Latest news with #SloaneSquare
Entrepreneur
2 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Entrepreneur UK's London 100: Sign of the Times
Sign of the Times is a full-service luxury resale marketplace that provides scalable, seamless solutions offering a comprehensive B2C service for individual buyers and sellers Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. Industry: e-commerce Sign of the Times is a full-service luxury resale marketplace. The start-up provides scalable, seamless solutions to major UK retailers like John Lewis and Farfetch for their preloved luxury offerings, while also offering a comprehensive B2C service for individual buyers and sellers. In the past five years, Sign of the Times has expanded into 40 countries, with a flagship store in Chelsea, an e-commerce platform, and concessions in Sloane Square and Oxford Circus, plus integration with 10+ marketplaces. They've extended the lifecycle of over 350,000 clothing items, preventing them from going to landfill. Their focus on sustainability powers resale initiatives for top retailers and supports the circular fashion movement. Leveraging custom-built technology, including machine learning for authentication, Sign of the Times has optimised operations and reduced costs. Recognised with three Drapers Awards and generating 9.5m views from viral campaigns, the start-up is endorsed by influencers like Leonie Hanne and Chiara Ferragni. Sign of the Times targets 300% growth in the next 3 years to lead the UK luxury resale and circular fashion market.
The Guardian
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
William Dudley obituary
The English Stage Company at the Royal Court is world-renowned for having launched a radical phase in English playwriting in the mid-1950s. But equally significant was the concomitant overhaul in British theatre stage design, and William Dudley, who has died aged 78, was one of its outstanding new stars. The age of painted backcloths and front cloths was now the sole preserve of pantomime, and exquisite costumes and furniture were replaced with rough, raw material and free-standing functional objects. The change, rendering stage design more architectural, more 'art school' and certainly more muscularly poetic, had been instigated by Sean Kenny in Oliver! and John Bury at Stratford East and the Royal Shakespeare Company. The transition was supervised by the 'Motleys', three sisters, Margaret and Sophie Harris, and Elizabeth Montgomery, John Gielgud's design collaborators, who launched an influential design course in 1966. Their mantra was design, not decoration. Dudley emerged in Sloane Square, under the aegis of the Motley-influenced great minimalist designer Jocelyn Herbert, consort of George Devine, the ESC founder, alongside such other luminaries as Hayden Griffin, Deirdre Clancy, John Gunter and John Napier. They would all go on to work in the major companies, in new plays, operas and musicals around the world, transforming the idea that mainland Europe had of British theatre design as the province of such throwback decorative geniuses as Cecil Beaton and Leslie Hurry. In a prodigious career, Dudley started at the Court with a stark design for Peter Gill's revival of The Duchess of Malfi in 1971 and embraced a reputation-enhancing design for Mozart's Die Eintführung at Glyndebourne in 1979; Jonathan Pryce's Hamlet at the Court in 1980, where Pryce spoke the words of his own dead father in a medical cabinet setting of skulls; and, in 1985, the triumphant National Theatre staging of the medieval Mystery plays, a trilogy in a Yorkshire dialect version by Tony Harrison, directed by Bill Bryden (a key collaborator in Dudley's career), beneath a glittering constellation of dustbin braziers, domestic utensils and hurricane lamps. Dudley's designs from the get-go were immersive and environmentally organic long before such terms were fashionable and deadly. He was an elfin, impish curly-headed presence in the preparatory theatre, bedecked with tools and flecked with paint, seemingly unmindful of sleep or recreation outside of his obsessive dedication. In 2006, in a collaboration with his future wife, the director Lucy Bailey (they had been together since 1994 and married in 2008), he designed Titus Andronicus, starring Douglas Hodge, one of the most memorable productions seen at Shakespeare's Globe on the South Bank. He transformed the space into a theatre of death, decking the pillars in funereal black and re-energising the whole arena, said Michael Billington, in 'an astonishing makeover.' Bill, as he was