How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - SPECIAL EPISODE! How to Fail: Henry Holland on business failure in the time of Covid-19

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

In the last of four special episodes specifically designed to help you through lockdown and Covid-19 anxiety, I welcome the fashion designer Henry Holland onto the podcast. This week, How To Fail returns to its usual format of discussing three failures but I've chosen to make this a special episode because one of Henry's failures will speak directly to a lot of people right now. It is the failure of his business, House of Holland, a failure linked to the impact of Coronavirus and which has left Henry having to call in the administrators and let beloved members of staff go. It's a failure he is still coming to terms with and I'm so grateful to him for choosing to talk about it. We also discuss growing up in Ramsbottom, with childhood friend (and future supermodel) Agyness Deyn, and going to a school which stifled his individuality and where even the female teachers were called 'sir'. Later, Henry became a fashion journalist on teen magazines in London before he started making slogan t-shirts as a side-hustle. The t-shirts proved so popular they rapidly became a sought-after fashion item, and Henry's future in fashion was assured. It was a life that took him onto the world's catwalks and into some of the most glamorous parties (keep your ears tuned in for the Kanye West anecdote) but, last month, he was forced to acknowledge that his business was no longer financially sustainable.  'The emotional turmoil of closing a business was one that was heavy to bear,' he wrote recently in a piece for British Vogue. 'But now, on the other side, while unemployed in the craziest economic time we’ve experienced in a generation, I can’t help but feel a sense of relief. Relief I am no longer letting people down. Relief I am no longer pretending everything is perfect when in fact it’s not. And relief most of all that I have space and time to think about what it is I want from my working life.'Thank you Henry. We'll be back in June for a brand new season with a truly fabulous line-up of guests. Until then, stay safe and I hope you all enjoy the episode.  *If you really can't get enough How To Fail content and are looking for something to read during lockdown, there is a book! How To Fail: Everything I've Ever Learned From Things Going Wrong is out now and available to order here* How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and recorded, edited and mixed by Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email [e-mail]* Social Media:Elizabeth Day @elizabdayHenry Holland @henryholland  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello there. Over the last few weeks, I've been making special episodes of this podcast to help us get through the strange and uncertain times of COVID-19. It's been an incredibly special experience, and I can't thank you all enough for your kind messages and emails and for the beautiful stories you shared with me for last week's listener special. On that note, a number of you lovely people got in touch offering to send

sweet peas for Anne, a doctor in Ireland, and when I passed that on she got back in touch to tell me that she'd arranged to buy them from her garden centre after all. So no sweet peas necessary, but thank you. You really are the best listeners ever. This week's special is slightly different. We're reverting to the usual format of a guest discussing their three failures. But the reason I wanted to use it now is that one of the failures we talk about is particularly relevant for anyone struggling with job loss or work-related stress at this moment in time. So I'm very grateful to the wonderful Henry Holland for choosing to talk about the failure of his business, because I'm sure it will strike a chord with many of you. of his business, because I'm sure it will strike a chord with many of you. So yes, this is the final coronavirus special for now, but How to Fail with Elizabeth Day will be back for a brand new season

of sparkling guests on the 3rd of June. I can't wait to share them with you. Until then, stay safe and know that we're in this together. And now, on with today's episode. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with Elizabeth Day, the podcast that celebrates the things that haven't gone right. This is a podcast about learning from our mistakes and understanding that why we fail ultimately makes us stronger, because learning how to fail in life actually means learning how to succeed better. I'm your host, author and journalist Elizabeth Day, and every week I'll be asking a new interviewee what they've learned from failure. Henry Holland is an acclaimed fashion designer, but it might have been very different. As a

teenager, he filled out an online careers questionnaire that said he should be a fishmonger. But fishmongering's loss was fashion's gain. In the early 2000s, Holland, who was then working as a fashion editor for teen magazines, started designing rhyming slogan t-shirts for his friends. They included the legendary I'll tell you who's boss, Kate Moss, and rapidly became a fashion crowd in-joke. Soon, everyone who was anyone wanted a Henry Holland t-shirt. He set up his business through a PayPal link on his MySpace page, and his t-shirts were modelled by his childhood friend Agnes Dean, who used to serve him fish and chips in Ramsbottom, Lancashire, where they both grew up.

Dean went on to become a supermodel, Holland to found his own label, House of Holland. He became a mainstay of London Fashion Week and his clothes have been worn by everyone from Katy Perry to the singer M.I.A. As a designer, Holland is prized for his wit and playfulness, with British Vogue calling him cool and quirky. He is then that rarest of things, a fashion designer with a sense of humour. But in March, Holland was confronted with a stark financial reality which was no laughing matter. He called in the administrators for the business which bore his name. It has, he admits, been a tough time, but one that has taught him many lessons. More on that later. Beloved of journalists,

Holland always gives good quote, and in an interview with ID magazine a couple of years ago, he revealed that one of his most overused phrases was, don't worry, I hate myself for it. So Henry Holland, what do you hate yourself for today? Just listening to that intro and just getting, feeling very proud of myself now I get it. Was it cringe worthy? Did you cringe a little listening to that? I did, but I think I cringed more at how much I was enjoying it.

