Sculptor and jewellery designer Slim Barrett in his studio in London WC1
London has been the backdrop for the rise and demise of far too many great talents in the fashion industry over the past 40 years, but Irish sculptor and jewellery designer Slim Barrett is a notable survivor. He's always operated on his own terms. After studying Fine Art at GMIT in his home county of Galway, Barrett moved to London in 1982 where chance encounters with Bruce Oldfield and Antony Price put him in the middle of a burgeoning new wave of design in the British capital. 'Jewellery was a total accident,' he tells The Blend, sitting at the welding bench in his studio near London’s Mount Pleasant. 'I had created a minimal collection of blown glass and leather pieces, and through Jan van Helden, who was making clothes for Princess Diana, and Bruce, I started selling through Harvey Nichols and Harrods.'
Sculptor and jewellery designer Slim Barrett in his studio in London WC1
Sharing a studio with shoemaker Jimmy Choo, and working with couturiers to the Royal Family, was an incongruous start for Barrett, who became known for edgy work that mixed folkloric and pagan imagery with the recycled junk aesthetic he shared with his friend, the stylist Judy Blame and his peers. Soon Barrett’s name was a regular credit in D-i-D. He went on to design prototypes for Vivienne Westwood’s orb logo, pieces for John Galliano’s shows, and Chanel. His work has been a part of fashion through so many eras that it has become an incidental document of changes in the industry. 'There wasn’t much art-based jewellery in the realm of fashion before I started,' he says. 'And today it’s become a corporate conglomerate thing. I started working at a time when people were able to be creative with limited finances. I’m not interested in fashion from a creative point of view at all right now. My work comes from an early fascination with Paul Klee, and the romantic connection of the Irish to our landscape.'
Sculptor and jewellery designer Slim Barrett in his studio in London WC1
There’s a talismanic quality to a lot of Barrett’s jewellery – like the pagan connotations of the hag stone garlands in Derek Jarman’s garden in Dungeness. It is rich in myth and magic, whether rendered in copper or platinum, depicting cherubs, eyes or trees. Recently he has been making shamrock pendants for Dublin-based band Fontaines D.C., one of the most feted groups to come out of the city since U2, and brooches for John Alexander Skelton, the menswear designer known for his limited-run artisanal tailoring with handwritten, individually numbered labels and a refusal to sell online.
When The Blend visits Barrett, he is working on pieces for Skelton incorporating antique coins, while the designer is away shooting the lookbook for a new collection near Barrett’s hometown in the hills of Galway. They have been collaborating for several seasons, Skelton’s fascination for handmade objects and folklore chiming loudly with Barrett’s history and canon: ‘When we worked together on pieces for his January 2023 show, about neolithic imagery from the Orkney Islands, he brought drawings as references. I explained they would have been used as maps, to travel with, so instead of just using those images in a literal way, I told John to go away and map out a few different spots in London that are important to him, and then we would create something totally new between us.’
Barrett remains an outsider in many ways. Any story about his work inevitably references the East of Paris Diamond Fairy Crown that he made for Victoria Beckham to wear when she married David Beckham in 1999, and there was a period where he created merchandise for the boy band Bros in the 1980s, but he remains an esoteric craftsman, hand-making everything laboriously at his studio. ‘My work has always been sculpture,’ he says. ‘I stopped all the wholesale jewellery stuff in the 1990s. I didn’t want to do it any more.’
Sculptor and jewellery designer Slim Barrett in his studio in London WC1
‘My work has always been sculpture – I stopped all the wholesale jewellery stuff in the 1990s. I didn’t want to do it any more’
Barrett
Asked how the business sustains itself, he explains, ‘It’s just word of mouth, with me working here with my wife Jules, who was my reason for moving to London in the first place.’ Those in the know have always made appointments for a piece of Barrett. ‘I remember Katharine Hamnett coming to me once in the 1980s when I was in the same building as her studio and asking if I could do headdresses for her show that day. Which I did. This morning, we had a partner of one of Fontaines D.C. come in for a chain. My son is in a band signed to their label, and we’ve known them since they started. I used to offer them a place to stay when they had no money and needed a place to crash. I’ve always liked to work with people I have a relationship with. I should have a retrospective or put a book together at some point, but that’s what really matters.’