The Red Dragonhood
Encyclopedia
The Red Dragonhood is a street fashion
label
from Wales
, founded in 2006 by Welsh
designer Martin Davies
.
The label is rooted in Welsh counter-culture, as exemplified at different times by the music of bands such as Stereophonics
, Manic Street Preachers
, Super Furry Animals
, Catatonia
and Goldie Lookin' Chain, and the literature
of Rachel Trezise
, Niall Griffiths
and John Williams. It draws on references from rock music
, the Welsh language
, Welsh history and the typically self-deprecating Welsh sense of humour to express a non-conformist, contemporary representation of Welsh identity.
Worn by musicians Richard Jones
, Javier Weyler
, Nicky Wire
, Dafydd Ieuan
and Guto Pryce
, actors Rhys Ifans
and Matthew Rhys
, television presenter Lisa Rogers
and writer Rachel Trezise
, the label has a cult following in Wales and sells to Welsh expats
the world over by mail order.
, such as the emblem known as the Prince of Wales's feathers
. Buckingham Palace
and the Welsh Rugby Union
(WRU) both claim exclusive commercial rights to an emblem that many Welsh people consider to be a symbol of Wales itself. So he began using T-shirt
s as a protest medium. Rejecting what he considered to be hackneyed and stereotypical examples of Welshness - blazer-wearing male voice choirs, traditional Welsh costume
, leeks, daffodils, lovespoons etc. - he printed, for example, T-shirts with an image of a sheep's skull and glow-in-the-dark ink to highlight the plight of North Walian
farmers in the aftermath of the Chernobyl
disaster.
Having previously sworn that he would never produce anything rugby-related, he designed a T-shirt to coincide with the 2009 Six Nations Championship
, where the claws of a dragon
appeared to rip out of the shirt from the wearer's heart through a symbol not unlike that used by the Welsh Rugby Union.
Davies created a more direct vehicle for his political and economic ideas when he founded Newid
(change in Welsh), a political party
in Wales, in 2009. The Red Dragonhood subsequently appears to have evolved into a more mainstream
fashion-orientated brand, albeit one with some underlying political themes.
, the Welsh national anthem
, to play automatically when visitors clicked on the first page of The Red Dragonhood's original website. So he sent guitar chord notations to a friend from art college days, the guitarist John Ellis
(The Vibrators
, Peter Gabriel
, The Stranglers
) who, despite coming from North London
rather than Wales, duly obliged. Another friend remarked that the howling, heavily distorted, over-the-top guitar rendition sounded a bit like Jimi Hendrix
. Davies immediately saw an opportunity to make a point about how some modern Welsh icons had been imposed through establishment propaganda
.
He wrote a short story about the finding of a lost tape, putting Jimi Hendrix in the frame for making the recording without actually claiming it was Hendrix. He based the story within a tight geographic location in North London and dressed it with real characters and places he knew well, such as a thinly disguised Stuart Goddard (aka Adam Ant
), another friend from college, and Ellis's old recording studio in Crouch End
. The real protagonists in the story were dead (Hendrix and his manager, Chas Chandler
) as were the characters Davies had invented, except for a possible eyewitness, an archetypal Welsh bass player called Viv Williams from a fictional 1970s band, The New Flames, whom Davies claimed he was looking for to prove the veracity of the story.
He published the tale on the Red Dragonhood website and for a while nothing happened. Then a journalist from the Western Mail noticed it. The Guardian
picked up the story and ran it on New Year's Day 2007. The New Musical Express ran the story on the same day. The next day, the BBC
news and current affairs flagship television programme, Newsnight
, closed with the story.
Davies's hoax traveled around the world within hours. At one point, a Google
search for 'Jimi+Hendrix+Welsh+National+Anthem' produced over 40 million results. The Red Dragonhood website received more than 30 million hits from people wanting to hear the recording. This sparked a global debate amongst Hendrix fans as to whether the recording was genuine. Speculation was rife about the identity of the player if it wasn't Hendrix.
Interest in the story had begun to wane by Saint David's Day
(1 March) 2007, a national day of celebration in Wales, so Davies accepted an invitation from the BBC to come clean about the hoax on Newsnight. Reasoning, correctly as it turned out, that the show's producers would reduce the political points he wanted to make about Welsh myths to concentrate on the deception itself, he agreed to meet the BBC crew in a pub where he plied them with Brains
Welsh beer and Penderyn Welsh whiskey. He was then interviewed wearing a T-shirt that featured a large representation of the Prince of Wales's feathers on which the German
motto
, 'Ich dein' had been subtly replaced with a vulgar Welsh phrase, 'Twll dîn pob sais'. In response to calls from viewers who knew what it meant, presenter Jeremy Paxman issued a clarification the following night, describing Davies as "Either a visionary or a Taff time-waster".