generally known, was the son of Dorothy (nee Stacey), a school dinner lady, and William Dudley, a builder and decorator. Born in Islington, north London, he studied at St Martin's School of Art and the Slade. On a Saturday job in the Canonbury bookshop, he stumbled across the amateur Tower theatre nearby in 1963 and found himself painting, then building, sets, while still training. His first design, in 1966 at the Tower, was for Machiavelli's Mandragora, with costumes by Sue Plummer, with whom he worked and lived for the next decade or so. He warmed up for The Mysteries (which opened in the first part of the trilogy in 1977) with other Gill productions – notably Edward Bond's The Fool (1975) about the country poet John Clare, and Gill's own beautiful Cardiff memory play, Small Change (1976), both at the Court, and a stunning National promenade production by Bryden of Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford (1978, adapted from the novels by Keith Dewhurst). Dudley responded inherently to such a piece of work set in rural communities at the end of the 19th century. His design for Peter Hall's production of The Ring at Bayreuth in 1983 sought a direct naivety in the confection of naked Rhine maidens in a soft tank reflected vertically in a suspended mirror, while Siegfried wandered in an Arthur Rackham-like tawny forest. Dudley was the first designer fully to exploit the amazing double-drum revolve in the new National, when, for Howard Davies's magnificent 1988 revival of Dion Boucicault's Irish melodrama of the 1866 Fenian uprising, The Shaughraun, he conjured the whole of county Sligo, mythical and realistic, with its crumbling ruins, abbey arches strewn with ivy, virgin statues and peasant cottages, with a glittering band of starlit sea beyond. After The Mysteries, his biggest theatre projects were in Glasgow with Bryden. Having commandeered the old Harland and Wolff engine shed in Govan, they produced two of the most spectacular and sensational productions of the past century. The Ship (1990) told the drama of the last great liner built on the Clyde, as the hull slid, literally, from its timber supports away from the audience … who were left to lament and celebrate the end of an era. Then, in The Big Picnic (1994), they recreated the terrible beauty of first world war trench warfare, night-time eeriness, search ights and star shell tracer bullets. The hallucination of the Angel of Mons appeared over the western front, and the audience. The 'show' was rooted in the fate of local Govan lads, with a live soundtrack of anthems and folk rock. In 2004, Dudley's range expanded into designing not only David Hare's brilliant documentary drama, The Permanent Way, about the scandal and tragedy of railway disasters, and a superb revival by Roger Michell of Pinter's Old Times – a mirrored floor and gauze surround expressed exactly the sexual and social ambiguity in the play – but also an ingenious, kaleidoscopically shifting projection setting for Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White, directed by Trevor Nunn. Personally, I worried about this intrusion of video and CG imagery into design, but Dudley had no fears about it and had taken it one step further in his panoramic designs for Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia (2002), a nine-hour trilogy investigating the seeds of the Russian revolution and the conflict between individual liberty and ideological prescription, directed by Nunn at the National. His last work – before a diagnosis of Alzheimer's – included a wonderfully agile design for Turgenev's Fortune's Fool at the Old Vic in 2013, starring Iain Glen and Richard McCabe, and Bailey's brilliantly conceived 2017 production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution in the old County Hall, former home of the Greater London council on the South Bank. Dudley always reminded me of the Artful Dodger. There was something cheeky and subversive about him. He played the accordion, and the spoons; a real north London lad. He won seven Olivier awards – only Judi Dench can match him in that number. He was appointed OBE in 2021. His younger sister, Jeanie, died in 2006. He is survived by Lucy and their sons, Ollie and Billy. William 'Bill' Dudley, theatre designer, born 4 March 1947; died 31 May 2025
Telegraph
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Jason Watkins: ‘I've won a Bafta and made Hollywood films – but I still have to clean up poo in the garden'
