Name? Siobhain Taylor
Born? London
Current residence? LA
Favorite food? Cake!
Husband? #2
Children? 1 is enough
Pets? 2 cats too many—Dinah and Keith (a.k.a. Keef or Sparkle Pee)
Favorite band/artist? Radiohead, Beatles, Stones, White Stripes, Blur, Black Keys, Elvis, Stevie Wonder, The Killers, Amy Winehouse….too many to mention.
Favorite song? Suspicious Minds – Elvis
Favorite movie? Quadrophenia
Favorite artists? Mondrian , Rothko, William Turner and Slim Aarons
Favorite designers? Westwood (I’ve been obsessed since I did a school project on her) and McQueen—I can’t imagine living with that much genius.
Most treasured clothing item? My Westwood Harris Tweed Crown—my Mother was sooo annoyed I spent my money on this. It’s a museum piece now, so I feel pretty good about the purchase.
Favorite magazines? Harpers & Tatler in the 80’s, The Face & Q in the 90’s, and Nylon now.
What did you want to be when you grew up? When I was really young a post-office worker (I liked stamping stuff), then an architect, but Mother said I wasn’t good enough at math (this is when drafting was on paper not on a computer), and lastly and for quite a long time a fashion designer, but it turned out I wasn’t fond of fashion students (in an ironic twist my daughter is now a fashion student and I’m rather fond of her).
None of those panned out for you, so what did you end up doing? I ended up in the music business, more by accident than anything. Firstly, I worked in music videos (shockingly not a video vixen) and then in A&R.
What’s A&R? A&R or Artists and Repertories is the department that finds and nurtures egos “talent.” It used to be night after night of trolling the live club scene, trawling MySpace….searching for that one great artist and whilst we to tell you “ it’s all about the music,” it’s not, it’s the prestige and money!
So what artists did you find? I can’t answer that in print.
Who was your favorite artist to work with? A lot of artists are really nice…because they pay their managers and attorney’s to be a-holes on their behalf, but if I still had to pick someone it would be Serge the lead singer of SOAD—he’s so polite.
So why write about fashion now? It’s simple, I’m over what people think, I know I have a really good eye, and I want to share.
Life’s regrets? I regret not pursuing an apprenticeship with a Savile Row tailor, turning down my boss (who’d been a music exec for 30 years) when he offered me his vinyl collection because I didn’t have the room for it (what an idiot I am!) and of course not marrying John Taylor from Duran Duran (but in all honestly, that was never really an option).