Thank you so, so much for coming on How To Fail. It is such a delight. You're my first ever fashion designer, in fact. Is that true? No. We're all full of failures, so I don't know how that's happened. Well, thank you so much for having me. I feel very, very honoured to be asked to be on. It's a pleasure. We are recording in the time of coronavirus, so we're recording remotely. We are. What are you wearing today, Henry? Given that I can't see you, I'd like you to describe it. You see, here I'm presented with a real choice whether to tell the truth. I'm half dressed up for work I think when you're working from home whenever I've worked from home you have to sort of get up get out the house and dress for the day so I'm just wearing like

ripped jeans and a shirt but I am pairing it with a tie-dye crock because it is self-isolation after all a tie-dye crock yes that's that's true. The shoes? Yeah, okay. The shoes, yeah. Okay. There was something that I bought just before the world went into lockdown and I was ridiculed immensely for them and now I feel like, you know, somebody was looking down on me because these have been the most useful thing during this whole isolation period, I think, so far. What is your earliest memory of clothes? Wow, I think my earliest memory of clothes is my parents separated when I was young and I used to swap houses every weekend. And so I think my earliest memory of clothes was always the whole rigmarole of packing up my clothes every weekend

and what I was going to take with me and switching from house to house. But then a bit later on, maybe more about around 12 or 13, when I got a clothing allowance from my parents, my memories of clothes kind of switched up again because I was able to buy my own clothes for the first time And I remember how liberating that felt and how much I was able to kind of express myself through what I was wearing It's always been a big part of how I've approached clothes Do you remember some of the first things that you bought with that allowance?

Oh God, yeah, Burton Burton shirts checked shirts jeans Burton shirts I used to wear to under 18s discos in Burnley it was at the time when everything was kind of bright orange or lime green I don't know if you remember that but very well yeah so I think I had one in each colour and they were absolutely hideous but they were so cheap that you were able to get one every weekend I remember that and did you have classic sort of early 90s fashion things like shell suits and global hypercolour sweatshirts yes and yes absolutely I actually tried to get hold of hypercolour a few years ago and relaunched them with them and I because a few years ago one man apparently bought all of the reactive dyes

that had the technology in them and then I just couldn't get hold of him. But yes, and I also have a horrendous shell suit story. When one Christmas, we were having Christmas out in France with my mum and her house didn't have central heating. So I was sat in my brand new shell suit next to a Cala Gas portable fire,

and the whole thing melted onto my arm. Oh, my God. That must have been painful. It was just devastating. It didn't hurt me because there was so much sort of quilting and padding between the outer layer and my skin, but I was devastated. I'd waited for that shell suit for about two years and I finally got one and then I burnt it like the day I got it I was so upset oh Henry you started off

there by talking about how your parents divorced when you were young I think you were three is that right yeah so I'm guessing you were too young to remember anything different. Do you think it affected you at all, having your parents separated? Not negatively in any way. I mean, as you say, I don't really remember anything different. And I've just always had four parents. And we've always had a really great, I've always had a great relationship with all of them. And my parents now have become, in my later life,

have become this newly blended family. So all four of my parents had Christmas together this Christmas at my dad's house because my mum was in town. So she's sort of lived between England and France for many years and she's now back in the UK. And so we had this amazing Christmas where we were all back together, which was just weirdly normal, I suppose. That's so lovely.

And how many siblings do you have? I have a sister. I have two sisters and a brother and then a stepsister. And in this age of social distancing and self-isolation, are you keeping in touch with them all over face oh my gosh yeah yeah I've got face time fatigue I think everybody's starting to suffer from it everyone's literally like can we please just have a phone call I don't need to see your greasy face and I don't need you to see my spots I think everybody's suddenly become obsessed with this oh well I need

to see your face because I haven't seen it for ages it's like well you wouldn't normally see my face just phone me yes we are all in touch there's millions and millions of group chats and facetimes and house parties and whatsapps and everything going on and how are you feeling personally living in this curious time yeah so so strange I mean it's a really strange time for me in general because for the first time in 14 years, I find myself without a company to run, which feels incredibly weird. But coupled with the fact that the entire world

has gone into lockdown and everything is in this weird state of flux and everything seems to be on pause. In one way, it's actually really useful for me because it's kind of forcing me to take a bit of time and put myself on pause and kind of quieten down the aggressive ambition that I've always listened to, I suppose,

and just sort of take a minute. That's really interesting you say that because it's almost as if your internal world and your external world are reflecting each other, and that very rarely happens, I think. Yeah, so rare. And I just, I've never been able to kind of sit still. And this whole situation is forcing me to do so,

and I think I'm kind of, I'm really trying to embrace it as much as I can. I mean, I built my a website in the last couple of days because I didn't have much to do so I built myself a website and you know I'm kind of just trying to get all of my ducks in a row for when this ban or this isolation or whatever we're calling it lifts itself and we can all get back on with things. We're going to come on to your business because you've chosen it as one of your failures. And I'm so, so grateful that you have, because I know that it will speak to an enormous amount of people who are also undergoing the very stressful reality that their businesses or their jobs might not

survive this particular pandemic. So we'll come on to that. But I'm super interested there. You spoke about, and I'm quoting, your aggressive ambition. Now, how young do you think you realised you were aggressively ambitious? Oh, gosh, pretty young, I'd say. I mean, the careers quiz that you mentioned where the outcome was that I suggested I'd be a fishmonger. And I literally remember it clear as day. And it was because I said I liked, I wanted to work with people and I liked outdoors. So that instantly must mean working on a fish market, right? When I was about 16, I think, and we were going through the whole process of which university we were going to go to and that kind of thing.

I was just hell bent on the fact that I was going to London. I didn't really care what I was going to study as long as I got somewhere that allowed me to be in London because I just saw it as the centre of the universe. I remember my tutors at college just being like, well, you can't only choose four options when you've got six possible options. And I was like, well, I'm not going anywhere else. So I'm not going to, I'm not bothered. You know, they were like, well, you need to put, you know, a backup. I was like, well, there's no backup. And then I think the minute I got to London, I felt this overwhelming sense that I had to be in industry.

