The Hustle by Van McCoy and The Soul City Symphony fills the air, its disco beats mixing with the excited chatter of people mooching and shopping on a grey Saturday afternoon. This is the vibe at the weekly market on Upper Gardner Street in Brighton. At the very end of the street, Max Barford, the owner of Skux Vintage darts back and forth to his stall of rails filled with the finery of every vintage leather jacket collector’s dreams. Max stops to take a video of a customer twirling in their new jacket, and a steady stream of people crowd the stall.
Every few minutes, someone calls out ‘Hey Mate, how’s it going!’ Or ‘Nice to see you!!’ to him. Everyone wants a grin and a wave, and he provides, like a well-respected local celebrity. Max is dressed head to toe in vintage, sporting a Skux jacket – a stand-out monochrome checked leather number he’s paired with a white polo shirt, beige flared corduroy trousers, snakeskin cowboy boots, and a brown cap. It’s clear Max embodies a vintage shop as much as he is the owner of one.
Max has been jacket-obsessed for years, and with reason. “A good jacket makes a good outfit,” he says. “If you’ve got a great jacket, that’s all you need. Jackets give you the same confidence having a beer does.”
Five years ago, when the pandemic hit, he returned home on a last-minute flight from Melbourne, plan-less and penniless, after spending a year living and doing casual hospitality work in the Australian city. Lost, living with his parents, on Universal Credit, and unable to get a job despite having graduated from Sussex University with a journalism degree, he bought his first vintage jackets on eBay to sell, not thinking of much other than needing money.
“I’d put aside £100 and bought five jackets with it and waited for them to sell, which they did. Now, four years on, I have roughly 700 jackets for sale.”
In the week, you’ll find Skux’s ever-changing collection of suede and leather jackets in a range of shapes, shades and sizes stationed in the famous Brighton vintage emporium Snoopers Paradise. But Max wants to open a shop of his own in the future, and with cultivating community at the core of his intentions, the shop would aim to platform Brighton’s young creative scene.
“The idea would be to have gigs and other events in the shop,” he says. “And other creative people, like my mate who’s a tattoo artist, to be there and create a little collective.” He stresses he isn’t competitive, and always has the local community in mind – he offers a 10 percent discount exchange to customers who eat at local breakfast spot Nowhere Man, and vice versa.
The stall is as much a centre of the community as Max hopes the Skux shop will be. There’s a red brick local’s pub, The Brighton Tavern, opposite the stall in Brighton’s North Laines. Every Saturday daytime at the market, the pub regulars enjoy the music (mainly a mix of seventies and disco classics) Max and his Dad, Alain, play from a speaker stationed behind the rails of jackets.
“We almost put on the music for them, and they’ll come over and sing and dance with us. Every week, you get the same characters, same dogs, same drinks, and sometimes they’ll come over to play dress up and try the jackets on.”
Max and Alain are a dynamic duo, and Alain features rocking a jacket in many of the business’s Instagram videos. By week, he’s a project manager, but on Saturdays at the market, he’s the Skux DJ and as renowned as his 28-year-old son. “My dad helps out at the market every Saturday because he likes to chat with people, and he likes putting on the music too, it’s an outlet for him.”
The buying process has always been intuitive for Max, but he thanks his younger sister for introducing him to motorbike jackets just before they hit the trend-sphere, which are now highly sought after in the vintage world.
“I’ve become known for them. Initially, when my sister told me about the trend when it first came in, I said ‘Yeah whatever, you’re pulling my leg.’ And now, whenever we’re out, she says I owe her a drink! I’m forever in debt to her.”
Through the street market, he’s not only made friends, but it’s opened the door for opportunities.
“I’ve met lots of my best mates through doing the market. One of them I met in Covid times, and we just got chatting. He works for Universal, and through him, I got into renting out my rarest, more one-off jackets for music videos. The reason behind it is essentially I don’t want to sell those jackets, but I can’t wear them all…so it’s a happy medium.”
The Brighton streets are lined with colourful characters dressed to the nines in vintage attire, but a jacket from Skux can be spotted from a distance, and Max says he loves when this happens. “I like the idea of people wearing the jackets and love how people style them. Around town, I can notice any jacket I’ve sold.”
Alongside the collective space Max wants to create, the foreseeable future brims with plans for the business. He’s branching out to stock his other obsession – vintage suits. He also wants to design jackets, he says. As much as he enjoys seeing people wearing the vintage jackets he has sold, he doesn’t feel he can take full credit. “I’d love to say I’d designed them! That’s the next step for me.”
Every vintage piece carries a narrative, and while Max isn’t familiar with the stories of all his jackets, there is one that has stayed with him and adds to the emotional value of selling vintage. “I bought a motorbike jacket from Spain, and the seller had originally bought it for her partner who had a terminal illness. It was a gift for his last ride, and he rode the whole coast of Spain wearing it. She said she didn’t want to hold onto it and would rather let someone else wear it and make their own memories.”
Skux is not only a business, but a vibrant and diverse microcosm. “I think the oldest person I’ve sold to was 80, and the youngest was an eight-year-old little rock star – his mum bought him a biker jacket. You get to chat to people you wouldn’t normally get to in any other context.”
Vibe Check
Clothing Genre: Undefined, just cool and stand-out.
Price Range: Mid to high
Writer’s favourite item: Baby pink cropped leather Dolly Parton-esque jacket with cream stars stitched on the back.
Ambiance: Infectiously fun, and everyone’s welcome.
Pictures: Rosaleen Harris-Davison & Skux Vintage via Instagram
Designs: Pius Bentgens