In Manchester in the early 1980s, no self-respecting youth with a quirky idea for a shop would be seen anywhere but Affleck’s Palace. It was the breeding ground for names that helped shape “Madchester”, such as “baggy” pioneer Joe Bloggs, and was trawled by pop star customers from bands such as the Inspiral Carpets and Happy Mondays.
Wayne Hemingway, the man behind Camden-based fashion label, Red or Dead, opened his shop in Affleck’s Palace in 1982. It was his first outside London and it helped launch the label into the fashion world.
Events have come full circle. Hemingway is back in his old stomping ground, hoping to create something different for the city. To achieve it, he is using his latest passion: housing.
Hemingway has entered into what he calls “a consortium of open-minded Manchester business people” to establish Dwell Developments. Their collective belief is to provide the ordinary people of Manchester with stylish city-centre accommodation that is suitable for families and will be lived in, not bought for buy-to-let. More importantly, it will be affordable housing.
Prices are too high
For the past few years, many apartments in central Manchester have been developed with the assumption that everybody is on footballer Wayne Rooney’s wages. But Hemingway, a Morecambe lad who spent many a weekend in the rainy city during his teenage years, is aiming to change that.
The 90 residential units at Bridgewater Place, next to Affleck’s Palace, will be marketed to key workers and priced at around £100,000. Construction started on 1 November and will be completed in a year.
“We had a choice of whether to do posh”and charge an arm and a leg for them, or to do something for key workers. We chose the latter,” says Hemingway.
Hemingway’s choice is not surprising. Over the past few years, the fashion guru — who has added house design, radio and TV art criticism to his CV — has been an outspoken critic of popular housing design. Three years ago, he coined the term “Wimpeyfication” to describe the blandness of much of what was being delivered by modern housebuilders — and declared he could do better.
Instead of rebuffing the comment, Wimpey invited Hemingway and wife Gerardine to translate their thoughts into designs for the firm. The couple had already set up Hemingwaydesigns after selling Red or Dead in a multi-million-pound deal in 1999.
Construction began in 2001 on what will eventually be 800 units in the Staiths South Bank development, Newcastle, where Hemingway is also building a four-bedroom home for himself and his family.
The scheme, the first phase of which numbers 158 homes, is near completion and has been widely heralded. Hemingway is hoping to achieve the same success in Manchester, while trying to project the city a more European feel.
The designer says that Britain’s continental neighbours have got things right with city-centre living, and that he is saddened by how Britain has got it wrong.
“The way Europeans organise the layout of their cities means you get a lot of family accommodation. Take a city like Amsterdam — which isn’t much different in size from Manchester — you can go right into the centre and it really feels like you could live there with your family,” says Hemingway, a father of four. “There’s nowhere in the centre of Manchester where I could live with my kids.”
Warming to his theme, Hemingway argues that this lack of family space is due to a “rush towards urban regeneration”.
“The authorities want the city centre to be lived in again and, to a certain extent, they have got that.” Although not opposed to the free market, Hemingway believes there are too many buy-to-let deals in the market.
Hemingway feels there should be more key worker homes. Part of the reason Dwell Developments was set up was to ensure people actually lived in the houses they bought.
While Hemingway takes a pot shot at some of the city’s residential schemes, he still has praise for Manchester, where he spent many weekends strutting his stuff in clubs like Pips and the Russell Club in the 1980s.
“There was always that bit of danger in coming to Manchester, especially after hours, out of the clubs. Compared to what it was like then, Manchester is amazing now. The city is far more cosmopolitan,” he says.
But what of critics who say that Manchester has lost its character? Given his hatred of blandness, one might expect Hemingway to agree with them, but he remains diplomatic.
“Some people may say that Manchester has become sanitised. But I would rather that than be afraid in the city.”
Architecture missed
However, Hemingway does highlight one of the city’s drawbacks: “Manchester has no world-class architecture.”
Fans of Ian Simpson’s sleek Urbis, or those who enjoy the gothic splendour of Manchester Town Hall, may disagree, but Hemingway says Gateshead and Newcastle have the type of architecture he is talking about.
“They have the Baltic and the Millennium Bridge, but Manchester has none of these. I believe it has missed a trick,” he says.
Hemingway has designs on changing things in other cities as well as Manchester. When asked whether he will start his own development company like Tom Bloxham, founder of Urban Splash who also started out as an Affleck’s Palace shopkeeper, he is uncharacteristically hesitant.
“The main thing we want to do is large-scale affordable housing. But we won’t be going into anything like Urban Splash.” When Hemingway says “large-scale”, he means it. He is planning more projects with Wimpey, including a 1,140-home scheme at Dartford in the Thames Gateway.But, in terms of Manchester, Hemingway says he has no plans to do anything else. Or at least none that he will admit to.
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1961 Born in Morecambe, Lancashire 1982 Establishes fashion house, Red or Dead, in London’s Camden market 1982 Opens Red or Dead in Affleck’s Palace, Manchester — the first shop outside London 1999 Sells Red or Dead and establishes Hemingwaydesign with wife Gerardine 2001 Teams up with Wimpey for Staiths South Bank development, Newcastle 2004 Work begins on Manchester development with Dwell. Continuing projects with Wimpey |