I don't know if anybody else who studies in London feels the same, but when you're getting on the tube especially when I was studying journalism which I was you're kind of in the midst of this industry that you're desperate to become a part of once you graduate but just finding yourself in the midst of it and surrounded by it I just felt this overwhelming sense that I had to be a part of it now you know I was so impatient and it created this sort of anxiety that I needed to be doing it straight away so I started doing work experience sort of in my first summer and from those work experience placements I did quite a few I ended

up getting a job at a teen magazine that I just continued over my next two years of university and when you say you were hell-bent on getting to London was it because it felt that Ramsbottom for all its many advantages just maybe wasn't the place for you to find yourself yeah I mean it's hard to say because I never felt unhappy there I just definitely felt like I was meant for somewhere different and I saw London as this real kind of bright lights big city land of opportunity you know it wasn't until I got to London sort of side note is that I realized that a career in fashion was even a thing fashion careers were not something that people knew of back then it wasn't like you knew about production or you knew about, probably design was the only career that I'd maybe heard of.

But in Ramsbottom, people don't talk about careers in fashion. You know, it's not a career, quote unquote. And so once I got to university and I was in these shared halls and we were with students from St. Martins and students from London College of Fashion, I was like oh my god these people are doing fashion courses that's the thing and so I immediately tried to change to a fashion course and they were like no sorry it's too late try again next year and again

my aggressive ambition and impatience meant that I was like okay I'll make this journalism degree as fashion as I can. And I spoke in the introduction about how Agnes Dean used to serve you fish and chips. She did. Which is an extraordinary thing that the two of you became. It's like a fashion fable now at this point, isn't it? Exactly. You left behind the tabards. Yeah.

But that idea that both of you became these kind of titans of the fashion industry. Did you, you again like when you were eating fish and chips with Agnes Dean did you imagine that it would ever end up like this did you talk about fashion with her then or do you feel more that it was a sort of happy accident back then it wasn't something that I really talked about you know I was kind of planning this career in journalism and writing and I was thinking that I was going to go to London and be in kind of this world of media and I didn't really know what that meant. I remember thinking that I was always thinking that Agnes should be a model and kind of like encouraging her to do that for sure. And when I went,

when I first went to university, she used to kind of, she was working in Manchester still at the time and she just used to come down and stay in my halls of residence when she got jobs and I think once we moved in together in London I think that's when we both kind of started to really pursue this dream of which we didn't know what it was really. So I'm going to get onto your first failure in a minute but I wanted to ask you a very important question first which is how you eat your fish and chips talk me through it well being a northerner oh just loads and loads of salt and vinegar um do you put the vinegar on first yes yes because it helps the salt to stick exactly yes and you have to eat and you have to eat them out the paper absolutely 100 okay so your first failure is not to do with vinegar and sauce and what order you put it on.

But your first failure is journalism, which we've touched on. So why have you chosen this as a failure? Well, I chose this as my first one because as far as my journalistic career goes, it lasted sort of about two years before I quickly moved on to something else and so I kind of I felt like whilst this was probably my first failure it was the one that created the opportunity that was my business that was kind of born out the back of me failing in that particular field and I think to a lot of people when I when I started my company and I started writing these rhyming couplets on t-shirts to me it felt slightly sort of

transitional you know I was using my quote-unquote journalistic skills and just writing on t-shirts and that was kind of what captured people's attention was what those t-shirts said not necessarily the fact that they were every colour under the sun although that definitely helped but yeah i would say my my failure as a journalist you know i never made it into the world that i sort of saw myself eventually coming to which was like this world of fashion journalism and going to the shows and writing about this of the higher end of fashion i i my journalistic career was much more at the desk of teen magazines suggesting which color juicy tube 15 year old should wear to the bus stop you know it was never it was never the highest echelons of the industry

by any by any stretch of the imagination i remember you know running around hamster teeth away from park rangers trying to style S Club Juniors because we were trying to do a shoot with eight 13-year-olds behind a bush. It was just, it was not glamorous. It was not fashion. It was very much, you know, your entry level journalistic career for sure. Am I right that you used to work for Smash Hips? Yeah, I was a fashion editor when I was about, I think, 21, 22. Yeah, it was incredible I mean I think this is kind of where this sort of failure comes from it's just

because I'm so attracted by fun and I'm so motivated by that and I think you know whilst I was I had these dreams and ambitions to be this sort of highbrow fashion journalist. The minute I ended up in a teen magazine on a work placement, I was just, I couldn't believe people got paid to do it. I was having so much fun. You know, we got called into a conference one day to watch Blue's new video and have a discussion on whether we thought that they were cover worthy again. And I was like, this is what I talk about in the pub. Like people are getting paid for this.

This is incredible. And it was just like such fun and like a playful energy that, you know, I didn't feel pressured to be something that I wasn't. I just felt really comfortable. And I suppose that's what made me excel, I think, in that environment. Peyton, it's happening we're finally being recognized for being very online it's about damn time

I mean it's hard work being this opinionated and correct you're such a Leo all the time so if you're looking for a home for your worst opinions if you're a hater first

and a lover of pop culture second then join me Hunter Harris Harris, and me, Peyton Dix, the host of Wondery's newest podcast Let Me Say This. As beacons of truth and connoisseurs of mass, we are scouring the depths of the internet so you don't have to. We're obviously talking about the biggest gossip

and celebrity news. Like, it's not a question of if Drake got his body done, but when. You are so messy for that, but we will be giving you the B-sides. Don't you worry. The deep cuts, the niche, the obscure. Like that one photo of Nicole Kidman after she finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise.

