LIAM GALLAGHER: 'CLOTHES ARE IMPORTANT, MAN'

His rock star fashion label is a global hit and he'll still look cool at 40, the not entirely former wildman declares.

Three years ago, Liam started his own clothes company. Named Pretty Green and dreamt up by Liam and his security chief-cum-Man-Friday Steve by a pool in LA, it was based on a straightforward idea: to produce the kind of attire that Liam, a self-confessed clothes addict, likes to wear. So think Beatles-y suits, Quadrophenia -ish parkas and polos, carefully cut denim and plenty of paisley.

Pretty Green has since done pretty amazingly. In its first year of trading turnover was a reported £4 million, and there are 11 stand-alone shops across the nation. Now it is going international, says Liam: "We've got something going on in Copenhagen and there's Tokyo as well."

The company's first Japanese store opened last week at a party attended by several hundred label‑loving fans and Liam himself, who was passing through for a gig with his post-Oasis band, Beady Eye.

Liam's move from rock to retail (although he's still rocking) has not only been a success during a particularly difficult period for clothes sales, but seems to have come at the perfect time for a man whose fortune depended partly on record sales. These might have been destroyed by the internet - but you can't download a jacket.

"Yeah, you're right," he says. "No one's making money out of records so it has been a good move. But it wasn't a planned move, it just happened."

Gallagher is keen to avoid sounding too enthusiastic about being in the fashion business because, quite simply, he loathes fashion. "I don't want to get caught up in it," he sniffs. "I'm not hostile, but 90 per cent of the music business is run by idiots and I'll guess it's the same for fashion, know what I mean?"

To drive the point home, he adds: "I haven't got a favourite brand, I haven't got a favourite designer. I like what I like. I spend a lot of money on clothes so I know my shit. In fact, I probably spend more on clothes than 90 per cent of these fashion people because they get it all for nothing."

Liam modeling a suave Pretty Green coat

And although he stars in his own campaigns - as evidenced by the largest image on this page - he is even endearingly shifty about endorsing his own clothes. For instance, yesterday, he says, team Pretty Green dropped off some new designs during his band rehearsals. Suffering from a hangover, "I had to walk down Hampstead High Street from the studio with two Pretty Green bags. This bloke at the traffic lights was looking at me with my new clothes in big bags like Victoria Beckham would have -but whereas she'd only have one, I had two - and I could tell he was thinking I looked like a right twat."

He reserves particular disdain for other musicians who allow themselves to be dressed rather than dressing themselves. "I'll never have a stylist. If I like something, I get it and I put it on.  

He may despise fashion but Gallagher is perfectly happy about "growing" his brand. He is, he says, "passionate" about doing boys-wear on behalf of his sons, Lennon and Gene. "Lennon's 13 so he can start wearing the T-shirts but Gene [just 11] is desperately going, 'Dad, can I have a parka? Can I have this?'And I'm mad for getting them made."

When he is asked whether he plans to make Pretty Green perfumes - a question designed to rile him but which delights him instead. "Why not? I'm down with the fragrances. I love my Chanel Bleu - I love it, man - and I get non-stop compliments off the girls who work in toy shops, man. I put loads on, you can smell me coming. So I'd definitely do it, without a doubt. I've got no idea how you go about it, though."

Clothes-wise, though, could Liam be confronting the same mid-life crisis as so many men of his generation, who have spent their teens, twenties and thirties in sporty casual gear but now face looking like sad, try-hard dads?

"No! Because I'm looking cool as fuck. As long as you look cool and you've got your own head of hair, that's all I care about."

www.prettygreen.com