London based Freya McKee is a woman of many talents. At just twenty-two, she has already made her way as a singer-songwriter, designer and model. Over the past year, Freya used the time spent in lockdown to put her creativity into practice, combining her art and entreupenurship to produce her own sustainable t-shirt designs, songs and music videos. On top of her clothing designs and stylistic talent, earlier this year she released her debut single ‘Oob’, detailing life in lockdown and perfectly capturing the raw emotions of bedroom pop and the indie genre itself.
Sheesh Magazine chatted with Freya about her new music, clothing designs and future creative projects….
Q: Where do you get your style inspiration from?
FREYA MCKEE: I find a lot of inspiration just generally looking through my Depop style edit and my Pinterest. I tend to source for individual items rather than full looks and then merge the pieces together. In terms of designers I love looking at Junya Watanabe, Vivienne Westwood and Jean Paul Gaultier. I’d describe my general style as a mixture of 70s and 90s fashion. The top tip for thrifting I have is just to research on the daily to find new places to source from! I think finding a wholesaler is particularly helpful.
Q: How have you managed your creativity over quarantine?
FREYA MCKEE: Over the course of the first lockdown I was in my final year of university studying photography so that kept me very occupied. But since finishing and leaving uni I’ve wanted to stay as productive as possible so I’ve had a lot of new beginnings and projects that I’ve been working on. I started recording and releasing my first solo single ‘Oob’ and the accompanying music video, as well as making my own screen print t-shirts! My first design was the FKA top, and I have actually just released my second design called the Deseree top which is a photo I took of my brother, Chester. The top is available in red and blue with a white print. I plan on making some new designs to drop when summer comes around too!
Q: How did you go about creating the FKA top?
FREYA MCKEE: I started my Depop properly in 2018 where I was initially just trying to make some money to live off at uni! But over the years I put more effort in and it became full-time. I had always wanted to start designing my own pieces to sell, so I thought with all the time I had in lockdown it would be a great opportunity to take the risk! In 2015 I created a watercolour painting of FKA Twigs based on her iconic LP1 album artwork. I also liked the idea of having such a powerful female figure on the top! Another priority of mine was to ensure it was as sustainable as possible so I did some research and found a company that supplied sustainably made t-shirts all from recycled materials and 100% organic cotton to make the tops with.
Q: When and why did you get into music?
FREYA MCKEE: I started songwriting at the age of 16 after really getting into music that year, particularly listening to artists like Beach Fossils, King Krule and Men I Trust. I began going to gigs frequently and loved the atmosphere so much – I knew it was something I wanted to experience in the future. My family is also very music orientated so I was always surrounded by good music, particularly of the soul genre. I initially was in another band for four years but I had different visions of what I wanted my sound to be, so decided to start up this solo project.
Q: What was the inspiration behind ‘Oob’?
FREYA MCKEE: To begin with I saw the first lockdown as a bit of an excuse to stop being creative, but by the second lockdown, I just set myself more of a challenge to make something from start to finish with all the constraints in place to prove it was possible. That’s why the whole concept behind Oob was to produce a full song and music video completely within the second lockdown. Oob was written, recorded and mixed within the same bedroom. I was lucky to be living in a flat in Liverpool surrounded by other amazing musicians so I had help from Jordi James of SUGARTHIEF, Harry Handford of Spilt Milk Society and Corrie Summers formerly of Tuscan Sun to make the song happen. We were limited to locations and concepts due to lockdown but we managed to make a little music video of me on a space hopper going around Liverpool as part of my “daily walk”.
Q: What would you like to see more of in the creative and music industry?
FREYA MCKEE: I’d love to see more women being represented in the music industry. Previous festival lineups are a shocking representation of the ratio of male to female artists, and in particular the headliners! There’s been a small victory in the most recent Brit Awards where a lot of female artists won (and rightly so), but more can be done. Maybe there should be an all female festival line up too…that would be cool.
Q: What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs and young creatives?
FREYA MCKEE: Some advice I would give for aspiring entrepreneurs is to just be persistent! It takes a long time to get noticed but as long as you’re staying active on social media and building connections, your platform will start to get recognised! I’d also just take the risk of investing because if you start small, you’re either only going to make a small loss or make a profit and be able to build your platform even more, but I believe it will be the latter.
Q: Are you feeling hopeful for the future of sustainable and second hand fashion?
FREYA MCKEE: I think the idea of sustainable fashion is becoming a lot more recognised and I would say the pandemic has actually had a more positive impact on sustainable fashion. With the growth of popular apps like TikTok, people are becoming educated on the damage of fast fashion. Due to the way these fast fashion stores glorify themselves, it’s easy to understand how the general public never saw the extent of their damage, to not only the environment, but also basic human rights. But with more creators speaking on the matter, people are wanting to make a change. Even the idea of going charity shopping, boot sales and vintage shopping is becoming a bit of a trend in itself!
Q: Do you have any future plans for your creative projects and yourself in general?
FREYA MCKEE: One of my long term future goals is to release an EP by next year which I’ve already started writing. A shorter goal I’d like to achieve is to have a summer line of designs out by this year. I’m open to exploring more creative projects in general and would love to do some more styling too.
