From face masks to Fenwick: Somebody Else’s Guy founder on building a North East upcycling brand

When Sam Fender walked out on stage wearing one of Somebody Else’s Guys’ designs, the brand’s founder Corey Dixon knew she had arrived at a turning point. “That was when the North East first found the brand,” she told FashionUnited. Next to the onslaught of new attention brought to the upcycling label from an audience that stretched even beyond the singer’s own fans, the recognition reaffirmed Dixon’s insistence on retaining Newcastle as a base.

“I’m proud to be a Geordie,” she said. “There are people that follow me that I don’t even know, but they still have shown love. I don’t think I would get that in another region. The love from the North East is so special. It’s not even just Newcastle, it’s the North East as a whole. The love is like no other.”

Since then, Somebody Else’s Guy has only been on the up. Dixon hosted what was described as Newcastle’s first Sustainable Fashion Show in early September, with support from local media company High Life North, before going on to secure a space to sell her work in Fenwick Newcastle, a partnership that has since expanded to the retailer’s York location.

From covid masks to fashion runways

It's a far cry from where Dixon was at the beginning of the pandemic. Following the loss of her mum, the designer began making face masks and donating the money to Cancer Research. After going viral, Dixon started to question whether there would also be interest in clothing creations. Whilst prior to the pandemic she had made costumes for cruise ships, now her focus lay in upcycling clothing, at first using items that were donated to her directly.

Starting by sharing her creations in videos on social media, Dixon soon garnered a larger following and, while not initially at the core, a more distinct motive to maintain circular values. From that, Somebody Else’s Guy was born. With it, Dixon has ensured that experimentation has remained at the forefront of her design process. By intentionally avoiding trends, and channelling her theatre background, her process instead relies on giving herself the freedom to express her love of fashion.

Bringing a gender neutral, upcycling brand to the Fenwick shop floor

By keeping upcycling at the centre of the business, Dixon was taking the risk that has seen many upcycling-focused brands struggle to secure commercial success. From the outset, however, she sought to lay the groundwork for future plans. Taking a shot in the dark and reaching directly out to Fenwick, Dixon was invited to present her brand concept to the department store’s team and has since held a number of pop-ups in the Newcastle site, before ultimately launching a more permanent presence.

By adding Somebody Else’s Guy to its shop floor as the first gender neutral brand, Fenwick is only underlining its positioning as a supportive pillar to emerging talent. Its womenswear department in Newcastle, specifically, is a maze of brands both established and up-and-coming, giving each equal footing and access to clientele browsing the floor. Dixon understands that in this setting, not everyone will become a customer or even understand the concept.

When observing passers-by, Dixon said she often finds the older generation in particular express doubt over the use of pre-loved items and their value. By opting to keep the existing labels of upcycled pieces, and also adding her own, she has spotted a hesitancy to fully adopt the idea from this demographic. Overall acceptance, however, is more broad, and has attracted new clients across the spectrum, from celebrities on the red carpet to fashion lovers on the street.

“I’ve chosen to do this brand to make people feel confident in who they are,” Dixon said. “That’s what’s more important to me, to push boundaries a little bit and let people be who they want to be, which is why I made it a gender-neutral brand. I think fashion is like armour. You can have such a bad day, you can not feel confident, and then you can put something good on and it kind of makes you feel like it gives you that power again. That's somebody else's garment. It's making you feel powerful.”

‘I think fashion is like armour’

This message was prevalent at Somebody Else’s Guy’s Sustainable Fashion Show. The event, held early in September at Newcastle Contemporary Art Gallery, was designed to not only celebrate the brand’s five-year anniversary, but also bring together the community that has formed around it. Akin to the fun eccentricity of her designs, Dixon said the atmosphere at the show was palpable, with guests dancing and cheering as models paced the runway. “A member of the British Fashion Council who attended the show even said they hadn’t been to a show like it,” she recalled.

“It was a real challenge for me and it was a point in my career where I've been able to actually say that I'm proud of myself too, for where I'm getting to,” Dixon added. “I wanted the show to be different and I wanted it to be something where people would sit there afterwards and say, ‘I've never seen anything like this.’ And that's what I delivered.”

The backing from High Life North and the additional presence of small businesses only underlined a mission to shine a light on the North East’s offerings, meaning everyone got something out of it. “I think it was really good for the city,” Dixon said.

It isn’t easy building a clothing brand in the present day. Small business owners, including Dixon, need to wear many hats, whether that be sourcing materials to promoting via social media. While Dixon said she would much rather remain anonymous, consumers are increasingly interested in the real faces behind the brands they engage with, and one day she hopes she can grow her team and relinquish digital responsibility.

Putting Newcastle on the fashion map

The challenge is intensified for those based in the North of the UK, where access to the creative hubbub of London is typically limited, meaning connections and opportunities can be hard to come by. The British Fashion Council (BFC) has recently implemented efforts to decentralise the UK’s fashion industry with Fashion Britain, a new initiative integrated into the most recent London Fashion Week schedule that saw related events brought to other cities across the country – Newcastle being one of them.

Building up the city’s fashion influence is also something close to Dixon’s heart. “From an early stage of the brand, I’ve said that I wanted to put Newcastle on the map and I didn’t think everyone should have to be in London for fashion,” she said. “A lot of my clients are still in London and I feel like I can lose out on work when it’s a quick turnaround. It can be really heartbreaking that you’ve lost out on not being there.”

Dixon does see the benefit of accepting any job opportunity that comes at the beginning of a career, and even understands when creatives have to maintain another job next to their emerging business, like she does. Her vision for Newcastle would be the establishment of a North Eastern fashion house, potentially for her own label, if funding allowed it.

“I would make sure it was fully sustainable, that you saw the workers working,” Dixon said. “With a lot of fast fashion, you don’t see what’s going on, whereas I’m an open book. When you’re buying from an upcycled small business, it’s been made with two hands. It’s being made with love, and you know the person well.”

Fenwick York and beyond

A fashion house is for now a distant goal, as Dixon is focused on the present: catering to the more immediate requests of stylists, awaiting the screening of a documentary on her fashion show, and following through on a new partnership with York Football Club, which is donating shirts for an upcycled collection to be made available in Fenwick York.

“Honestly, leading up to the catwalk, I don’t even think if someone pinched me, I would be able to feel what was going on. It was almost disbelief, there was so much going on that you don’t have time to think about it until afterwards. I've worked and grafted so hard that things just come up and I take the job. There was never a set plan because I never thought it was going to be a business,” Dixon explained.

It’s an expression of disbelief that so many emerging names make when the rollercoaster starts moving, and there is no time to get off. For Dixon, what began as an act of creativity during an uncertain period has evolved into a growing business with a presence in two Fenwick stores, an expanding network of collaborators and a platform for putting Newcastle’s fashion talent in the spotlight.

There may still be no set plan for Somebody Else’s Guy, but that unpredictability appears to be part of what has kept Dixon moving forward. As opportunities continue to arrive, she is taking them as they come, with the same instinct that shaped the brand from the beginning.