Mother. A mother to many. Follow Let Me Say This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new episodes on YouTube or listen to Let Me Say This ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hi, I'm Matt Lewis, historian and host of a new chapter of Echoes of History,

a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. Join me and world-leading experts every week as we explore the incredible real-life history that inspires the locations, the characters and the storylines of Assassin's Creed. Listen and follow Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. and do you think having been a journalist in your early 20s it gave you a sense of the need to be nice to people because I often think that if you've been a waiter or if you've just sort of seen the other side of things and then you become a quote-unquote a star in a particular industry and you're courted by journalists, or you're served very graciously by waiters, that it actually helps to know what it's

like from the other side. Yeah, I think so. But I also think my personality is that I just have an unquenchable thirst for people to like me. And so my solution to that just tends to be oversharing until I make someone laugh and I feel like you know I'm breaking through so I think it's a bit of a combination I don't think I've I've kind of got the personality where I can be sort of standoffish or a bitch to someone it's just it's much more I have a need for people to think that people like me well it makes you an a dream guest on this podcast, I have to say. So thank you very much for being that person. Did you feel, because I think, and I speak as a journalist myself,

like I didn't have a very good time at school and I never really felt that I fitted in. And I feel that journalism is one of those industries where it gets the misfits. And what makes you a solid unit is the fact that you're connected by your misfittery did you feel that way yeah definitely I mean I had a tough time at sort of earlier on at school I started at an all boys senior school and I started there from about eight through to my second year at

senior school and I left there because I was getting bullied so I had a really tough time at that point in my life but then I moved to this much smaller school which is where I met the girl that I ended up running the business with for about 10 years I just really sort of flourished in that environment it was like big fish small pond type idea and so we were all already these misfits because it was such a small group of people but yeah I definitely did feel a sense of kinship once I got to London and I was in this kind of world of fashion and journalism and and this world I did definitely felt like you know there's a lot a much more diverse grouping of people in that field for sure. I really find it upsetting the thought of a young Henry Holland being bullied. Yeah it was rough it was not very nice I was camp and I was in an all-boy school of

a thousand boys and people pick up on that and they pointed it out and it just wasn't very nice and so I just decided it wasn't for me it was it was tough because it was kind of like a family tradition that we all went to that school and so it was kind of you know that whole process of moving was not the easiest but once I got to my new school it was everything sort of lifted and everything was great again and you felt able to be yourself yeah exactly and just being around women well girls but the all-boys school I went to when I was about eight or nine we were told to call the female teachers sir because quote unquote it would be I'm not joking it was an archaic school they told us to call the female teacher sir because it's easier I was like I can see you're

a woman I'm not an idiot so it was an interesting place so you're in London and you're working on teen magazines and yes when is it that you come up with your first rhyming couplet t-shirt first of all I was having the time of my life. I absolutely loved my job. It was just the most fun. And as I said, it wasn't serious in any way. I was just really just getting on with life and loving it. certain fields, you know, this teen world that was a bit sort of not taken very seriously, was that I would go out to lots of clubs in and around London, like when there was clubs still in Soho and in the East End. And that was kind of where I made connections in the more sort of high fashion, I suppose, if you're going to say that sort of world. And one of those clubs was Boombox, which I'm sure lots of people have heard of and know of, which was this Sunday

night party in Hoxton Square which was run by a guy called Richard Mortimer and there was it became so well known it just became this sort of almost global phenomenon at one point because it's sort of the leading night in this movement god it sounds so wanky. This kind of trend, I suppose, called new rave. And I was on my way to one of those parties with a group of my mates and we were just around their house having some drinks beforehand and started, you know, making up these rhyming couplets about designers that we may or may not have wanted to sleep with at the time. And they'd become increasingly pornographic

to the point that we we edited it down to four which were you who gareth pew get your freak on giles deacon do me daily christopher bailey and cause me pain eddie simone it was really just a kind of a bit of a joke amongst us and then something that we wanted to wear ourselves. I made about 20 of each and I ended up just giving most of them away to get them out there. And yeah, those four slogans completely changed the trajectory of my career and my life, I suppose, from that point. That's incredible because in the end, Giles Deacon and Gareth Pugh both wore one of your t-shirts, didn't they? Yeah, they did. So I gave, as I say, I gave them out to friends and I knew Gareth from going out and I knew Giles, sort of one person removed through friends.

And so I'd given one of each to Gareth and I was at his show at London Fashion Week and I was sat on the floor with all of his housemates. And one of his housemates was like, oh, Gareth's got one of your t-shirts on today. and I was at his show at London Fashion Week and I was sat on the floor with all of his housemates and one of his housemates was like, oh, Gareth's got one of your t-shirts on today and I was like, what? So then I had this sort of mild panic attack throughout the whole show thinking, oh my God, is he gonna come out in it at the end? Which he did and really I later found out

it was only because he hadn't had a chance to go home and change. He'd been in the studio all night. And then the next day I got a message saying Giles wants to wear the Gareth one for his show and Agnes was walking the show as well and so I managed to get this t-shirt out to Giles and then Giles gave us tickets to the show and it was me and Agnes's boyfriend at the time this guy called Josh and we had these tickets to the show but Giles's show was always in this notoriously tiny venue and he used to do it twice so like two sittings but it was still like

massively oversubscribed so the fact you had a ticket didn't necessarily mean you were going to get in and so we turned up trying to be cool and quote like fashionably late and we couldn't get in and so Josh and I climbed some scaffolding across the road of the Rochelle canteen in East London and I was fuming so I was wearing white jeans I remember it vividly and we climbed the scaffolding to try desperately to see if a Agnes walks in the show kind of watch her through the window and b see if Giles came out in my t-shirt at the end. And Giles is very shy anyway. He just sort of popped his head around the corner and gave a little wave. So I didn't know if he'd worn it at all,

even though I was up some scaffolding, two flights up trying to see through the window. And then after that, did the demand just become insane? Yeah, after that, it was like the speed at which things happened was really quite insane. It was maybe a speed at which things happen was really quite insane. It was maybe a couple of days later, maybe I got a phone call at my desk at Bliss on my mobile and it was Sarah Moa.

