It feels right to start with the bench. Not the heavy wooden ones stacked floor-to-ceiling in AllSaints stores, part of that infamous industrial aesthetic, but a metal bench outside a small Italian sandwich shop in London. That’s where I met Stuart Trevor. We sat there with focaccias wrapped in greaseproof paper, sipping San Pellegrinos yapping in the August sun, chatting about his life while the city moved around us. It was disarmingly normal. This was the man who created AllSaints, the label that defined a generation’s going-out, rock & roll wardrobe, rewrote the look of the British high street, and turned distressed leather into a lifestyle. And yet here he was, brushing crumbs off his lap and telling me stories about Hong Kong, New York and living the high life in his old design studio in Shoreditch.
And maybe that’s the thing about Stuart. For someone who changed the way Britain dressed in the late 90s and early 2000s, he's surprisingly very chilled and matter of fact, never mincing his words or appearing like somehow he's not. He’s genuine and funny in a way that cuts through the mythology. A man who started with very little, obsessed over clothes since childhood, and somehow carved an empire out of talent, no-nonsense business acumen and flea market furniture.
Stuart grew up in Dundee with his siblings. “We didn’t have money,” he says plainly. “Everything I wore was a hand-me-down.” When his mum remarried when he was eight, the family doubled overnight. “She married a guy with four kids, and then we adopted another. Suddenly there were eight of us in the house.” Clothes were rationed, toys scarcer, but imagination filled the gaps.
Grammar school became the place where his sense of style started to fight its way out. “I used to get in trouble all the time for the way I wore my uniform. I’d narrow the trousers and change the jumpers, that didn’t fit the rules.” He didn’t have designer brands, but he had an instinct for making something feel different. “It was the only way I could express myself.” By ten, he was already learning from his mother how to sew. “I used to drive her mad. I'd pick out a pair of huge men's trousers for her to alter. The first pair were Bay City Rollers trousers and I used to be so embarrassed about this. But I got them when I was 9 and I’d give them to my mum and beg her to add pleats in them like Bowie had, she helped me tailor them and I wore them out. But unfortunately for me, it was about 2 years too late for the Bay City Rollers and everyone would laugh at me." It was upon reflection that he states "I used to be embarrassed but looking back they were a huge influence on legendary bands like the sex pistols, because they appeared from nowhere and became a huge, massive thing." It's that individualism and love of Rock and Roll and Punk culture that appeared to be ingrained in Stuart from a young age. And similarly to the legacy and influence the Bay City Rollers had, perhaps set the tone for Stuart's own legacy.
That unique vision and hustle through to university eventually led him to Reiss, where he became their first designer in the 1980s. Reiss back then was a small menswear brand, formal and clean, mainly a wholesaler for the likes of Armani and other major brands and Stuart was itching to inject the chaos of music and street culture into it. “I was obsessed with music, with what people were wearing out on the streets. Reiss was tailoring, very proper, but I wanted to bring that energy in.” It was as though it was his apprenticeship in the industry. Despite learning at university, he developed his skills and learned how to source, how to build collections. But more importantly, he learned he didn’t fit into the mould of traditional British menswear. “I knew I wanted to do my own thing. Something more connected to punk and rock and roll culture.”
That “thing” became AllSaints in 1994. At first it was gritty and sharp, but nothing close to the global chain it would become. “People forget, but it wasn’t this big glossy brand from the start. It was just me." The name came from AllSaints Road in Notting Hill, where Stuart spent a lot of his time and also home to sound systems and rebellion. That street spirit became the brand’s DNA.
The stores were where the mythology and world of AllSaints started to form and come to life. “I had no money in the beginning, I used to go to flea markets, pull things out of skips, junkyards. I used to take a shop and rip out all the white plasterboard and take it back to the exposed brick. I'd put really beautiful rails, tables and no one else had ever done anything like that." He laughs at the memory. That make-do attitude and obsession for industrialism became aesthetic. Exposed brick, reclaimed wood, industrial rails. Before “experiential retail” became a buzzword, AllSaints was already doing it. “In the beginning I remember landlords saying to me at the time 'you can't leave it like that' and then they'd come to the store opening and think: wow this is incredible". It was Stuart's confidence in not only himself but his vision that built AllSaints into what it has become. And also became the blueprint for the likes of Ralph Lauren, Hugo Boss and others to copy.
