Idris Elba on his collaboration with Superdry

last updated 4 July 2016

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I come from a part of East London where fashion is important. We couldn’t afford the big brands, but we still looked good. This was the starting point for my collaboration with Superdry – the concept of the ‘everyman’. I could have taken my name to a more expensive designer brand, but for me that wasn’t the goal. The goal is to make affordable, cool-looking clothes for the everyman. To have a shirt that may not be expensive, but that you can wear to work and then to dinner and still look sharp.

When I first started working with the brand’s founders, James Holder and Julian Dunkerton, we were very honest with each other about what we wanted to achieve. I know what Superdry do, and they do it amazingly, but they wanted a departure – something a little smarter, more premium than before. And I certainly wanted my collections to capture my own style and the clothes I like to wear. They taught me how to look at fashion in a different way, and the result was a true collaboration.

The initial approach was to think about how I dress day-to-day – this is my favourite cut of jeans, my preferred type of T-shirt. The idea was to take the things we like the most and tweak them, paying attention to details such as quality of material and fit. I’m not a designer, but I know what looks good – I can look at someone and say, ‘That doesn’t work for you, this will work.’ And that’s what I did when I walked into the room with Julian and James. I said, ‘This is what I think I can do, and this is how I imagine my ideal customer to feel walking out of the store.’