<BRAND> x Russ Jones

This is me after 14 hours of sleep since last newsletter.

Apologies for the typos, but I wanted to say Hi and give everyone an update

I’m helping to relaunch an Iconic British Brand, and it’s an artist and creative-led team

Things are about to get a whole lot faster

Beginning

Two weeks ago, I stepped into something new. A collaboration with Topshop.

The first week was a slow negotiation between my world and theirs, a conversation about vision, values, and what this could become.

By the end of the week, we shook hands. This was happening.

By Sunday, we were in full production.

Our first collaboration - an installation an after-party for the biggest music awards night of the British Calendar.

It was fast. Unrelenting. The kind of speed I like.

But the real work isn’t in the speed. It’s in the patience that came before it.

Vision

I remember the first time going into Topshop when I was a kid.

I was a skater, and the jeans they had were flexible, good-looking, and fitted into the social side of skateboarding which is the dress code.

I couldn’t quite afford the clothes in there, but how they looked and felt was an aspiration for me at the time.

I’d go into a different store where I’d take the discount labels off trousers they couldn’t sell, peel them off, and put them on trousers and jeans that looked like the ones I’d seen in Topman and Topshop so that I could look like the cooler kids.

It was a while until I could afford to go there, and now, to be working and collaborating alongside them feels like a weird experience that I haven’t quite processed yet.

It feels like a responsibility to create something that maintains that experience.

I think what’s cool about fashion sometimes is that you don’t have to wear the clothes to be influenced by them—you can just see them and then find ways to get that.

Brands like Topshop make designer wear accessible to a much wider group of people, and for me, that feels like a service.

Finding out who you are is difficult, especially if you haven’t got the money or resources that many people do to present themselves in a certain way, embodying specific identities.

Topshop isn’t just a fashion brand.

It’s a national icon, it’s a gateway—an entry point for people who want to participate in fashion but don’t have access to designer labels.

It was one of the first places that made style feel possible for me.

That’s why this collaboration matters, because the ability to shape identity through clothing shouldn’t be a privilege.

It should be something everyone can engage with, in whatever way they can.

A name everyone in the UK knows, whether they love it, hate it, or just grew up with it as a backdrop to their lives.

It’s the high street, it’s culture, it’s what people wear when they don’t know what else to wear.

And that’s a powerful thing.

Because what we wear shapes how we move through the world. Fashion has always been a strange machine.

A mix of control and rebellion, of conformity and individuality.

I’ve spent years observing it from the edges, watching how it tells people who they are before they’ve even spoken.

Sometimes it’s a costume, a mask to slip into.

Other times, it’s a uniform, enforcing an identity.

And somewhere in between those two, I’ve found my space—where I can push the boundaries of what’s expected without losing the thread of what makes fashion a shared language.

It’s a system, but one that can be rewritten, repurposed, subverted. That’s the part that interests me.

It tells people who they are before they’ve even said a word. And for me, finding a place in that—finding the part where I could contribute without being consumed—wasn’t immediate.

But I knew when I saw it. And I know why I’m here now.

Choices

Over the last year, brand offers have flooded in.

Big ones. Prestigious ones. Offers that would’ve made things easy.

Money, exposure, growth—all the things people chase.

But I turned almost all of them down.

Not because I didn’t want the opportunity.

But because I didn’t want to be used.

Consumerism has its own kind of propaganda.

So does every industry that promises transformation in exchange for consumption.

Alcohol brands, in particular, kept knocking.

They pay well.

Their customers always come back.

That’s the business model—build dependency, sell identity in a bottle, and turn social rituals into revenue streams.

You don’t just drink; you become the kind of person who drinks.

And once you’re in, they know you’ll return, whether it’s celebration or self-destruction pulling you back.

But I can’t stand behind something that takes more than it gives.

And if I start promoting things that chip away at people, I start chipping away at myself.

This is something I’ve had to sit with.

And patience has been the cost of saying no.

Lessons

I’ve been thinking a lot about patience this week.

How time works on its own schedule, and how little control we have over the things we want most.

Patience isn’t just about waiting; it’s about trusting the process even when you can’t see the outcome.

Patience isn’t something I’ve always been good at, but sometimes, you find yourself in a place where you have no choice but to slow down.

Just over a year ago, I found myself in rural India at an old palace in Rajasthan. You can only get to the palace by taking a small wooden boat across a lake, and once you’re there, there’s a 100-person hidden residence.

I went there for New Year’s Eve, mixing, partying, and exploring, immersed in the spiritual weight of being somewhere so rich in culture yet so isolated from what I’d consider civilization.

Being so removed from the trappings of the West forced me to slow down in a way I hadn’t before.

As part of that reflection, I decided to plant a tree. It felt like a small act, almost insignificant, but I wrote a letter to myself, buried it alongside the roots, and put something of myself into the ground.

It felt a little silly at first, but as I was writing, as I was digging, I found this quiet understanding of what I was doing and why it mattered.

Now, I don’t know when I’ll go back to see that tree. Maybe never.

But when I think about it, I feel two things—gratitude, for having created something that will hopefully outlive me (assuming they haven’t dug it up), and patience, because I know that tree will take its time to grow, just like everything in my letter.

A root system doesn’t rush to find things.

It creeps outward, moving toward sources of energy and away from poison. It builds strength slowly, and only when it’s ready does it begin to support the soil and the plants around it.

Until then, it waits. Because if it grows too fast, it won’t be strong enough to hold what it’s trying to become.

I think about that tree often. About how things happen in places we’re not looking, how waiting feels like stagnation until suddenly, it isn’t.

We can chase them. Hunt them down. Try to force them into existence.

But they slip through our fingers like smoke.

It’s like coaxing a cat. The more you run after it, the more it bolts.

But sit still. Let it come to you. Build trust, build a world it wants to be part of.

And suddenly, it’s there. Sitting in your lap, like it was always meant to be.

Opportunities are like that. Love is like that. Money is like that.

They don’t move on hunger. They move on patience, on being ready when they arrive.

And I’m still learning. Still fighting the instinct to force.

But this collaboration is proof that the waiting was worth it.

Unfolding

The next few months are about building.

There’s an installation coming that I can’t say too much about yet, but it’s one of the most ambitious projects I’ve worked on. 

If you care about the intersection of art, music, and fashion, you’ll want to watch this unfold.

I’ll share what I can on stories, but for those of you who read my newsletters, you’ll get the deeper side.

This isn’t just about a collaboration. It’s about patience. Community. Vision.

And building something that matters.

More to come

I love you loads

R