And she was like, oh, hi, Henry, it's Sarah Moa from American Vogue. I just wondered if you had a second to talk. And I was just like, my mouth dropped open. I think I just dropped whatever I was doing, whoever I was talking to just walked out of the office and was like, this is clearly important. just dropped whatever I was doing whatever whoever I was talking to just walked out of the office and was like this is clearly important from between that sort of September through to the Christmas we got orders we were in like Dover Street Market in London Joyce in Hong Kong Barney's in New York

placed an order and did windows it was just insane the speed and the trajectory at which they kind of became global almost. And at this stage were you still working for teen magazines? Yes full-time. So when did you give up your full-time job? Well I handed in my notice on the 26th of November and so my last day was for the Christmas holidays and then my first fashion show at London Fashion Week was February the 11th. That's incredible Henry, oh my gosh the stress of those months I can't even imagine. Yeah I had no idea what I was doing and I always sort of use this quote and say ignorance is bliss

because it absolutely was, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea what I was getting myself into, no idea of the importance or seriousness of what was riding or what I was about to do and so in that vein I just kind of blindly went out and did it in the only way I knew how I didn't really have the pressure on me that I should have I don't think well I just think that really helped you know I didn't ever have a moment where I just sat in the floor and just got overwhelmed by what was going on because I didn't really know or understand that kind of came later has anyone ever taken exception to one of your slogan t-shirts anyone whose name you featured yes I've got a couple of cease and desist which I keep in a filing cabinet

but they those those were mostly for later ones where I drew people they weren't quite happy with their depiction one from Don Vesace which is quite cool there was one designer Olivier Teiskens who was a New York-based designer who took umbrage at the slogans which I found quite interesting that he was the only one and did you make something rhyme with Versace or it was just a picture? which I found quite interesting that he was the only one. And did you make something rhyme with Versace or it was just a picture? It was a picture. It was another round of T-shirts that I did a couple of years later where we did illustrations of naked designers

and covered their unmentionables with flowers. And Alba Elbaz and Donatella Versace weren't so keen on those. OK. Well, as I say, you're very rare in that you're a fashion designer with a sense of humour. But is there anything that you think you couldn't rhyme a couplet with? Yes, Holland. My own name. It's insane. When you'd interviewed me previously and you'd asked me to do a rhyme for your name.

It's quite common. People would do that quite a lot and ask me to do that and then but often they would also say what what would be your rhyme and the reason that there isn't one out there is because it doesn't work so I think in my first ever show I tried I did like a sort of a wedding dress type thing where I tried to do I don't need a husband I've got house of Holland which is touching girl it's a half rhyme it's a half rhyme but it doesn't fully rhyme but there was one incredible story when I was in Tokyo I think I was doing a launch of a fragrance I did in this group project a few years ago and I was with a friend of mine and it was not long after Kanye West had done the Taylor Swift VMAs stage crashing intrusion situation yes and he'd gone to Tokyo because it's the perfect place to hide out because the culture

there is such that there just isn't paparazzi and there you know nobody would at the time social media wasn't as big a thing nobody would take pictures of you or post you on social media and it was just the perfect place to sort of disappear and we were in this club out there called Le Baron and ended up being with Kanye West and he said to me in the club he was like come on man do a rhyme for me or do a t-shirt with my name or something and without missing a beat I just blurted out, come all over my chest, Kanye West. And he was like, whoa, back off. He wasn't quite prepared for what came out. I was like, well, you asked for it.

I think I'd had one or two drinks at that point. But yeah, that was one of the ones that sort of blurted out. Sometimes they come instantly and sometimes it's a bit more tricky but it's always the first one that works the best the one that just sort of comes to mind straight away so interesting and hilarious and just in case anyone's interested so I did interview Henry in 2009 and it was for the Observer and I did ask him to rhyme with my name. And the one that you came up with instantly was Elizabeth Day covered in clay. So well done. I'm glad to have rhymed you with a simple surname.

Yeah, I would definitely have gone much more, you know, much more risque than that these days, I think. Oh, excellent. Well, I can't wait to hear the new one. Did you do one for Agnes Dean? I did. It was one of the rudest ones because I felt like I could get away with it. And that one was Flicky Bean for Agnes Dean. Which, looking back, looking back, I can't believe I opened a show with that.

I just can't believe that I had the balls to do that. But yeah, that was the first ever runway look of my career, was a T-shirt that says Flicky Bean for Agnesty. I remember that show vividly because, as I said, ignorance is bliss or whatever, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I had an intern come and help me. He was a friend of a friend who sort of taught me

how to cut a pattern on the floor of my flat in Chalk Farm. You know, I was like, oh, I need to make outfits rather than just T-shirts. And so I just made T-shirts that were slightly longer. So I was like, ta-da, T-shirt dress. And they were by no means long enough. So they basically flashed the girls' knickers. And then we did these kickers in collaboration for the shoes and put these knee socks on the girls.

