Fashion Records
| Fashion Records | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1980 |
| Founder | John MacGillivray Chris Lane |
| Genre | Reggae |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Location | London |
Fashion Records is a UK-based record label, publishing reggae music.
Founded in summer 1980, Fashion Records is one of the more successful UK-based reggae labels, and one of only a few British reggae labels to release records that were produced in their own recording studio.
The label was the brainchild of John MacGillivray and Chris Lane, two reggae devotees, and was essentially a spin-off from MacGillivray's Dub Vendor record store. The first Fashion release hit number 1 in the UK reggae charts in the summer of 1980 - Dee Sharp's "Let's Dub It Up". In the next few years many British reggae artists, and artists who were passing through from Jamaica, turned up on the label: Keith Douglas, Carlton Manning (of Carlton & His Shoes), Alton Ellis, Carlton Lewis and Johnnie Clarke amongst others.
In 1982 Fashion opened a four-track studio, essentially an expansion of Lane’s dub-cutting facility, A-Class, in the basement of the new Dub Vendor shop in Clapham Junction. By this time the UK MC explosion had begun, and Fashion played a part with Papa Face, Laurel & Hardy, Pato Banton, Bionic Rhona, Macka B and Asher Senator. The dub-cutting service saw Paul Robinson (of One Blood) and Maxi Priest as regulars at the tiny subterranean studio and Robinson soon enjoyed hits with the label as Barry Boom, while Chris Lane played guitars and percussion with Maxi & Paul's 'Caution' band, contributing to (and engineering much of) Priest's debut album, You're Safe.
Smiley Culture had one of the biggest reggae hits of 1984 on Fashion with "Cockney Translation", and his single "Police Officer" went to number twelve in the UK Singles Chart, and he appeared on Top of the Pops. Their connection with the UK MC boom made the step into ragga and dance-hall in the mid-1980s a comparatively natural one, and the studio was busy enough to employ Gussie P, and later Frenchie as engineers – both went on to be producers with their own labels, Sip-A-Cup and Maximum Sound respectively.
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