 You get the feeling that Wayne Hemingway could turn his hand to designing anything. The co-founder of fashion brand Red Or Dead, which he established in the early 80s with his wife Gerardine, has now turned his focus to housing and interior design with their company Hemingway Design. "Well we've lived in houses for 40 odd years, and you've got that kind of brain anyway where you notice things and question things," he explains. "It's the same reason I don't think we'd be phased by designing a car." Having sold off the fashion chain in the late 90s, Hemingway famously spoke out about 'the Wimpification of Britain' and the state of community housing, Wayne's bluff called by property developer George Wimpey when he was invited to work with them on some future projects and give his unique take on how to make interesting and affordable housing. The result is a collaboration on the likes of the three projects which make up Thames Gateway in Dartford, Kent and the Staiths, South Bank, an 800 home development on the River Tyne in Gateshead. In both cases homeowners are given choice and quality houses with character - without breaking the bank. It's a world away from his fashion roots, selling clothes with Gerardine at Camden and Kensington markets in the early 80s. "Well the approach is the same in that you're designing something that you're coming up with things that people want to buy," says Wayne, who comes to this month's Grand Designs Live show at the NEC to speak on housing. "You want to make them happy and hopefully make their life better, but obviously the approach between fashion and housing is different - fashion is a very disposable thing, you're only designing for a short time and instant gratification, whereas with housing you've got to take a lot more into account, like it's the most expensive thing people will ever invest in; you have to take a lot more care, you can't afford to make any mistakes." Despite working in the fashion and design industries for over two decades, Morecambe-born Wayne has always managed to stay in touch with his Lancashire working class roots, which is reflected in his work, be it clothes, wallpaper or bricks and mortar. "We've not got odd tastes, we share our taste so we're able to come up with ideas in the confidence that other people will share our love of them," says Wayne. "You do meet designers who don't have, for want of a better word, the 'common touch' - you get a lot that just have a very unusual outlook on things, too narrow, and we haven't; I think a lot of people share our philosophies, which makes it a lot easier. "We're good at finding affordable ways of doing things and also compromising - a lot of designers don't like to compromise, we've always realised that at the end of the day products have to make money." He adds: "It's quite good 'cos all these different projects feed off each other; so you know, you might be working on a technology project - that feeds into housing, it's quite good to do lots of things. You get more contacts with different suppliers, different materials for different industries, I think it works really well." So does he miss swapping jackets and jeans for bricks and tiles? "No, not at all," Wayne insists. "We did that, and the kind of fashion we did is a young person's industry, and you get older and the things you're interested in change, and housing and the community became more important to us than shirts. "I don't think I'd be very comfortable being 40 odd years old and still getting excited about blouses and tops... it's more interesting to keep changing." Wayne appears at Grand Designs Live NEC on October 6.The show runs from October 6-8 - for more information or to book tickets go to www.granddesignslive.com or www.hemingwaydesign.co.uk | 
