We spoke to the brothers behind Gio-Goi and Manchester's illegal Acid House raves
Christopher and Anthony talk about the good and bad times, as well as the re-launch of Gio-Goi
So the full collection came after profiting from the T-shirts?
Christopher: Yeah, as soon as we got the money in from the T-shirts, we re-visited the range. We made striped T-shirts without knowing what we were doing so we never colour-fasted them properly. People kept coming back to us and complaining that the stripes came off in the wash and we didn’t know why.
Anthony: As soon as we realised, we did what any self-respected young designer would do, we blagged it! We changed the name of the range to the Fucked up range, which meant we could do whatever we wanted. When people called to complain, we told them that’s how the clothes are supposed to be. Fucked up!
Anthony: Things were going well. We got ourselves a flagship store in Covent Garden and a flat in Kensington above Issey Miyake, but the authorities caught up with us and framed us for something we didn’t do. That really crippled the brand.
How did you bounce back from that?
Anthony: The case collapsed and we done a bit of jail time. We took a hiatus and decided to re-launch in Berlin, in 2005. We couldn’t afford a stand at this exhibition, so we decided to rent a club and showcase the collection in there.
Christopher: We thought fuck it, if there’s one thing we’re good at it’s throwing a party.
Anthony: It was described that if somebody dropped a bomb on that building on that night, nobody would be left in the fashion industry. G-Star left their party and came to ours.
Christopher: We put the collection on the catwalk, done the party and from there everybody was talking about the brand again. Straight away investors were offering us mad amounts of cash.
Anthony: The brand was a success again. We collaborated with Pete Doherty and had everybody from Liam Gallagher to Calvin Harris wearing it. Then one of the shareholders gained control and made a terrible fucking job of it. We decided to write a book with the authors of Stoned and Two Stoned – Irvine Welsh read it and wanted to produce a series on us.
Christopher: We went back and fourth over the course of a year, spending a lot of time and a lot of money until we could finally be 100 per cent owners of our brand again. That’s when we finally agreed to doing the series and official re-launching the clothes.