And then came the leather. The AllSaints leather jacket became its holy grail: soft, distressed, perfectly imperfect. Everyone wanted one. But here’s the part that people don’t know: it was a happy accident. “I just had a leather factory that couldn't make really beautiful leathers, so I used to wash them” Stuart says. “to try and make them look cooler. And suddenly it became the coolest leather that looks beaten-up.” He laughs at the happenstance of it all. But then the bands started wearing them. Rappers too. Suddenly, what Stuart thought was a factory error became the symbol of cool. “It just took off. People loved that they looked lived-in. It was like the jacket had already had a life before you.” And it defined an era. If you were out in the early 2000s, you or someone you knew probably wore an AllSaints leather.
Part of what made AllSaints work was that it wasn’t just about clothes, it was an entire world. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of vintage sewing machines, industrial light fittings, junk-shop furniture turned into shop fixtures. “Honestly, it was just me using what I had. It ended up creating an atmosphere. It felt authentic because it was authentic.” That authenticity became aspirational. Other brands with millions to spend tried to replicate it, but they couldn’t recreate the authenticity that birthed it.
By the mid-2000s, AllSaints had exploded. Global expansion, hundreds of stores, a cult following. But success has a way of eating its creators. Investors came in, control shifted, and eventually Stuart sold his way out. “I never wanted to sell AllSaints. I built this thing from nothing. And suddenly, it wasn’t mine anymore.” He doesn’t dwell on bitterness, but you can feel the weight of it. AllSaints carried on without him, but its DNA remained his. And speaking personally, I can't imagine how i'd feel in his shoes. Yes, you've walked away with a nice payout but to see your baby carry on without you apart of it must really be heart-wrenching.
After leaving, Stuart drifted into the world of sustainability. He ended up in Arizona, of all places, rifling through thrift stores. “It was amazing. You’d find these incredible pieces, just sitting there for a few dollars.” He started customising again, this time with his daughter. “We’d take old jackets, old tees, and rework them. It was fun, no pressure. Just making things new out of old.” his passion, never gone, but on a sabbatical was igniting once again.
His new brand is under his own name, but it comes with a twist: it doesn’t produce any new clothing at all. “We don’t make clothes,” he says simply. “We reuse them. There’s already too much out there. Why add to it?” Old garments are sourced, reworked, and re-signed. “We sew the owner’s name inside. That’s the point, it’s yours. I don’t want my name plastered everywhere. The ownership should be personal.”
And like so much of his story, it started as a happy accident. “I was just messing around, customising pieces for myself, and people started asking about them. Then friends wanted them. It grew from there. I didn’t sit down and plan it as a business. It just happened.” What began as an activity with his daughter became a full-fledged label, one that directly challenges the overproduction that nearly broke fashion in the first place. And one that drove around 750 people to show up for during last fashion week for its debut. I think it's quite poetic to think and look back at how Stuart's journey started with his own mother customising his clothing, not knowing the icon her son would become in the global fashion industry. Leading to now, that same moment being re-enacted as he customises clothing with his daughter.. Perhaps not even knowing the seed, he himself, is planting in her.
What strikes me most is how consistent the thread has been. A childhood of hand-me-downs taught him to see value in scraps. Customising trousers at ten became customising thrift store finds at fifty. Flea market furniture became a high street aesthetic. A factory setback became an iconic jacket. His whole career has been built on making do, turning the overlooked into legacies.
Sitting with him on that bench, focaccia in hand, I realise how much of his story comes back to resourcefulness. It’s about seeing possibility where others see waste. It’s about building worlds from scraps. It’s about staying grounded, even when the empire has your name on it. Stuart Trevor didn’t just build a brand, he built a way of thinking about fashion that refuses to separate necessity from creativity.
And maybe that’s why his story matters now more than ever. In an industry addicted to novelty, obsessed with endless drops and trend cycles, he’s showing us that the future might lie in authenticity, honesty, and everything we already have. AllSaints was his legacy, but Stuart Trevor’s new chapter might be his revolution.