| Oneupmanship ~ countylads.com

6876 - started up in 1995 by Dundee designer Kenneth MacKenzie.
The clothes take a technical, formal and casual stance, simple minimal designs shirts and jackets cut just right, with subtle details, hi tech fabrics, organic materials, subtle branding and classic style tailoring.
Looking into the label there is a rebellious socialist spirit, with some tee designs paying homage to certain issues and events of our time.
6876 has always caught my eye, I bought my first piece around a decade ago, and have been buying it ever since, a smart label that's not necessarily aimed at anyone in particular but has a small loyal band of supporters amongst the better dressed footballing flock.
Some of their pieces are instant cool, the yellow capandula jacket is for me one of the most iconic jackets made in the last few years by any label, 6876 is one of the first labels worth getting excited about when their new seasons arrive.

an independent fashion company - which started in 1995

68 = the Paris student riots / situationist movement, and 76 = Punk Rock. Basically I wanted to have a name that was modern sounding and not retro, Also the theme's / years were chosen to represent an independent collective spirit...

Always we sell shirts and jackets well, but at the moment style wise is the Capandula jacket.

Always the one's that don't sell! ( running company joke but sadly a fact! ) a double harrington from 1999 which is basically two jackets that connect ( button fastening ) but can be used independently.

I always look out for Patagonia, but of newer brands I like Acronym, plus Porter in Japan for bags.

Yes, it's a very small operation and I still design everything, for better or worse!

We don't have excessive branding and our distribution channels are quite tight.

I think its a good thing because its a scene where they are not easily influenced ,know their own mind and are passionate about clothing.

What exactly is 6876 and how did it begin?

What's the story behind the catchy name?

What, if any would you say is your biggest selling item?

How do you feel about 'casuals' wearing your clothes?

How has it managed to connect with football folk, yet avoid the trap many other labels fall into?

You still seem very hands on with the label, do you still design all the pieces yourself?

What's your personal favourite item of all time?

Are there any other brands that catch your eye?

Is it at all true that you turned down the chance to work with the people behind the likes of CP Company and Stone Island, SPA Sportswear in Italy? if so, why?

Not really, we met throught the Four Marketing guys and had a good meeting but my ex-business partner went down with everyone like a lead weight!
I could elaborate but suffice to say anything that could have developed was kind of stopped then and there....also it was a very exploratory meeting not that specific. Anyway it's fate I am content the way things turned out, plus it's not as if they don't know where I am.

You started 6876 from humble beginnings. What inspired you back then? Were there any designers in particular who you looked up to?

I had just had enough of working for other people and with product I wasn't that passionate about. When I first started there was a basic premise : understand quality clothing that actually worked and that didn't rely on inflated hype or branding.
Influences : military and vintage clothing, Designers / Brands ; Massimo Osti, Patagonia, Ralph Lauren and in their early days Commes Des Garcons. Sometimes it's brands and designers that aren't that similar to 6876 for instance in Japan there's Porter bags that I've always bought and more recently a workwear/denim brand called Kapital.

Is it possible to define what 6876 is about in 4 words?

Impossibe!................Design, Product, Distinctive & Stubborn!

Updated 10/04/08 6876 has changed it's direction ever so slightly, bringing out stock as and when they like and moving away from the traditional twice annual seasonal collections, concentrating on specialised and limited runs of clothing Kenneth MacKenzie told our friends at Proper Magazine.
"Basically for a small company the seasonal thing was getting very un-profitiablle and timewise frustrating. I just felt there was never enough time to develop projects and it was felling like a treadmill. So we decided to concentrate on selling online and with very limited stores. Now we are much more in control of how, when and what we produce, so it feels pretty promising."

So after a period of inactivity, it appears 6876 is on the up once again.

" The next year will hopefully see more products released at greater speed, and continually throughout the year, so that there's always something new on the horizon. I think the old twice a year system is very outdated as well as the logical / economic reason's there's also a realisation that what customers want is changing also."

Spring 2008 sees the return of the popuar Capandula jacket, and the release of the Sonora, a superb hi tech jacket in striking yellow, a nailed on contender for jacket of the year.

You're in the middle of filming "Awaydays". I remember when I first read it thinking what a top film it would make. It must be dead gratifying to see if come to full fruition on the big screen.

