at The Glasgow School of Art. There, while completing a bachelor’s degree in Print, he would make shirts for his friend, the musician and frontman of Primal Scream Bobby Gillespie, to wear on tour. “I made a lovely black satin shirt with big cuffs for him to wear on his Screamadelica tour. I made one for him and one for me,” he remembers. “I’ve made shirts for him on other occasions too; for editorials – I made one for him for the cover of Dazed and it had all these badges and patches on it; it was this mad, military thing.”

While there aren’t any badges and patches on these shirts, they are nonetheless decorative. The motifs themselves originate from 18th- and 19th-century prints that Mackie found in a stall in Islington market, not far from his house, which he then photocopied, printed out, cut and stuck together. “I wanted the whole thing to be very local and very personal to me,” he says. “I wanted the shirts to look like something I’d wear and [something] that belonged in this house.”

And that’s the essence of this collection: the shirts are an extension of Mackie’s universe, expressed through the clothes in his wardrobe, the interior design of his home, the pages of Another Man and, more recently and perhaps more personally, though the pages of The Leopard, the limited-edition magazine he launched last year which aims to celebrate queer life “in all of its creative, sensuality and DIY glamour”.

“They’re kind of opulent, which is what I like,” he continues. “I wear the shirts everyday to go to work. It’s as simple as that, they’re what I wear to work. I didn’t want to do anything that was too far removed from [myself], I’m not launching myself as a designer at this point – I just wanted to do something really personal.”

Personal, too, was his choice of models for the collection – he cast several friends and people who inspire him, such as Bobby Gillespie’s son, Wolf, his former assistant Reuben Esser who is now Another Man’s fashion editor, Dazed Media’s editorial director Bunny Kinney, and photographer Chris Lensz, stylist Tom Eerebout and Central Saint Martins student Gulliver Whitby, among others. Photographed by Mackie’s friend and collaborator Brett Lloyd, he styled these muses of his “as individuals” – as is his practice.

At a time when men’s fashion can feel rather lacking in glamour, these shirts represent just that; things of beauty, opulence and restrained elegance.

Alister Mackie’s exclusive collection of shirts will launch on Matches Fashion on February 26, 2020.

PHOTOGRAPHY Brett Lloyd STYLING Alister Mackie ART DIRECTION Simon B. Mørch HAIR Anthony Turner SKIN Zahra Hassani CASTING Piotr Chamier SET DESIGN Miguel Bento MODELS Gulliver Whitby @ AMCK. Tom Eerebout, Gavin Gega @ Select, Chris Lensz, Mo Nabeh @ SUPA, Bunny Kinney, Reuben Esser, Wolf Gillespie @ KMA PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSISTANT Matt Moran STYLING ASSISTANT Vincent Pons HAIR ASSISTANT Claire Grech PRODUCTION theArcade Production SPECIAL THANKS to Leroy House