John Ellis's 'Hendrix' recording and Martin Davies's original story can still be found here..
Street fashion
Street fashion is a term used to describe fashion that is considered to have emerged not from studios, but from the grassroots. Street fashion is generally associated with youth culture, . Japanese street fashion sustains multiple simultaneous highly diverse fashion movements at any given time....
label
Brand
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...
from Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, founded in 2006 by Welsh
Welsh people
The Welsh people are an ethnic group and nation associated with Wales and the Welsh language.John Davies argues that the origin of the "Welsh nation" can be traced to the late 4th and early 5th centuries, following the Roman departure from Britain, although Brythonic Celtic languages seem to have...
designer Martin Davies
Martin Wilding Davies
Martin Wilding Davies is a Welsh screenwriter, political theorist, and designer noted for his design of the Welsh street fashion label, The Red Dragonhood....
.
The label is rooted in Welsh counter-culture, as exemplified at different times by the music of bands such as Stereophonics
Stereophonics
The Stereophonics are a Welsh rock band now living in turners x that formed in 1992 in the village of Cwmaman in Cynon Valley, Wales. The band currently comprises lead vocalist and guitarist Kelly Jones, bassist and backing vocalist Richard Jones, drummer Javier Weyler, guitarist and backing...
, Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers
Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh alternative rock band, formed in 1986. They are James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Richey Edwards and Sean Moore. The band are part of the Cardiff music scene, and were at their most prominent during the 1990s...
, Super Furry Animals
Super Furry Animals
Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band that lean towards psychedelic rock and electronic experimentation. Since their formation in Cardiff, Wales in 1993, the band has consisted of Gruff Rhys , Huw Bunford , Guto Pryce , Cian Ciaran and Dafydd Ieuan Super Furry Animals are a Welsh rock band...
, Catatonia
Catatonia (band)
Catatonia were an alternative rock band from Wales who gained a national following in the United Kingdom in the mid to late 1990s. The band consisted of Cerys Matthews on vocals, Mark Roberts on guitar, Paul Jones on bass , Owen Powell on...
and Goldie Lookin' Chain, and the literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
of Rachel Trezise
Rachel Trezise
Rachel Trezise is a Welsh author, born in Cwmparc, Rhondda.-Background and career:Trezise studied at the University of Glamorgan in Wales and University of Limerick in Ireland. Her first novel, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl, released in 2002 while she was still as a student, received broad...
, Niall Griffiths
Niall Griffiths
Niall Griffiths is an author, who has published six books to date. He has also written travel pieces, restaurant and book reviews, and radio plays...
and John Williams. It draws on references from rock music
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, the Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
, Welsh history and the typically self-deprecating Welsh sense of humour to express a non-conformist, contemporary representation of Welsh identity.
Worn by musicians Richard Jones
Richard Jones (Stereophonics)
Richard Jones is the bassist and backing vocalist for the Welsh rock band Stereophonics, playing alongside Kelly Jones and Javier Weyler. Jones grew up in Cwmaman, an old mining village in South Wales...
, Javier Weyler
Javier Weyler
Javier Andrés Weyler is the drummer for the Welsh based rock group Stereophonics. Despite being born in Argentina, Weyler lived most of his life in Caracas, Venezuela, and now resides in London, England...
, Nicky Wire
Nicky Wire
Nicholas Allen Jones, known as Nicky Wire, is the lyricist, bassist and occasional vocalist with the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers.-Early life:...
, Dafydd Ieuan
Dafydd Ieuan
Dafydd Ieuan is the drummer with the band, Super Furry Animals and The Peth. He currently lives in Cardiff with his wife Debbie, and their two children Cai and Lleucu....
and Guto Pryce
Guto Pryce
Guto Dafydd Pryce is a bass guitar player in the band Super Furry Animals.The name Guto is pronounced in Welsh....
, actors Rhys Ifans
Rhys Ifans
Rhys Ifans is a Welsh actor and musician. He is known for his portrayal of characters such as Spike in Notting Hill and Jed Parry in Enduring Love and as a member of the Welsh rock groups Super Furry Animals and The Peth. Ifans also appeared as Xenophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly...
and Matthew Rhys
Matthew Rhys
Matthew Rhys Evans , known professionally as Matthew Rhys, is a Welsh actor, best known as Kevin Walker on the U.S. ABC family drama Brothers & Sisters, and as Dylan Thomas in The Edge of Love.-Early life:...