It was part of this group fashion show called Fashion East which run by a woman called lulu kennedy and three designers show at once back to back and so you all share a backstage area and it's absolute mayhem before the show so everyone's getting hair and makeup done and it's all just manic i've no idea what's going on you know like the levels of anxiety are completely insane. And then just before the show, all three groups of models lined up backstage just to, you know, to get sent out one by one. And it was at that point that all of my girls stood there in these tiny little t-shirts and very little else. And then the next designer was stood behind them in a row. Every single one of them was wearing floor-length cardigans and balaclavas that I realized that it was winter it was a winter season and I was showing basically the most summery

collection of clothes you'd ever seen and that was the first point I realized it was an autumn winter season I was like holy shit that was you learned on the job you learned on the job what did your parents make of what you were doing? They were incredibly supportive. They always have been. I think, you know, as long as there's drive, ambition and kind of a work ethic, then, you know, I could have been going out there to be a bin man. And, you know, when I was 23 and I said, you know, I'm giving up my said you know I'm giving up my career I'm giving up my salary I'm giving up my career to start my own company they were all like incredible well how

can we help like this is so exciting what you do you know there was no questioning of are you sure this is the good idea sure this is going to work there was just no questioning of that whatsoever and they just had complete and utter trust and faith in me that I was doing the right thing well talking about your parents brings us on to your second failure, which I think is one of my favourite failures of all time, which is your failure to grow up. And you said to me in the email that you had asked your 73-year-old mother recently when you start to feel like a grown-up. And what was her reply?

Still waiting, darling. Still waiting. I think if anyone knows my mum, that makes perfect sense. But yes, I had that exact conversation with her when I was at work a few months ago. I don't know, it's just something that I'm always like, I need to, surely this, I need to stop feeling like such a big kid and feel a bit more grown up.

Because when you're running a business and you're dealing with right quite serious things like tax bills and staffing issues and you know and all of those things you kind of feel a bit like you should feel more grown up and you should be dealing with things in a much more serious manner and you should be taking things really seriously and I think I've learned to realize that you can still do those things effectively without doing it with a sour face on you and without doing it in a way that isn't fun and isn't finding the joy and whatever can be found in doing it yeah my failure to grow up is actually something that I now embrace for sure I mean mean, throughout my career, I've had this imposter complex

and also this idea where I've longed to be considered more seriously at times than I possibly have been by the press or by the industry as a whole. And then as soon as I kind of go after that, it immediately turns me off and fills me with anxiety that I'm going to be held up to a different set of standards. And I go straight back to being my silly, frivolous self as much as possible. So I think that's so interesting, because you've identified something really quite profound there. I, like you had that for years, I wanted to be taken seriously, quote, unquote,

as a novelist. And then I realised that actually actually in trying to be more serious than I was, I wasn't being true to myself. And actually, true success lies in authenticity. And your authenticity is being playful and witty. And I feel like we've been fed a lie for so many millennia that there is one right way of doing things. There is one right way of operating a business or writing a book. And generally, it's the straight white male way. Yes. And actually, that's incorrect. And there are lots of different ways of doing things. But how much do you feel now that success is another word for authenticity? Absolutely. I think that's, I always talk

about that. And I think, you know, I often, I've done interviews or panel discussions where people ask about advice for people going out into this industry. And I think because my journey into it was so atypical and, you know, it wasn't this sort of pre-planned career path or trajectory, and I didn't study fashion and, you know, I didn't go the traditional route. My story is quite unique in that sense. But I always talk about just authenticity. It's like this industry is a form of expression and it's a way of expressing yourself. And if you're not doing that in a way that's authentic and true to yourself, then that's going to show up immediately.

And cracks are going to appear and it's just going to look fake and people see through that straight away and have you ever been guilty of that have you ever done something where you felt like you were trying to be more grown up more serious than you really were little bits yeah it little bits but nothing nothing sort of seismic i don't think because I think it's sort of as I say it goes in waves and so I'll sort of head down a certain path trying to appear to be slightly more serious and more grown up and then ultimately it just I just get pulled back to my authentic self and and just the way of doing things mean, we did a show once called Grow Up and it was kind of, in a way,

trying to kind of communicate to the press and the people at the show that we were, as a brand, we were growing up, you know, our product's growing up. We were trying to talk to a slightly older customer. And then I came out in a bright red hoodie with a carpet on the front that said I love my job so it was kind of like I tried to go one way and then ultimately I was just still

myself but it strikes me talking to you that you are someone who really does know yourself very well do you think that you've had that ability from an early age? Because sometimes it takes, I know it took me a while to know who I really was. I don't think I had it from an early age, no. I think it definitely, it's something that I've kind of developed more in adulthood. Because I think, you know, when you become more comfortable with who you are authentically, then that becomes a much easier process and that definitely happens as you as you get older but this career has definitely helped you look at yourself a lot more and question yourself in certain ways because

you're putting yourself out there I think when you're working in a creative industry of any kind you leave a piece of your heart and soul on the page or in each collection and you know you're working in a creative industry of any kind you leave a piece of your heart and soul on the page or in each collection and you know you're basically opening up your diary for the world to read and then you're ultimately asking them to pass judgment on it so as a fashion designer we're doing that every three months with each collection we're like saying look up you know what's inside my head and what I want to talk about and then sit there with your eyes closed and your fists clenched waiting for people to pass judgment you know and I'm guessing it's

the same as an author you know you put your heart and soul into a body of work and then you wait for someone to review it it's quite a unique process to go through and do you read your reviews yeah I do and then but it's all it's always a tricky timing thing of when to read them because often the day after the show you're invariably quite hungover and coming sort of coming down from this real sort of endorphin rush of the excitement and the exhilaration and the nerves and the panic of like the last week the build-up to the show and so you kind of you find yourself in this bit of a dip anyway so to read anything slightly negative it doesn't even have to be you know it can be the most glowing review

and it might be like his shoes were a bit shit and you know it'll throw you into a five-hour depression i'll be like what's wrong with my shoes oh my god so you're just not equipped or strong enough to hear anything that's even remotely negative so it's about a timing thing reading them at a time when you can take them on board and use them as constructive feedback and not at a time when they're gonna make you sob for hours on end i wonder if you could just tell us a bit more about your mother because from the small amount that you've said she sounds utterly fabulous. She is, she's incredible. We're very similar me and my mum I think. We both love attention and we love excitement. She's been so

thrilled and in awe of my career in fashion. She's at every single show front row and after every show she'll come up to me for weeks on end and be like oh i spoke to that person at the show i spoke to that person at the show and it'll be everyone from like oh i spoke to kanye west at the show i spoke to sarah mo at the show and i'm just like how do you manage to speak to 400 people in the space of nine minutes when people are being seated and it's because she just sort of parades up and down and sort of receives visitors. She loves the process of going to the shows. And, yeah, she's a very inspiring woman, my mum.

