Fashion

In Conversation with Liam Gardner | SS19

With the sound of Quiet Riot, Cum on Feel The Noize as the backdrop for our chat with Liam Gardener, we took a break from the shoot to talk all things skating, family, modelling and personal style. Listen in on our chat with Liam as we give a voice to the face of the Coggles SS19 campaign.

So you’re a model and a skateboarder, how long have you been skating for?

So probably since I was about 13 years old, about 9 years now.

And you teach skating as well don’t you?

I used to, the hours were quite sporadic, I’m still quite close to the company and I still know the owner. It’s called Skates and Ladders and it operates mostly in South London.

Tell us a bit more about your career in skating?

So I was super passionate about it as a teenager, it was one thing that was consistent when I maybe wasn’t doing so well at school or doing less sport in other areas. That was one thing that I kept pushing on with.

Have you ever been sponsored by a skate company?

No, but I’ve been booked by brands to skate for them in a modelling capacity rather than in a sponsored sense.

And how did you get into modelling?

I was scouted on the train when I was going on holiday, I was 16.

We hear you’ve got a big family?

Yeah, I’ve got nine siblings, six sisters and three brothers.

Are any of your siblings models?

No, some of them work in film but no models. I’ve tried to get a couple of them scouted, we all look very similar but I’m the only one who’s tall.

In terms of your skating career, is that a destination you want to follow?

I’m pretty open to whatever happens really, like I said before I’ve worked as a teacher for a couple of years but I don’t know if I would want to do that again. I did love it at the time, as it suited that period of my life but now I have more responsibilities I can’t really go back into something like that.

I enjoyed it and it was brilliant to have some sort of revenue coming from there. I mean it’s sometimes nice to keep your hobbies as hobbies and keep that untouched from just trying to earn money from it.

Who would you like to skate with the most?

I think Brian Herman, he would be the coolest one to skate with, watching him do it made me want to learn how to do tricks and I spent loads of time trying to learn.

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It’s always a fun time skating with @mattallen___ @desertmamba 📹 @anhelrx

A post shared by Bryan Herman (@bherman) on Jul 16, 2018 at 1:41pm PDT

So do you see certain tricks online and want to try them out?

You always kind of see that, unless you’re some sort of crazy skate genius who invents every trick that you try, you’re always learning from the people around you and you see that especially with skate parks.

Where as if you take someone training in a vacuum where all they see is stuff online they’ll not progress as quickly as if your with your out with friends. If you go out with your friends and see them try a trick and you think actually they got pretty close that might be achievable, you know it brings things into the realm of what you might be able to do rather than that guy on the screen.

In terms of the outfits that we’ve seen so far, I know we’re only half way through the day, are there any that you’d want to take home and wear yourself?

The fourth set of shoes that looked more like a cruiser style they were really nice, there were a couple of sets of the trousers, the skinny ones with the zips were quite cool. The stripey Acne jumper I really liked and the Satisfy orange t-shirt and sheer jacket.

Eytys

In terms of your go-to off duty outfit, is it more like what you turned up in today?

Yeah, I mean it depends what i’m doing. So I chose trackies today because I knew I’d be barely wearing any of my own clothes, so in the 10 minutes that I am, I want to be comfortable.

A couple of months ago, before I got my current part time job where I have a uniform, I wanted to just wear boiler suits and become completely utilitarian in my clothing, the only thing that would change would be t-shirts, I’d wear black boiler suits all the time.

The idea would be that if someone met you, they’d be like there was this guy who was wearing a boiler suit and then people would think, oh yeah I know who you mean. Kind of like in Pokemon where they wear the same clothes every day. I could take it off quickly for castings and it would fit for skating, it would just be completely utilitarian. You don’t want to think anything about a person before you actually meet them, that was kind of my thinking behind it. I wanted my clothes to give as little away about me as possible, you’d have to actually talk to me and learn about me rather than make assumptions.

In terms of your modelling career whats stood out for you?

So a couple of weeks ago I did a Farfetch one which was in Tenerife, that was pretty sweet because obviously it was in Tenerife so there were nice beaches and the location was awesome. It was right in the middle of this volcanic rock. I’ve also got to mention the one I met my girlfriend on, she was wearing glitter head to toe, one to remember.