, television presenter Lisa Rogers
Lisa Rogers
Lisa Rogers is a Welsh television presenter and occasional actress. She has appeared in films, television programmes, theatre and radio.-Early life:...
and writer Rachel Trezise
Rachel Trezise
Rachel Trezise is a Welsh author, born in Cwmparc, Rhondda.-Background and career:Trezise studied at the University of Glamorgan in Wales and University of Limerick in Ireland. Her first novel, In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl, released in 2002 while she was still as a student, received broad...
, the label has a cult following in Wales and sells to Welsh expats
Expatriate
An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...
the world over by mail order.
History
Davies originally created the Red Dragonhood (meaning brother/sisterhood of the Red Dragon or more simply Welsh people) to subvert traditional Welsh iconographyNational symbols of Wales
The National symbols of Wales include a diversity of official and unofficial images and other symbols.-Flags:- Heraldry :-Other symbols:...
, such as the emblem known as the Prince of Wales's feathers
Prince of Wales's feathers
The Prince of Wales's feathers is the heraldic badge of the Heir Apparent to the British and Commonwealth Realms thrones. It consists of three white feathers emerging from a gold coronet. A ribbon below the coronet bears the motto Ich dien...
. Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
and the Welsh Rugby Union
Welsh Rugby Union
The Welsh Rugby Union is the governing body of rugby union in Wales, recognised by the International Rugby Board.The union's patron is Queen Elizabeth II, and her grandson Prince William of Wales became the Vice Royal Patron of the Welsh Rugby Union as of February 2007.-History:The roots of the...
(WRU) both claim exclusive commercial rights to an emblem that many Welsh people consider to be a symbol of Wales itself. So he began using T-shirt
T-shirt
A T-shirt is a style of shirt. A T-shirt is buttonless and collarless, with short sleeves and frequently a round neck line....
s as a protest medium. Rejecting what he considered to be hackneyed and stereotypical examples of Welshness - blazer-wearing male voice choirs, traditional Welsh costume
Traditional Welsh costume
The Traditional Welsh costume is a costume once worn by rural women in Wales. The costume was identified as being different from that worn by the rural women of England by many of the English visitors who toured Wales during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is very likely that what they...
, leeks, daffodils, lovespoons etc. - he printed, for example, T-shirts with an image of a sheep's skull and glow-in-the-dark ink to highlight the plight of North Walian
North Wales
North Wales is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England...
farmers in the aftermath of the Chernobyl
Chernobyl
Chernobyl or Chornobyl is an abandoned city in northern Ukraine, in Kiev Oblast, near the border with Belarus. The city had been the administrative centre of the Chernobyl Raion since 1932....
disaster.
Having previously sworn that he would never produce anything rugby-related, he designed a T-shirt to coincide with the 2009 Six Nations Championship
2009 Six Nations Championship
The 2009 Six Nations Championship, known as the 2009 RBS 6 Nations because of the tournament's sponsorship by the Royal Bank of Scotland, was the tenth Six Nations Championship, an annual rugby union competition contested by the six major Northern Hemisphere rugby union national teams...
, where the claws of a dragon
Dragon
A dragon is a legendary creature, typically with serpentine or reptilian traits, that feature in the myths of many cultures. There are two distinct cultural traditions of dragons: the European dragon, derived from European folk traditions and ultimately related to Greek and Middle Eastern...
appeared to rip out of the shirt from the wearer's heart through a symbol not unlike that used by the Welsh Rugby Union.
Davies created a more direct vehicle for his political and economic ideas when he founded Newid
Newid
Newid is a political party in Wales. It is the world's first popular movement for demarchy, a form of democracy in which government policy is decided by representative groups of citizens randomly selected by sortition rather than by career politicians chosen in elections.The party defies...
(change in Welsh), a political party
Political party
A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...
in Wales, in 2009. The Red Dragonhood subsequently appears to have evolved into a more mainstream
Mainstream
Mainstream is, generally, the common current thought of the majority. However, the mainstream is far from cohesive; rather the concept is often considered a cultural construct....
fashion-orientated brand, albeit one with some underlying political themes.
The Jimi Hendrix Welsh national anthem hoax
Davies wanted a subverted recording of Hen Wlad Fy NhadauHen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau is the national anthem of Wales. The title – taken from the first words of the song – means "Old Land of My Fathers", usually rendered in English as simply "Land of My Fathers". The words were written by Evan James and the tune composed by his son, James James, both residents...
