Tinie Tempah top floor of his studio in Holland Park is covered in clothes and paper sketches. Tinie Tempah has went from being a well-known musician to becoming a well-known fashion icon. Tempah released his first collection for What We Wear. Tempah has been an ambassador for LFWm since its launch back in 2012, a time where Tinie Tempah believes was pivotal for men’s fashion.
“I think 2010, 2011, there was a lot of press about how British men were becoming more fashionable. ‘Metrosexual’ was the term being used around the time,” he tells the BBC.
“Since then, more men have been paying attention to their fashion. To be honest, I still think there’s a lot more women paying attention to what they wear, how they wear it, how it looks, who the designer is.”
“But we’re started to seeing a new generation of young people who are very savvy, more into their brands.”
“Most people who are shooting music videos, they’re styled to some degree, there’s some thought about what they’re wearing, how their hair is styled. All of that, to me, is fashion.”
“Even a fashion show itself wouldn’t be right if there wasn’t any music. I think there’s a really close relationship between the two.”
“I’d say it was from about nine or 10. I come from a Nigerian immigrant background, my parents had us here, and my Mum, on top of having three or four jobs, she always believed in having a side hustle, and one of those was actually going and buying fabric,” Tinie explains.
“She’d go over to Switzerland or Italy, bring it back and sell it to other women from the local community.
“In Nigerian culture, a lot of the women like to make their own dresses and wear them to weddings, so she’d buy all these different materials, and once in a while she’d let me go with her.”
“From there, I started to understand and have a bit of a passion and knowledge for fashion and textiles in general.”
Tinie’s enthusiasm eventually encouraged to him become a prominent figure in the fashion circuit, working closely with the British Fashion Council.”
“I remember just saying to myself one day, ‘I can’t come to another Men’s Fashion Week for the sixth year running, being this guy that knows fashion, being this guy that’s a clothes horse for most of these designers, and not make a contribution myself,'” he recalls.
