Jimmy D designer and founder James Dobson has curated a new exhibition for the Dowse museum, “re-exploring” the art collection that he grew up with in the Hutt Valley and presenting it through his unique perspective. We asked him to reflect on bringing the show together, as well as 20 years of his label – and the lessons he’s learned about fashion and creativity.‍

When the email came through from Ensemble asking me to write this piece, the opening line was: “It's SO cool you are doing the exhibition at the Dowse, I was stoked when that news came into my inbox. Also, it freaked me out that Jimmy D is 20??!!!!”

It freaked you out? Gawd. It freaks me out CONSTANTLY!

I feel particularly lucky, because in many ways I think Jimmy D is still considered an ‘emerging brand’ that still has that rebellious and subversive energy of a much newer label.

I started my brand in 2004 with a small tax refund of just over $1000 from a year spent working in the UK, and a black and white image of a clothing rack backstage at a Stephen Marr Marr Factory show. I remember staring at this image and thinking how incredible it must feel to have a rack full of clothing that you designed. 

A friend came over to show me how to trace out pattern pieces onto fabric with chalk, and I cut out all the first samples in my bedroom on the wonky floorboards of my Kingsland flat.

I had no idea what I was doing. I had a degree in photography, during which time I’d done one pattern making paper. I didn’t speak the ‘language of fashion’. Once, I took a T-shirt to a pattern maker to explain that I wanted the same “two lines of stitching” (a coverseam) on a silk top.

I still think that lack of training made me more inquisitive than I would have been if I studied fashion. I wasn’t working from traditional pattern blocks, instead I was dreaming up crazy shapes and wondering what they would do on the body.

I finally got my rack of samples together, and sold my first collection to the store that I worked at in Newmarket. At the time there really felt like there was a mini wave of exciting new labels starting out: Juliette Hogan started at the same time, labels like Cybele and Lonely Hearts hadn’t been going long, Stolen Girlfriends started the next year. 

I want to say they were crazy debaucherous times, but it was all pretty hetero and boring. We had to create our own fun, which we did in the form of a club night called It’s Time to Get Dumb – a chaotic night of New Rave music with a mandate to dress up and get crazy. We had to keep moving venues constantly, for reasons varying from an attendee stealing an entire bars' worth of alcohol from an adjoining bar to homophobic bouncers.

Stylistically I think New Rave is one of the only aesthetic periods I’ve dabbled in that hasn’t aged that well – a pair of neon green skinny jeans from my Lowest Common Dominator collection (2008) haunt me to this day. 

When I started (and this really ages me) there was no social media – there weren’t even smart phones; I was still using internet cafés to check my emails. Labels had a presence on the internet but no online stores; we didn’t have access to Instagram feeds introducing us to new labels from New York and I think, as a result, people’s references were very local. 

This meant on one hand, New Zealand had a very distinctive style but on the flip side, for me, it meant that I was constantly compared to the older guard. I was even called “the bastard son of Zambesi and Nom*D” by one reviewer. I mean… there are definitely worse comparisons that could be made, but as a young designer trying to forge his own path, it was kind of annoying.

So when anyone asks me about the biggest changes in fashion during my 20 years, it’s the internet and how it has democratised fashion and expanded everyone's references – and a label’s ability to build a community and get in front of much bigger audiences.

For me, fashion has always been about making sure everyone can see themselves being part of the Jimmy D world. Prior to my label, I had a trial in a retail store and struck up a conversation with a customer and we had a cute convo about how incredible a particular garment was. When the customer left, the person training me said, “I don’t know why you bothered talking to her, she never buys anything”. I remember feeling so deflated, and like it reinforced my worst fear: that fashion was just a judgemental, superficial world. 

I left that trial crying on the way home – it brought out all my own insecurities and made me feel like I was too ugly and uncultured to be part of the fashion world. So when I did start my own label, it was about celebrating all types of beauty, and trying to make sure it never feels elitist or exclusive.

That’s also why curating this exhibition at The Dowse has been so inspiring and cathartic. The show literally opens with a 1998 campaign image from Starfish (the iconic Pōneke label started in 1993 by now deputy mayor, Laurie Foon) printed on the sliding doors into the show: an image of a model wearing an asymmetric dress in front of a state house in Naenae.

It’s one of the first images that made me feel like I could be part of the fashion world. It’s not flashy or glitzy. It was fashion in an environment that I could relate to.

The rest of the exhibition explores facets of the Jimmy D world – the hedonistic extrovert, the introvert, the surrealist as well as moments that celebrate the beauty in decay and in the mundane, queering the masculine and the power of reinvention. All with a mix of works from artists that have inspired me – Janet Bayly, Peter Peryer, Paul Johns, Anne Shelton – and works by artists that I have had the delight of discovering through The Dowse’s incredible (and always subversive) collection that dates back to the 1970s. 

There’s a beautiful conversation between all these works and pieces we’ve pulled from the Jimmy D “archive” as well as some of my early photography.

One of my favourites is an image of my friend Emma in front of our hedge on Miro Street in Upper Hutt, in a simple cream dress from Starfish captured mid movement as she tucked her hair behind her ears – a kind of in-between moment when her guard was down, but there’s an almost perfect symmetry to the image.

I remember taking these photographs, obviously emboldened by the Starfish image, and for the first time seeing the beauty of where I grew up and realising the potential of fashion to make you look and feel truly invincible. I hope my label has, and continues to do that for people.

‍• The House of Dowse x Jimmy D exhibition will run at The Dowse Art Museum for a year, from March 30.