, the Welsh national anthem
National anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
, to play automatically when visitors clicked on the first page of The Red Dragonhood's original website. So he sent guitar chord notations to a friend from art college days, the guitarist John Ellis
John Ellis (guitarist)
John Ellis is an English guitarist and songwriter.-Career:He was a co-founder of the pub rock band Bazooka Joe in 1970 and a founding member of the punk rock band The Vibrators. Ellis formed The Vibrators in 1974 while still at art school studying illustration. The Vibrators released two albums...
(The Vibrators
The Vibrators
- Early career:The Vibrators were founded by Ian 'Knox' Carnochan, bassist Pat Collier, guitarist John Ellis, and drummer John 'Eddie' Edwards. They first came to public notice at the 100 Club when they backed Chris Spedding in 1976. On Spedding's recommendation, Mickie Most signed them to his...
, Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
, The Stranglers
The Stranglers
The Stranglers are an English punk/rock music group.Scoring some 23 UK top 40 singles and 17 UK top 40 albums to date in a career spanning five decades, the Stranglers are the longest-surviving and most "continuously successful" band to have originated in the UK punk scene of the mid to late 1970s...
) who, despite coming from North London
North London
North London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
rather than Wales, duly obliged. Another friend remarked that the howling, heavily distorted, over-the-top guitar rendition sounded a bit like Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
. Davies immediately saw an opportunity to make a point about how some modern Welsh icons had been imposed through establishment propaganda
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
.
He wrote a short story about the finding of a lost tape, putting Jimi Hendrix in the frame for making the recording without actually claiming it was Hendrix. He based the story within a tight geographic location in North London and dressed it with real characters and places he knew well, such as a thinly disguised Stuart Goddard (aka Adam Ant
Adam Ant
Adam Ant is an English musician who gained popularity as the lead singer of New Wave/post-punk group Adam and the Ants and later as a solo artist, scoring ten UK top ten hits between 1980 and 1983, including three No.1s...
), another friend from college, and Ellis's old recording studio in Crouch End
Crouch End
Crouch End is an area of north London, in the London Borough of Haringey.- Location :Crouch End is in a valley between Harringay to the east, Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green to the north, Finsbury Park and Archway to the south and Highgate to the west...
. The real protagonists in the story were dead (Hendrix and his manager, Chas Chandler
Chas Chandler
Bryan James "Chas" Chandler was an English musician, record producer and manager of several successful music acts....
) as were the characters Davies had invented, except for a possible eyewitness, an archetypal Welsh bass player called Viv Williams from a fictional 1970s band, The New Flames, whom Davies claimed he was looking for to prove the veracity of the story.
He published the tale on the Red Dragonhood website and for a while nothing happened. Then a journalist from the Western Mail noticed it. The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
picked up the story and ran it on New Year's Day 2007. The New Musical Express ran the story on the same day. The next day, the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
news and current affairs flagship television programme, Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
, closed with the story.
Davies's hoax traveled around the world within hours. At one point, a Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
search for 'Jimi+Hendrix+Welsh+National+Anthem' produced over 40 million results. The Red Dragonhood website received more than 30 million hits from people wanting to hear the recording. This sparked a global debate amongst Hendrix fans as to whether the recording was genuine. Speculation was rife about the identity of the player if it wasn't Hendrix.
Interest in the story had begun to wane by Saint David's Day
Saint David's Day
Saint David's Day is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March each year. The date of 1 March was chosen in remembrance of the death of Saint David. Tradition holds that he died on that day in 589...
(1 March) 2007, a national day of celebration in Wales, so Davies accepted an invitation from the BBC to come clean about the hoax on Newsnight. Reasoning, correctly as it turned out, that the show's producers would reduce the political points he wanted to make about Welsh myths to concentrate on the deception itself, he agreed to meet the BBC crew in a pub where he plied them with Brains
Brains Brewery
Brains is a regional brewery founded in 1882 in Cardiff, Wales by Samuel Arthur Brain. The company owns over 250 pubs across South Wales, Mid Wales, the West Country and particularly in Cardiff...
Welsh beer and Penderyn Welsh whiskey. He was then interviewed wearing a T-shirt that featured a large representation of the Prince of Wales's feathers on which the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
motto
Motto
A motto is a phrase meant to formally summarize the general motivation or intention of a social group or organization. A motto may be in any language, but Latin is the most used. The local language is usual in the mottoes of governments...
, 'Ich dein' had been subtly replaced with a vulgar Welsh phrase, 'Twll dîn pob sais'. In response to calls from viewers who knew what it meant, presenter Jeremy Paxman issued a clarification the following night, describing Davies as "Either a visionary or a Taff time-waster".
John Ellis's 'Hendrix' recording and Martin Davies's original story can still be found here..