Most menswear shops keep you in the dark, literally, and slightly on edge. Dashing Tweeds in Marylebone is different – brightly lit enough to see every decision you’re about to make, its mannequins sport bold tweed, its patterns do laps around the place, and there’s a hefty swatch book near the front door. “It’s actually quite funny because the window is a filter,” says Guy Hills, the label’s founder. “Some people look in and go, ‘Oh my God, it’s all so colorful,’ then they walk away. Or they come in and say, ‘Do you do menswear?’ And I say, ‘yeah, it’s mostly menswear…’”
Ex-fashion photographer. Marylebone local. Hills is also, in many ways, a one-man British wool lobby. “I love British wool because I like sustainability and using what we have in Great Britain. If I were Prime Minister, I’d be absolutely radical and ban fast fashion and force people to wear more wool.” If it sounds a bit authoritarian, he’s got the precedent ready: 1571, when Parliament propped up the wool trade by requiring woollen caps on Sundays and holidays – punishable by fine for non-compliance.
His pitch starts with tweed – the fabric most people label ‘country’ and move on. When he was younger, his grandmother wore immaculate tweed suits and took him to John Lewis to pick her fabrics – Guy grew up around a certain ‘standard.’ “She was of that era where she wouldn’t go out without hats and gloves. And I hardly ever saw my grandfather out of his suit.”
He would eventually veer in the opposite direction: rave. His stepmother taught him to sew, and by the ’90s he was making his own outfits. “I was just drawn to crazy colours, like a bee to honey. It was all about dressing up to have a party.” He’s currently wearing the proof: trousers cut from his ‘Acid’ cloth, dyed with fluorescent yarn, 100 percent British wool. “This design was inspired by my raving days when I’d be dancing around in fields and there was a mixture of colour, old tweeds and fluoro lights…”
If UV fluorescent tweed isn’t striking enough, reflective tweed sounds like an oxymoron until you see Dashing Tweeds’ ‘lumatwill’ fabric. Guy’s curiosity borders on sci-fi: he’s even flirted with fibres that could generate electricity, woven into wool as a natural base.
Despite these experiments, he sees himself as more of a pragmatist than a prophet. “I don’t think I’m so much of a pioneer… I’m just taking lots of elements that exist and honing them into a strong brand. I like the lumatwill because it catches people’s imagination and it’s practical, as well as breathable, waterproof and safe.”
By ‘practical’ I think he means that he keeps one foot in tradition while the other pushes forward. “It’s all about just having a fresh take on how to use wool... I was [recently] looking at Carbon Nanotube fibre that could potentially charge your phone. It never quite happened, but [it’s] interesting. You get heritage brands, and they’re held back by thinking, ‘Oh, we only do things that we did in the past,’ they’re not very exciting.”
Of course tweed has been used subversively before, most notably by Vivienne Westwood in the 80s. Guy is an admirer – he used to buy vintage from a dealer in Notting Hill Gate, even prowling Christie’s for her auctions. “Dressing the punks in tweed, it was irreverent, disruptive and caused a lot of antagonism. All the Lords in the house were wearing tweed – it was an establishment fabric.” Is that what he’s after with his radical tweeds, too, then? Another dose of antagonism? “I’m not trying to create a new punk movement or be disruptive or anything. I’m just trying to bring more choices to men.”
As he speaks, tailoring is the topic he returns to again and again, wool the fabric he trusts to do it properly. “Wool is obviously brilliant for tailoring because it stretches and is breathable, the most perfect cloth. It lasts a long time as well.”
And he is a walking advert for the fabric; rarely out of it. “Maybe mid-summer, but [even then] I’ve got fine merino wool shorts… I pretty much have wool on me all year round.” He tells me that, during lockdown, he even made a hat by blending wool with the hair of his Shih Tzu. (Today, he’s wearing a Vivienne Westwood moth-hole jumper.)
Guy’s personal style has the same effect as the shop: it holds your attention without seeming to ask for it. I first came across him on @guysdashingstyle, where the outfits do the work of both an algorithm and an usher. It’s on TikTok if you want to see what I mean. There’s something very refined about it, even when exuberant; Guy can wear combinations that would swallow other people. “Half the fun of clothing is just the joy of dressing up, the humour and the colour and the fun of it all. All these people wearing black - especially the millennials, the most boringly dressed people.”
As if to underline the point, he pulls out the antidote: a jacket with shoulder pads so wide they could take out a doorframe. “I made this with a tailor. It’s got acoustic foam in it. It [would] obviously be worn to make a splash when you’re going to a party.” I ask to try it on. He lets me – you don’t wear it so much as pilot it.
But for all the talk of individuality, in most tailors customers ask for something they can already see to be copied. Guy says it plainly: “Very few people go to their tailor and think, ‘I want something new’. Most people think I want something that everyone else has got.” He says that the Dashing Tweeds customers are mostly mavericks, but there are limits: “it’s a fine line between having humorous clothes and turning into a clown.”
For Guy, the point isn’t to dress people as Dashing Tweeds, but to let them bring something of themselves to it. “I’m not trying to create a brand which you just shove at people and say, this is this. The whole thing is opening up a conversation with people, saying, ‘you can use this fabric in different ways…’ There’s always a three way collaboration between the fabric we’ve designed, the customers who have their own ideas, and the makers.”
Before I go, I fire off a few quick questions.
Q: What’s the worst menswear trend you’ve lived through?
“People wearing football shirts off the football pitch.”
Q: What’s the most complimented item you own?
“A three piece suit with plus fours. I’ve got a few of them in different colors, and I wear them with stripey socks and cycle around London. People always just go, ‘Wow, you look great!’”
Q: If your tweed were a person at a party, who are they and what are they doing?
“They're pretty fun and loud for a start, and amuse people telling stories. Life and soul of it all.”
Q: Who’s the best dressed fictional character?
“I was once described as a modern day Bertie Wooster. I do quite like the idea of that jolly devil-may-care, doesn't really give a toss what anyone else thinks…”