“You’ll be able to spot me; I’ll be dressed differently from everyone else,” said Steve Edge when we arranged to meet in London’s Arts Club. He was right – he was the only one wearing an immaculately tailored three-piece suit in brown Prince of Wales check with a red velvet collar and a striped shirt with double cuffs that flopped, unfolded and unlinked, from beneath his sleeves.
Edge says he always dresses flamboyantly, whether he is working, fly-fishing or relaxing at his log cabin in Box Hill, Surrey, with his wife Sylvie and their five children.
“I made up my mind at the age of nine that I would wear my Sunday best every day after an affluent aunt, who had a cabinet filled with expensive cups and plates kept for special occasions, died without ever using them,” he says.
Edge’s immediate family, however, was anything but affluent. Born in Brixton, south London, his parents were impoverished artists, meaning his father went to work at Smithfield meat market to support his three children.
“It was a very Bohemian household – we had next to no money, but we had a fantastic time,” Edge says. “I was always happy as long as I had a bag of glitter, a bit of cardboard, some glue and some magic markers. Pretty much the tools of my trade today.”
Being severely dyslexic, Edge claims never to have read a book but recognises his good fortune in having his word blindness diagnosed early, at the age of four.
“My father had a friend called Dennis Gray who was a director of IPC magazines. He married a New Zealand woman who was a pioneering expert in dyslexia and she quickly recognised it. There were no special educational facilities back in the early 1950s, so the Grays said they would look after me and I wouldn’t need to go to school for a while.
“I was always passionate about art, design and making things, and Dennis had his own studio at home where he used to let me come up with ideas for items that would be featured in some of IPC’s do-it-yourself magazines such as Practical Woodworking. By the time I was 12, I had made all sorts of things for the readers to re-create, from a tortoise hibernation box to a mouse cage that attached to the skirting board, Tom and Jerry style.”
It was also the Grays who secured Edge a place at a private school when he was 13. He spent as much time as he was allowed in the art department and subsequently entered the European Young Artist of the Year competition, which he won.
“A design agency called ABC Graphics offered me a job’” he recalls. “I was 15, and ABC was actually paying me to draw things and to make stuff, exactly what I would be doing at home. I couldn’t believe my luck.”
His next long-term employment was in the art department of EMI studios where he made props for movies such as Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark. He decided to establish his own studio and design agency in 1982.
“Almost immediately, a brand came to me called Wickes, which was a newly established building supplies company. One of the first things we did for them was to create the Wickes Good Ideas leaflets, which were simple, DIY guides to home improvements. They were a great success and we went on to create 3,000 different pieces of own-brand packaging and aisle displays – it was definitely the big liquidity moment for Steve Edge Design. We went from absolutely nothing to a turnover of £1.2m in little more than a year.
“Suddenly I had serious money but, more importantly, it gave me the confidence to believe that I could really make it in business, and that, in turn, gave me a sense of freedom to enjoy life.”
Word quickly spread about the bright, unconventional agency and Edge began to attract blue-chip names. One was Fortnum & Mason, the royal grocer. “I went to see Gerry Hamilton, the then managing director, and he asked me to tell him honestly what I thought of Fortnum & Mason. I said I thought it was boring, stuffy, dull, elitist and snobbish, and they needed to accept that the old money was running out and bring humour to the business in order to attract customers off the high street. As a start, I recommended that we used the quotes and personality of Oscar Wilde in the Christmas catalogue – sales went up 30 per cent.”
After that, Edge was deluged with work from the likes of Christian Dior, Richemont, Cartier, Purdey, Lock & Company and Sunseeker, as well less glamorous companies.
“People say that our business has brought a new dimension to the design world, and I’m proud of that. If it’s true, I attribute it to my dyslexia because, the fact is, if I can look at a piece of design before it leaves the studio and immediately get the message that it’s trying to convey, then anyone should be able to understand it.
“Its success has brought me substantial personal wealth, but like most creatives I’ve never known how to look after it. I’m hopeless when it comes to keeping accounts – I’d rather be thigh deep in water on the river Test, fishing for trout.”
By Simon de Burton
Financial Times
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