She brought me up very much with a kind of a mindset that was all about manifestation and positivity and positive thought. And, you know, she wrote a book when I was about 11 or 12 called Living Positively with Stephanie Holland and I was brought up listening to Louise Hay affirmation tapes and things like that she's always kind of instilled in me this different belief system which I think so many people and myself included as a teenager just thought was ridiculous and you know was thought was this embarrassing thing and now as an adult knowing that that's just sort of ingrained in me this belief system that anything is possible and believing is seeing and all of those things such a valuable lesson to have so that's super interesting do you have a mood board and do you manifest things in your own life yeah I don't do mood boards but I do

manifest things where I sort of visualize things and then do the whole gratitude thing I mean the biggest thing that they teach you in manifestation is acknowledging the things that you ask for when you receive them and and showing gratitude to acknowledge that the universe has provided the things for you and my mum lives in France or had a house in France for many years and we used to go over as groups of friends and she would sort of give these mini manifestation courses and then send everybody off to go and write down what they wanted from life and and do these visualizations and stuff which to me always just seemed so normal but as an adult people always found it so interesting and exciting that's fascinating given what we're about to discuss

which is your third failure and I'm so so grateful that you have chosen to talk about it because I don't think enough people do and I think it will bring an enormous amount of comfort to a lot of listeners. And it is your failure to keep your business solvent. So, yes. Tell us about that, Henry, in your own words. Well, I thought given the name of the podcast and kind of that's probably the reason why we're speaking at this point in my life. I think it was sort of the elephant in the room. I felt like it was important to talk about. So we closed the business or we called in the administrators in March this year. And I wouldn't say it was a direct result of coronavirus, but definitely when that hit in China late last year, early this year, it definitely impacted us quite heavily because quite a lot of

our business at that point was coming from China and so you know potentially it would have happened anyway but it definitely sped things up with what we're going through at the moment now globally. In very basic terms I suppose it is a failure it seems a failure because the business is no longer able to continue and it was you know it got to the point where it was the responsible thing to do to acknowledge that and move on and make sure that, you know, we protected space of around six months prior, the process of making that decision to walk away and to call time and to acknowledge that, you know, this was the right thing to do at this point was the hardest thing. And that was the thing that really got me and I really struggled with. And that was kind of for the last half of

last year, I think, just kind realising that things were a struggle, you know, the fun was getting less and less because it was being so overwhelmed by much more serious and trickier situations and having to kind of continue to drive something. I think the biggest thing for me that whole period was the duality of it you know we talked a lot earlier about authenticity and for me being authentic would have been going

out there and being like shit things are really tough actually but you're actually in this game you're out there selling a dream and being like everything's brilliant everything's fantastic you know everything's bigger better shinier newer because, because you're selling that dream. And in reality, you're going back day after day, like trying to figure out how we can continue and trying to work your ass off, trying to, you know, generate the money to keep things moving and all of those things. And so I found that duality of it quite tricky. So actually, I suppose the moment of making that decision and saying, okay, I think this is the right thing to do now. This is it's time to call it was just this incredible weight lifted off my shoulders.

And how much is that duality to do with the responsibility you have to employees? I mean, that must be a crushing weight of responsibility. That was a crushing weight of responsibility that was a crushing weight for sure and I think I managed to mitigate that quite early on by being really open with them because for me they were the most important part in all of this and it was so important for them to understand as soon as possible to not kind of walk in one day and say bye guys that's it and so you know I tried to bring them in on the process because it's a real team effort and you know I wanted them to understand and also open things

up for suggestions and ideas of ways that we could you know improve things or turn things around and so that bit I kind of we did in stages So I was able to mitigate that level of responsibility. And I think the biggest sort of weight, I suppose, was responsibility to people that we worked with, suppliers and, you know, investors. And there's so many different pieces to the puzzle. There's so many things that go through your head. It's a lot. How scary is it because I know that for many of us even if we're not business owners money worries keep us awake at night I mean

were there periods of time when you were really terrified absolutely like petrified of what people were going to say petrified of what people were going to think petrified of letting people down I think that's a real a thing of mine that you know i was talking earlier i have this unquenchable thirst for people to like me and you know that kind of extends into i really don't want to ever let people down and when people have you know invested their trust and and money into you it's a really difficult thing to get to a point where you're like this isn't going to be able to work out in the way that I would want it to you know so it's a lot of emotional pressure for sure. And how have you found a way of living with it to the extent that you can talk to me

about it and you have courageously chosen it as one of your failures. How have you got to that point? What kind of thinking have you had to put into place? Well, I think it kind of connects back to that first failure that I talked about with you today. It's about, you know, my failure in journalism created this incredible opportunity that was my brand for 13 and a half years and so I'm just seeing this as making space for the next opportunity and it's really difficult to look back on what I achieved with the business and what we all experienced anyone who's a part of it as anything but just the most overwhelmingly exciting and inspiring kind of time that just I have nothing but pride and gratitude for if I sit and think about anything over the last 13 years to do with the business I just have so much joy and excitement and

