YMC You Must Create

When, back in 1995, Fraser Moss and Jimmy Collins borrowed industrial designer Raymond Loewy’s slogan, ‘You must create’, in order to name their nascent clothing company they couldn’t have realised what a clarion call those words would become. YMC, as the company swiftly came to be known, took initial inspiration from work wear, the football terraces of the early 80s, the tradition of outward bound attire and American and British military wear. From the uniforms and sportswear they borrowed precision and crisp functionality and from punk they took a dark humour and well aimed iconoclasm. YMC were and will always be defined as much by what they are against as what they are for.

Since 1995 YMC has slowly and quietly evolved into a highly significant label. They are now among the prime exponents of a highly British form of modernism in clothes design. Where others are increasingly concerned with the fleeting, the transient and the contingent, YMC follow the Corbusian precept that form follows function. The results, free from fads and fripperies, are as close to timeless as clothing gets.