'Oh, that's really nice,' Jason Watkins enthuses, casting a discerning eye over my vintage blue velvet Jaeger jacket, borrowed from my mother's wardrobe. It reminds him of a navy velvet suit his late father bought from Simpsons, the department store in London, he tells me. Watkins, 62, is quite the natty dresser himself. 'I've got a bit more dapper as I've grown older,' he confirms, illustrated by his outfit today: statement red socks, a lemon shirt channelling spring under a blue cardigan-jacket, and a playful soccer-motif tie – a nod to his semi-professional footballing days as a teenager playing for Wrexham's youth team, among others. We're in the bar of the Royal Court Theatre, in Sloane Square, where the actor has performed many times and helped with youth workshops. Watkins is here to discuss his new four-part thriller, The Game, in which he plays the newly retired, diligent detective Huw Miller, who is haunted by his failure to catch a serial killer. When a new neighbour, played by Robson Green, moves in across the road, Miller becomes fixated that he could be a potential suspect. Green's Grantchester schedule meant he turned up mid-shoot and that Watkins and Sunetra Sarker, who plays Miller's wife, filmed most of their scenes together without him. 'The show was a weird animal in that way,' Watkins says. 'But Robson and I have worked together before, on Being Human and Soldier Soldier. He's just great, we had a lot of fun when he was there.' Following 2023's The Catch, and Coma in 2024, this is a hat-trick for Watkins in terms of Channel 5 dramas. So, what's the appeal? 'Channel 5 is just very straightforward – offer, do it, but hard, hard work and a tough schedule, because everyone's on a budget. So, instead of filming two, three, four pages [of script] a day, you might do seven or eight, which is tough.' The schedule may be punishing, but he relished shooting for seven weeks in and around Bilbao, Spain – standing in for the UK – where there were good tax breaks, great crews and actors. 'One of the joys is working with people from Europe and their culture. I learnt a bit of Basque and they gave me one of their famous berets at the end. I was very touched by that,' he says proudly. 'It was nice to think we are working with our European neighbours, having left Europe, catastrophically, in my opinion.' At his core, Miller is a flawed yet good man, trying to make amends for his mistakes and to do right by his family and his profession – but floundering. Watkins, similarly, is a dedicated and hard-working family man, with two children from his first marriage and two with his second wife, the actress Clara Francis. Watkins and Francis's two-year-old daughter Maude tragically died from undiagnosed sepsis in 2011 and is the subject of their deeply moving ITV documentary Jason & Clara: In Memory of Maudie. Down to earth and genial, Watkins brings a compelling everyman quality to this new role that makes you root for Miller and offers a sense of familiarity; he could be your neighbour, the man on the train, or indeed, a different national treasure altogether. 'People often confuse me with Toby Jones,' he reveals, his eyes twinkling behind his tortoiseshell-framed glasses. 'I was at lunch yesterday, and this director, who I worked with on a film, thought I was Toby. But then he [the director] is getting on a bit...' Rada alumnus Watkins may have a passing resemblance to his friend Jones, but he is, of course, a highly respected actor in his own right. His talent for impersonation was highlighted when he played prime minister Harold Wilson in Netflix's The Crown, and his sensitive and nuanced performance as Christopher Jefferies, the schoolteacher falsely accused of the murder of Joanna Yeates in ITV's The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, won him the Bafta for leading actor in 2015. In an era of prestige TV, how does he feel about those who judge or dismiss Channel 5 dramas because of their mainstream appeal and smaller budgets? 'I think if it's a good script and I like the character, I'll nearly always do it – and, frankly, one can't always choose. Last year was very tough for everybody. Almost 50 per cent less drama was being made, 78 per cent less documentaries. I mean, it was brutal. When things get tough, that kind of snobbery is redundant. I wish I could choose all my work, but I can't, and I feel most people are in that boat,' he admits. 