Gratifying is exactly the right word....it's been a saga trying to get the film off the ground. Came close so many times, but ultimately TV and Film in the UK is largely run by people who have no real interest in working class culture. As your Gran would say to you: "if you want something doing, do it yourself..."
So we did.

Myself and the ex keyboard player from OMD, Dave Hughes ( who wrote the film scores for Lock Stock Snatch, and lately that Hogfather on Sky ) set up an IES, which is a government initiative to finance low-budget film i the UK, Basically a tax loophole, where people can invest in a way that they're nailed-on to make money. More or less. But yeah, I'm ecstatic. all those years of hurt, and now.....

"Come 'ead!!! These want it!!"

Kevin Sampson, Liverpool based author of Powder, Stars are Stars and Outlaw, is probably best known amongst football circles for his best selling debut novel Awaydays, which after years of speculation is finally being transferred from script to screen. Here he gives an insight into the fiming process of what could be the proper hooly flick we all crave.
After being invited by Kevin himself to spend a day on set on
location in Birkenhead, I can personally say this film looks like
it's going to be great.

for a write up and interview in full you'll have to buy Proper Issue 4

Often when books are converted to film they lose something in translation or certain bits don't work as well on the screen as they do on paper. Have you had to re-write much?

It's not so much a case of re-writing as having to be fairly brutal about what stays and what gets binned!

You have, more or less 90 minutes to tell your story, so you have to quickly get right to the heart of what the story really is. Awaydays touches upon many things; it documents the early days of the only major British youth movement not to have started in London. It gives a flavour of how much it means to young males to belong - to have an identity, and to be a part of something that matters so much to them that they will go to extreme lengths to preserve it. But above all it's growing-up tale. It portrays one of those great, meaningful friendships that all 17 year old lads have, but that always sooner or later have to come to an end.

that became the heart of the story for the film adaptation - the way that Carty and Elvis are abng into each other, inseparable, all time bezzy mates...up to the point hat something has to break.

Having seen a few shots from a recent bit of filming I was pleased to see that for once a film involving terrace culture at last had a clue about how important the gear was and still is. Have you had problems sourcing certain stuff?

By Jove, Yes! Really, really tricky. There's some stuff I can't go into because of ongoing struggles with certain companies.

We wanted a simple, 'core uniform' of green Peter Storm smock cagoules (the ones that had the pouch zip armpit to armpit) Fred Perry t-shirts, Slazenger v-necks, Lois straights and Samba, Nastase and Forest Hills as the main trainees. That's a strong easily identifiable look, so you'll always know who's who...but without the help of loads of you lot from the various Casuals websites who have either lent, rented or sold us your swag - and without an unbelievable, massive and beyond-the-call of duty amount of input from Gary Aspden at Adidas, we might have struggled to have got the lads' look as good as it is now.

I've got to say, they look boss. We deliberately cast them dead young so that the contrast between how they look (dandies with tarts fringes) and how they act (brutal) is something of a shock. It's how it was, I was one of the 90 on the ordinary to middlesbrough, august 1977 and the look on those men's faces was a treat. They obviously fancied their chances - they were men with moustaches and tattoos - we probably looked like rent boys...but you could see real unease with them. They were looking round at eachother, obviously dead confused....'who are these puftas?' The Liverpool lads of that era were mainly all small and the wedge haircuts made us look easy. Then you'd run at them and they genuinely were flummoxed.

I told our director that story and he was made up. Wanted all The Pack bar the leader Stephen Graham, to look baby-faced.

Are there any familiar faces in the film? Stephen Graham is perhaps the best known?

Stephen Graham is definitely the best-known actor. But for the lads, wewanted to find a new, young Northern rat-pack... The Pack Pack. So it's mainley new talent.
The faces in The Pack are played by Nicky Bell, Liam Boyle, Oliver Lee, Michael Ryan, Anthony Borrows... none of them a household name, yet.
But there are good cameo roles from, for example, Rebecca Atkinson from Shameless, and Ian Puleston Davies who plays Carty's Uncle. (In the book, by the way, Bob is just his boss. I morphed him into a surrogate father figure fro the film script...Carty's Ma has died, his Dad is a reclusive shell, and Uncle bob susses his ever-growing obsession with footy violence. Ian P-D is just amazing in that role...)

When can we expect to see the film released in the UK?

Generally it's about a year to 15 months from completion... so somewhere between this time next year and Feb 2009. But every scamp on the set has been sneaking footage on their phones. There'll be out-takes all over YouTube.