“You have to try this carrot cake from my neighbour. It’s amazing!”
James Brown is making me coffee in his cottage in Loughrea in Galway. The celebrity hair stylist and art director has just come back from London where he was working on a film being made about Kate Moss and the portrait artist Lucian Freud. “Lucian rarely painted anyone famous. His sittings are really long, so Kate had to go to his studio for months. They formed this kind of special friendship, so the film is about that relationship.”
Directed by James Lucas, Derek Jacobi plays Freud and Kate Moss is played by Ellie Bamber, who is styled by Brown for the movie. “For me it was so strange because I was dressing the actress in the same way I’ve dressed my friend for more than 30 years. There’s even an actor playing me. I’ve never done a film before so it was very different to fashion, but it was fantastic.”
Brown, now 54, grew up in Croydon, his Irish parents having emigrated to England in the late 1960s. The family returned to Ireland in the school holidays to Mayo and Fermanagh, where Brown played in the fields and learned to ride horses.
Back in London, it was quickly apparent that a creative life was on the cards for him. At 16 he started ditching school to work in a hairdressing salon, and met Kate Moss through his sister. They became firm friends and he styled her hair from her early modelling career, and famously for her first Vogue cover. At 22 he became the youngest hair stylist to ever do a Vogue cover.
As his and Kate’s careers exploded, Brown lived for several years in New York, before moving to Ireland.
“It was around 2005 that I found this place,” he says, talking of the cottage. “Only the land was advertised for sale, but when I drove up the lane, I saw there was a beautiful house. But half of it was falling down and it was covered in pebble-dash. Everyone was saying knock it down, but some of the outer plaster fell off one day and there was this lovely stone underneath.
“When I was working in New York I was flying over and back just to spend weekends here. I’d be working on the garden and then on the way to the airport I’d see my hands were all scratched from brambles and I’d realise I was on my way to do Nicole Kidman’s hair.”
While his work tending to the locks of the rich and famous still sends him to exotic locales, Brown now spends most of the year in Galway. “I’m very lucky in that I’ve lived all over the world and had access to the most wonderful places and parties. But this here is the best place in the world. I identify as Irish. I mean, you can identify these days as a fridge if you want to, but I identify as Irish. My grandfather sold vegetables in the village here, so it’s home.
“My friends have houses all over the world and yachts, but I don’t want to be on a yacht in St Tropez, I want to be here. And when my friends come here they want to go out, and keep saying – so what are we doing? They want to go shopping, but they don’t understand there is nothing to do. But then I see them change. They start leaving their phone down for a while and take a stroll outside, or go down to pet the horses. And they completely slow down. There’s a magic to it.”
It’s Brown’s love of the local that has led him to his latest venture – a magazine about what he terms “Ireland’s Superpower – creativity”. The first issue of D’naleri was published earlier this year. “It all started when I saw this image on Instagram of a woman in yellow gloves – washing up gloves, and another image of the shadow of clothes hanging on a washing line. I never usually do this but I messaged the guy [who had taken the pictures] and asked him was he in London.”
The “guy” turned out to be photographer Eoin Greally, who had just moved to London from his parent’s farm in Galway. “I met Eoin for coffee and we had a quick chat. Then Kate [Moss] loved the photos and said ‘Get him to do Self Service’ – the fashion magazine she was editing at the time, so Eoin came to her house in the Cotswolds and photographed her for the magazine.”
Some days later, Brown was having dinner with Victoria and David Beckham and he told Victoria about Greally’s work. “Then Eoin ends up working for Victoria. So, in two weeks, he went from his mum and dad’s farm in Glenamaddy to Kate’s house, to shooting a Victoria Beckham campaign for Vogue. He’s so talented, a wonderful photographer.”
It was when Brown started meeting Greally’s friends that he came up with the idea of a magazine to showcase the work of young Irish creatives. “There’s this whole generation in fashion and the arts leaving Ireland and going to London, and I wanted to help them in any way I can, so that’s why it started. I put together the magazine from my office in Loughrea. My business partner Jonathan Madden thought I was mad. But when I’m told I can’t do something, I get a bit anarchic and want to do it even more.”
He believed in me so much, and it changed my life. He wants to pass on the knowledge he has learned in his career, and that’s so important for young Irish creatives
— Photographer Eoin Greally on James Brown
Brown pulled in many well-known names to collaborate on the publication, including the actors Denise Gough and Paul Mescal. The Irish fashion photographer Chris Sutton, who has photographed Kendall Jenner and worked on campaigns for Louis Vuitton, flew to Ireland to shoot the young musician Rachel Connolly in Galway. Brown shows me the beautiful images and laughs. “This was in a car park in the rain. Rachel had never done any modelling before, but she just got it.”
While the shots are striking, Brown is not interested in delivering a magazine that’s purely about the visual. “It’s not a fashion magazine,” he says. “No one is interested in, ‘Are polka dots the new stripes?’ The world’s a different place now. It’s not about politics either, it’s just a purely creative space. And it’s for different types of people, though it is Irish-led. So the magazine – D’naleri [Ireland spelt backwards] – is about trying to get them a foot on the ladder.”
The magazine is tactile and beautifully produced. It’s image-based, but there’s enough writing to make you want to know more. Make-up artist and model Ben Sun, singer Rita Ora, influencer and boxer KSI and photographer Perry Ogden also feature.
“My whole life, my dad talked about leaving Ireland when he was 15. And I never understood this – why would you leave somewhere you love? And we would come here every summer and I’d cry, kick, and scream when I had to leave. So for me, these kids are in the same predicament as my dad. In rural Ireland they aren’t getting the opportunities – and Dublin is so expensive to live in now, they are going abroad.”
For Eoin Greally, being featured in the magazine gave him confidence. “I met James soon after I’d moved from Dublin to London and I was really unsure about the path I wanted to take,” he says. “He believed in me so much, and it changed my life. He wants to pass on the knowledge he has learned in his career, and that’s so important for young Irish creatives. Often we feel our only choice is to emigrate. But what the magazine is saying is that we can create a space for artists in Ireland, we just have to do it together.”
Brown is now working on a second issue – D’naleri will publish annually, while delivering a monthly offering online – but he needs help in funding it. “On a daily basis people contact me to be in the next issue, or to photograph for it. I’m talking from Oscar winners that want to be on the cover, and some of the best people on the planet. I know someone is out there who will help me do the next one. They will find me or I will find them. Doing this magazine is in me now. And I can’t wait to do it again.”
[ The Irish woman who embroidered dresses for Kate Moss and Catherine DeneuveOpens in new window ]