'If it's a good script, just get it made. Channel 5 is underpinned by Paramount [which currently owns it], so that has enabled it to make choices and get the people in place, including Ben Frow [chief content officer], who knows what their USP is. They have always been very ambitious about the work, the subjects and the people they want, supplying what they know their market likes.' Watkins's work with the channel isn't limited to dramas. For several years, he's narrated the documentary series Inside the Tower of London, which led to his own three-part Tower of London strand. Shortly after narrating an episode about Lady Jane Grey and the famous Paul Delaroche painting of her in the National Gallery – which depicts her being led to the execution block by Sir John Brydges, the lieutenant of the Tower – the actor discovered a surprising personal connection. 'A few weeks [after recording that episode], my dad passed away. He was adopted, and there were always these rumours that he was connected to Jane Austen. I found some photographs and birth certificates that had Austen on them and did some Googling, and if, in fact, I was related to Jane Austen through my dad, then I was also related to John Brydges, the guy in the painting. I mentioned it to my team who were making Inside the Tower of London and then to Ben Frow at the launch of Coma, and he said, 'Well, you should make it' – and the next day he greenlit it.' Being related to Jane Austen means Watkins is also a distant relative of Edward I and Richard III. It must be thrilling for the Hounslow-raised boy to discover that he's got blue blood. 'What do you do with it, though? Do I just walk up to the palace and say it's mine?' he asks impishly. 'They're [Netflix] doing Pride and Prejudice. I think they should just cast me as a matter of course.' Watkins's Mr Bennet to Olivia Colman's Mrs Bennet would be quite the powerhouse pairing, I suggest. He is no stranger to sharing scenes with acting royalty, after all, having just performed with Cate Blanchett in Duncan Macmillan's modern take on Chekhov's classic play The Seagull, at the Barbican Theatre. Blanchett played Arkadina, an egomaniacal actress with extraordinary levels of self-obsession, while Watkins was her sickly brother, Peter Sorin. The contemporary update, which broke the fourth wall and used modern technology (including VR sets) and rock music, received a four-star review from The Telegraph, while London Theatre described Watkins as 'the quiet soul of the whole piece'. 'Cate was amazing,' he confirms. 'She's incredibly inventive in rehearsal and a real team player. It never felt like a vanity project for her.' As a veteran of the stage – he's been in approximately 120 plays across his 40-year career – why does he think other Hollywood stars, including Brie Larson, Rami Malek and Sigourney Weaver, have fared so badly in the West End recently? 'Who knows? I mean all I can say is Cate's a theatre animal – she ran the Sydney Theatre Company. So, she's done theatre and that helps, understanding what that is,' he says diplomatically. The news in January that the ITV crime drama McDonald & Dodds, in which Watkins played the eponymous DS Dodds to Tala Gouveia's DCI Lauren McDonald, was ending after four series was a source of great disappointment to him. However, the downtime did lead to him getting a literary agent and writing a TV show, about which he is tight-lipped but reveals that it is 'getting close now'. He is also set to take on another campaigning role later this year, about which he is equally secretive. 'This project is less personal, but more about an issue,' he offers. 'As soon as these roles come along, I tend to jump at them. We've seen with Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Adolescence what these dramas can do – how getting hold of the zeitgeist really makes an impact.' After an hour in his company, the word I'd use to describe Watkins is 'grounded', which in no small part seems down to his family. 'In my household, I'm the lowest rung of the ladder. I have absolutely no credibility, kudos,' he muses. 'Last year, I did a Wes Anderson movie [The Phoenician Scheme], came home and was still, quite rightly [treated like that]. The Seagull has been so rewarding, but I still have to clean up the poo in the garden.' He warms to this theme. 'We were on holiday once and I was trying to adjust the bike seat and the kids said, 'No, you don't do it like that, Dad, you do it like this.' I said, 'No, I've got the Allen key.' I do know what I'm doing with a bike, but there's this terrible mistrust, they think I'm useless. I did sort of say in a fit, 'Listen, I've won a f------Bafta! I do know what I'm doing!'' And did that have the desired effect? 'No, of course not!' he chuckles. 'There was more laughter!' I suspect he wouldn't have it any other way.
