London, jan 5, 2001
... with 16 years of T-shirt design behind him: "In those days my clients were Aerosmith and all the heavy metal boys. Now we do everyone from Emma Thompson to S-Club 7," he says.
His current London range is a far cry from the burning skulls and roaring tigers of the Aerosmith generation and will make you feel quite at home in your comer of the Holloway, Hoxton or Dalston 'hood.
"I always pick dodgier bits of London," he says. "I'm into the London ghettos instead of the New York ghettos. I find it a bit bewildering that kids in the UK are wandering around in a shirt with Brooklyn on when loads of them are living in a ghetto themselves - give them something they can identify with.
"I started with Hackney, because the whole place is a dump, then Brixton and Peckham. Most of the places I've got first hand experience of — I squatted in Dalston, I had a mate who was living in Holloway... My posh uncle lives in Highbury but that's not quite the same."
So if Highbury is your hangout, you might have to fall back to Antoni and Alison. One bearing the words "Portrait of a woman singing Are Friends Electric by G Numan in her head" should get them talking.
· Antoni and Alison T-shirts are available from 43 Rosehen-Avenue, ECI, telephone 020- 7833 2002. They are also sold in Selfridges and prices range from 27.50 to £42.50.
· Savage London is at 14A Newburgh Street, Wl, phone 020-7439 1163. In T-shirts, costing between £19.50 and £21.50, are also available from Top Shop. Its website can be found at www.savagelondon.com
Sue Gyford
www.islingtonexpress.co.uk - A Ham&High publication
