“It challenged me, um it made me think about choices I had made up until that point as in the type of fashion or possibly the lifestyle I was interested in as a youngster.”

“It just showed me that there were other ways - you know - not necessarily comfortable.”

“I think it was too, I found it, yeah it just challenged me. I didn’t agree with everything I was seeing but it was somehow drawing me out and bringing me into some sort of middle ground.”

How did iD inspire you creatively or with what you wore or what you did at the time?

“I definitely started to change where I shopped. I tried places in the magazine. Kensington Market, that sort of thing, and generally there more than anywhere else because the whole thing was overwhelming so I thought if I just go to Kensington Market I can get a variety there without having to do too much plodding through London because I was living in Surrey at the time.”

“I did a bit of Army surplus shopping as well and one thing I definitely did was I started accessorising my own clothes. Either with badges, pins or sewing or actually painting directly onto my clothes with tippex because I didn't have anything else handy so I used tippex and it was fine.”

“I think I painted the cud symbol on the back of an army surplus jacket and had a variety of pins on the front.”

“Also I guess I was reading Arena magazine at the time and The Face and the sort of high fashion that did cross over was sort of interesting because it was a bit more outrageous so I wore Junior Gaultier because obviously I couldn't afford Jean paul gaultier as a student.”

“And I used to dress as if I was one of those people in the clubs that were photographed and I would walk into college wearing some of this stuff and lorry drivers would hoot their horns.”

“It was kind of fun and it was nice - when you want to be different you know it gave me plenty of ideas.”

Would you consider yourself a ‘fashion victim’?

“Yeah definitely. I was definitely a fashion victim when I was into my Japanese brands like Matsuda, Yamamoto, Comme Des Garcons and others.”

“I lapped it up. I had this really weird relationship with that I knew I was a fashion victim but I didn't have any choice.”

What was/is different about iD compared to The Face and Arena and other similar publications at the time?

“I think it was the - Arena and The Face seem to be more commercial, they had more mainstream adverts so you would havenmore beer adverts or technology adverts in those magazines maybe. The - you know - the cost of everything was higher in those magazines but that was still enticing. And it felt like iD was the route to go if you wanted to make your own version maybe.”

“The Face was probably the most mainstream of those three magazines. It was good, it was a good balance of design. I would say that magazine was design, Arena was fashion and iD was street life, street fashion if I had to sum things up or possible nightlife.”

“There were people who were going to trendy clubs up and down the country in those magazines. I wasn’t necessarily going to those clubs but I wanted to take some of that fun - they seemed to have fun, they were living a different life and I was trying to tap into that. In the suburbs you feel like you are missing out a little bit so you've got this hunger for what's going on and that magazine helped to see what was happening and it did feel kind of up to the minute unlike the other magazines so you got the sense that things came round seasonally because it was so fashion driven whereas iD was more of a movement type thing. Especially when the magazine switched to recycled paper and they did a special on recycling in general so there were people who were making dresses out of used phone cards for example.”

“Also you got to see up and coming designers from Europe as well, not to mention college shows but also just small designers in the Netherlands or Belgium or wherever. People who were unknown.”

What have you carried from iD into your life now - whether that's creatively or just kind of in general in terms of your lifestyle?

“Colour is one thing. I kind of think that there's definitely got this feeling of - if not now then when?”

“With the use of colour or your choice of clothing. What are you waiting for? Do you care if people judge you? I think basically it gave me courage because I could see other people doing it and they were real people - the shots from the streets or in the clubs you know these are real people and they were pulling it off.”