Samuel Ross on the weight of innovation.

Interviewed by Bisoye Babalola

I sat down with Samuel Ross, acclaimed designer and entrepreneur behind the innovative fashion label A-COLD-WALL* and the boutique company SR_A, known for its focus on industrial design and precision engineering. 

Samuel shares how his upbringing has shaped his personal identity and creative outlook. As Samuel discusses navigating the complexities of the fashion and design industry, he reflects on the pivotal moments of founding A-COLD-WALL* and his venture into industrial design. From selling a majority stake in his brand to achieving global success, he highlights the essential roles of education, mentorship, and staying true to one’s roots. 

Bisoye:

People often describe you as 'serious'. Do you think your upbringing and understanding of your background have influenced this perception?

Samuel Ross:

I'd say I'm the oldest of two siblings. There's an expectation to be the one who goes on to provide for the family. I'm also pretty much the eldest out of 10 to 15 cousins on both sides of my family - my mother's side and my father's side. So among the uncles, aunts and cousins, there's also an expectation. It's very old-school Caribbean, but as the elder of that batch, you need to be the one to provide; answer, support, or at least be some form of a beacon. I think those values were inherited, and they shaped, my sense of responsibility and accountability. 

The second component, if I'm really honest with you, was relative poverty. There were times when there wasn't a lot of food or means to participate in extracurricular activities, school trips and other elements of wider socialisation. When I went back to school after being home-schooled, I quickly realised, ‘Oh, we don't have the means, but we should have the means’. 

So, I guess this seriousness came from believing that you could fight against the odds of a class system, knowing that our voice and perspective are as valuable as those who sit in other tiers of the class system. 

Bisoye:

I think this provides us with a great opportunity to speak further about you almost cracking the system or breaking into the system. By any means, you have not had a traditional trajectory in the industry and I want to speak a lot about that. One of the things that you seem to take pride in and ownership of is your ability to be accountable to yourself about your actions but also, about this drive you have, that irrespective of whatever circumstance you were coming from, you were going to find your way in. I think you've provided insight into where that background comes from but, I want to understand more about you as a person and how you were able to crack this code. Take me to just before your interaction with the late Virgi Ablohl, when you were planning and mapping what you wanted to do in this industry. What was your thought process? 

Samuel Ross:

Well, it's interesting because you do your degree, or your first degree and you're sold this dream that, especially in graphic design and product design, you can become Jony Ive, Marc Newson, Ralph Steadman or Peter Saville. Although there was this desire to belong to a canon of an industry, I was not in the canon. My genealogy was not in the Western canon of industrial products, graphic design, or architecture. David Adjaye was practising, but his notoriety wasn’t what it is now. I started to look around, and factor in where I could go in my career post-graduation. I worked hard. I got a first-class degree, and I was scouted immediately. It was just before graduation, and it was at a local industrial design company, which was run by a South Indian family. So, already there was an opportunity provided by other people of colour, people who could look beyond the exterior and see talent. That was almost my first olive branch in. That's the importance of understanding that unity is in the global majority, not just our immediate demographic. After working at this agency for about a year and a half, which was a great experience, I realised that if I stayed in the traditional design industry, which is all relatively small, private limited companies, there would be no way for me to reach the heights on the timeline I had for myself. 

I wrote this list at the age of 20/21, and it was a bullet point list of where I want to be in 10 years and what I want to stand for in 10 years. I put down, that 'I want to be a notable Black artist and designer in graphics, industrial and fashion'. 

The second component was, after spending a year and a half in this agency and writing this list, I could see that this industry didn't facilitate the level of creativity, expression, and lifestyle that I wanted to be a part of. By that I mean, the way fashion and fine art facilitate far more bohemian, socialist, liberal and expressive ways of working, and the values that they express. I found industrial, product and graphic, to be honest with you, to be too restrictive, to be too conservative, in this very traditional middle-class culture, which is fine, but that's not where I had come from, and that's not where I had aspired to join. I started an artistic practice outside of my working hours, I was doing a lot of street art, and posting it around the city. I started printing T-shirts, and a lot of this was exposure I'd seen being adjacent to the arts, because I studied in the arts, but also through the internet, on Tumblr, and through culture. At this point, I was being exposed to all of these new references which I had far more of an affinity towards. I aimed to pursue that by reaching out to a list of names that I, at that time, believed to be establishing themselves between art and fashion. I think I got no response to every email I sent. I kept trying, I started inboxing: brands, clothing stores, designers, artists, painters, and anyone who was fundamentally a person of colour and close to what felt like a zeitgeist at the time of radical expression, who I wanted to build some type of network with, or work for, at that point.

This eventually led me to cross paths with Virgil via Instagram. I remember the day like it was yesterday, I was sitting in my office in Leicester, and I was on Instagram. My page maybe had about 15 posts, and it was a mixture of T-shirts and fashion elements that I'd been printing and making. I went on to his page, he just wound down Pyrex Vision at this point.

I liked a few of his posts and he happened to be on his phone at the same time, and he liked a few of my posts back, and I remember sitting in the canteen area of my first job, and thinking, 'I'm gone, I'm gone, gone, I'm gone'. 

Within the next few days, I started strategising how I could use that interaction to get out of Leicester and get to London. That's the first step. If you're not in London, get to London. If you're already in London, you already have a head start on the rest of the country so, don't take that for granted. I then received an email from Virgil the following day, which was really about Donda and what would then become Off-White. In this email which has gone viral a few times on the internet, it pops up every few months, he said that he was building Donda out for Ye and they were looking to add new talent to their team. It was a relatively formal email, which was standard at the time. I responded to it formally. All of these passion projects and commercial projects that I'd been working on in my nine-to-five, and then, my five-to-midnight, I was documenting professionally. I uploaded them to Behance, so there was a professional log. I then started to produce microsites which could facilitate each of the work per discipline. I did this so that when the email came back from Virgil, I could list all of my work per discipline in an orderly and professional manner. I can't explain the overlap of Virgil without talking about the degree in the first job, because the degree took me out of a particular environment. I remember the first day, and I have to raise this, it's really important to show the breadth of the journey. On my first day enrolling for university, I had to have a security interview, because I had a case for GBH, and I got found guilty for it.

Fortunately, because that happened before I was 18, I didn't proceed to have a record, which meant I could still get to university. University opened me up to such a different world of people, I learned the cadence of what it is to move through society. This then helped me get my first job, which then helped me have the confidence to build a portfolio and to speak in the language of the professional sector, which then assisted me in being able to communicate with Virgil appropriately to become his assistant. So all these steps stem back from education. 

Bisoye:

Once you got Virgil’s attention what was the process, what were your next steps?