Red or Dead
Red or Dead is a fashion designer and manufacturer, started in London in 1982 by Wayne Hemingway and his wife Gerardine Hemingway. They design products such as shoes, spectacles, bags and watches.
History
In 1982, Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway opened a stall on Camden Market, London to sell items from their wardrobes. Within a year they had expanded to sixteen stalls of second hand clothes, purchased from all over the world.
The company's name (Red or Dead) refers both to an inversion of the Cold War slogan "Better dead than red", and to Wayne's Red Indian ancestors.
The Hemingways began making and retailing their own designs. Wayne later explained their goal "to be the first designer company that sold to everyday people." London Fashion Week snubbed them at first on the grounds that designer fashion was meant to be elitist, but later relented, and Red or Dead won the British Fashion Council's Streetstyle Designer of the Year Award from 1995 to 1997.
In 1995 they sold the brand to Stephen Hinchliffe's Facia Group. Facia collapsed the next year, and receivers sold Red or Dead back to the Hemingways. At that time it was counted as "one of the UK's leading fashion chains", employing more than 100 people.