it's such a great time so it's really hard to look back on something that's so positive as it being negative in any way if that makes sense it does it makes total sense you wrote something to me in the initial email where you outlined your failures which I wanted to quote back to you because I just think it's so powerful, which is I think I didn't realize until now how much I was weighed down by the constant drive for success that I was so distracted by over the last decade. And that for me goes to the heart of what this podcast is about, that there is this notion of success on paper. And the way that you describe it as a distraction is super interesting to me because it sounds to me as if that wasn't actually where your happiness lay yeah potentially

and I think that's something that I've only been able to realize given the space outside of it you know and no longer having that daily distraction and constant drive because I think when I set out in this business and when I started House of Holland it was something that found me in a way and so I saw myself very much as just realizing every opportunity that presented itself to the best of my ability and working my arse off to make it the best and the biggest and the most global and as big as I could make it. And I was so distracted by that just blind drive to do that that I didn't ever sort of sit down and be like, is this what I want to be doing at this stage? You know, is this the best thing for me?

Even to the point that, you know, is this the best thing for the business at this point? Or is this the best thing for my relationships and my life? And it does feel a bit like at the time sort of now sort of stepping outside of it and looking back that it was I was distracted just by this blinding kind of drive for success yeah and all consuming yeah completely yeah you are married and I wonder I know that the failure of businesses can often have a really tough impact on relationships. And it's a difficult thing for a partner to deal with. How has your husband been through this process? He's been incredible. He's definitely been one of the things that's really helped me get through the process.

And I think he works in the industry, so he kind of has a level of understanding which helps. But definitely the period, the last half of last year, when I was talking about that emotional wrenching of making the decisions and coming really slowly to the realization that things might not work out and things might not go on forever that's when he was kind of really amazing and I think it's been a great thing for all of my relationships actually just that weight that's been lifted that I talked about I just think it's allowed me so much more to let so many other things in that perhaps I hadn't given as much space and time to as I had before it's quite rare on this podcast that I speak to someone who is currently in the grip of a failure

and one of the things that I think it is necessary to say to people is that whilst I and you might believe that failure can be an opportunity wrapped up in something different, that I also believe it's necessary to take time to grieve a loss. And I wonder if you're going to take time to do that, or maybe you feel that you're in that time now. And how much are you thinking of the future or is it just too early to ask that question? Yes, I definitely questioned me coming on and talking to you about this and thought about, you know, this whole idea, because I'm sure that I'm still very much in the midst of many different stages that I'm going to go through with this whole process. But I just thought it was an important thing to talk about and kind of share my experiences with.

But, you know, I may well end up going into a kind of a much more sad grieving process down the line. But I do feel like that happened before making the decision that the time was right to move on I definitely felt like I had those sort of dark times and those sad days and you know we talked about this before we did the podcast but this idea that most people are happy to talk about their failures once they've got to their next success and they can be like oh well that failed but now look what I've done and so I'm kind of I'm not yet there I don't have a very clear path as to what my next move is going to be I don't have a clear decision on what my plans are for now but I think this global meltdown that

we find ourselves in is really helping me just take a bit of time and acknowledge this pause and embrace it a little bit whilst getting all of my ducks in a row and getting my things together and figuring out what I want my next move to be and making sure that I have enough time to think about what I want it to be and not just going out with this blind ambition that we talked about before and just going into the first opportunity that presents itself because it looks like a success at that moment acknowledge the pause is just such a beautiful phrase and i wish i had it on a t-shirt and i wish i knew someone who could i don't know like do a slogan t-shirt what rhymes with pause god oh laws anyway that's your job um yeah what advice would you give anyone who is facing the threat of losing their job or their business because of what's happened recently with the

global pandemic and they are really terrified of the blankness of the future what advice would you give i can only ever give advice from my perspective of how I am dealing with things and I think my advice would be to just do your best to not get weighed down by the quote-unquote failure of one thing and channel all of that energy that you would have been plowing into something that was potentially this sort of sinking ship or something that was not going to turn itself around into something new and exciting and putting all of those energies into building new opportunities

and finding the excitement in the newness. I think I'm very excited by change and newness, which definitely helps. I know that some people find it really unnerving and unsettling. So I'm quite lucky that I find it quite easy to focus on the next thing, focus on the newness and opportunity. I think that's such an important point. And I think you're totally right. When your life completely changes and you don't know where you're going next, that can also be interpreted as a blank canvas

and there's a liberation to that yes you know use this time as i was saying earlier this is probably never going to happen to us again where we're gonna you know the world is effectively hitting the pause button and we can literally sit and take a bit of time and even if you know someone's going through a downturn as a result of what's happening at the moment in the world then using this time that we have on this sort of pause it's basically like the world hitting control alt delete and that just means that we're refreshing and we're restarting you know I don't think it's we're not closing down we're just restarting and we're re-energizing for the next chapter I love that Henry Holland thank you and can I be an awful awful interviewer and put you right on the spot and ask you if you have another

rhyming couplet for Elizabeth Day given that you dismissed your earlier one about being covered in clay yeah that was so lame I apologize how about I give up being gay for Elizabeth Day yes that's amazing oh my god I love it so much much more on brand I feel like given it only took me how many years? Ten. Nine years? No, eleven. It only took me ten years. Let's speak in another ten and we'll see where we are. I might still be sat in my house in isolation. Let's hope not. Oh, Henry Holland, you have been an absolute delight. I cannot thank you enough for your honesty, your courage, your humour.

I'm so delighted you're not a fishmonger. And thank you so, so much for coming on how to thank you thank you so much if you enjoyed this episode of how to fail with Elizabeth Day I would so appreciate it if you could rate review and subscribe apparently it helps other people know that we exist