“It was literally right there,” says Carl Haley, eldest of the three West Dulwich brothers who have ripped through the fashion scene like a heel-snapping hurricane. He’s sitting with his siblings in their north London studio recalling their biggest project to date — the musical curation of the 2023 LuisaViaRoma catwalk show inside Florence’s Galleria dell’Accademia.
“The runway was right alongside the Michelangelo sculpture. They’d got the biggest models from all over the world to walk the runway, we were at one end on a big platform overlooking the sculpture, and then on the other end was Andrea Bocelli singing.” He laughs at the sheer madness of it. “The entire time you’re doing it from third person, looking down thinking, ‘This isn’t happening.’”
It may just be legend that David tapped a toe, but Hale Zero are definitely happening. From the sounds that this DJ, composer, producer and sound design trio — Carl, Rafael and Greg Haley — have spun at catwalk shows and parties for Vogue, Armani, D&G, Versace, the Brits and the Baftas, to their Instagram posts from behind the decks at David Beckham’s 50th birthday, they’ve become the most invigorating thing to hit the fashion party world since the sequin. Gone are the dry, ultra-chic, too-cool-to-drool after-parties where supermodels briefly posed for pictures along to minimalist French techno and then bolted for the limo. At Hale Zero events, fashion yanks off its Jimmy Choos and raves on the tables.
“Before we came in the industry, a party like that would be a lot more tame,” says Rafael. “It would be about schmoozing, talking about projects. But the vibe we brought to the event, now everyone was, ‘Wait, we can actually dance at this event?’” They are a personal stylist’s worst nightmare. “If you’re a celeb you’re so used to maintaining appearances,” says Carl. “You’re aware that there are photographers and everyone has smartphones — you’re aware of yourself constantly. They’d turn up at parties and want to maintain their appearance because, particularly in Fashion Week, there could be two to three events on the same night. You don’t want to look dishevelled by the third one. But people would leave ours pretty dishevelled!”
“Before we came in the industry, a party like that would be a lot more tame”
This trail of smeared cat-eye leads back to their upbringing. All lovers of art and music, they learned to play instruments from being left with their father’s old jazz albums, under instruction to learn a section in an hour. All three attended the Brit School to study art and Carl and Rafael went on to art college while Greg branched out into session work for the likes of Rihanna and Chris Brown.
“His life just looked cooler,” Carl recalls. “We’d be at home, then a car would come and pick him up and take him off to the airport, and he’d be in, like, Italy doing a gig.” After enough stories of salutes from Pharrell and handshakes from Brian May, Greg’s brothers began auditioning for tours too, landing places in Brown’s band. “From working a part-time job and all of a sudden you’re on the TV, it was like, ‘OK, this is the best thing ever’,” Carl grins. From there the trio taught themselves production and fell into pop and TV work (their music graced films for the BBC and Channel 4, as well as Empire and The Big Bang Theory) before an early film-maker mentor noted their enthusiasm for fashion and suggested they strike out into composing for catwalk shows.
With no industry strings to pull, Hale Zero began posting drawings of models, designers and brand lines on Instagram, tagging the subjects and bugging anyone that responded for music work. That earned them enough of a soundtrack portfolio to approach renowned fashion film-maker Alec Maxwell, husband of then-Vogue editor Edward Enninful. Within a month Hale Zero were producing music for a string of films for Vogue and Louis Vuitton.
“A lot of that world uses music as an afterthought,” says Greg. “They would automatically go to music libraries. Whereas we were composing music from scratch.” Their broad musical background, embracing jazz, Motown, gospel, rock, Afrobeat, hip-hop and more, proved a major boon in an industry which, until then, had seemingly only ever heard Sexy Boy by Air.
Then, when Rafael was hired to DJ at a Maxwell book launch, all three hopped behind the decks for a set of Afrobeat, Afrohouse, old school hip-hop, R&B and electronic trap, and all Hale broke loose. “In fashion, it’s quite techno-led, or house-led,” Rafael says. “We were pulling from so many different genres that we were able to inject a different energy to it. All of the guests were like, ‘This is not what we’ve heard before.’ So many people were coming up to us saying, ‘Who are you guys, what is this? This is really cool.’”
Having no previous fashion-industry experience was key. “We just went in playing what we liked,” says Carl. “People seemed to like that it was authentic and we weren’t trying to be fashion: ‘Let’s not try to be cool, minimal techno.’” Before they knew it they were playing at Enninful’s exclusive private parties and Vogue’s biggest annual event: the Baftas aftershow.
“The crowd lost their mind,” says Carl. “Someone would walk in and they’ve got a five-grand dress on and £2,000 shoes that they wouldn’t want to mess up, and they were literally dancing on the chairs and tables... Pretty much everyone you’d see if you go to the cinema, if you open Vogue magazine, were suddenly all in front of us, which was surreal. I was thinking, ‘I saw you on Netflix yesterday and now you’re dancing two feet away from me and giving me a high-five because you like the track I just played.’”
“Someone would walk in and they’ve got a five-grand dress on and £2,000 shoes that they wouldn’t want to mess up, and they were literally dancing on the chairs and tables”
Suddenly Chanel, Dior and Armani were on the phone and the fashion industry elite were on their dancefloors. “Walking into a party and seeing Naomi Campbell was a crazy thing for us, and her dancing to your music,” says Rafael. “People you wouldn’t expect to fully let loose.”
From there, Hale Zero “took on a life of its own”. There were private villa parties in Ibiza, Fashion Week shindigs in Paris, New Year blow-outs on the Cayman Islands and pre-set tours of the Versace mansion in Miami. Their work with the Beckhams remains under wraps (“They prefer it a little more private,” says Carl, “but they’re lovely”) but supermodels such as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley have been spotted on social media getting her Hale on. The only time they’ve ever gone down like a soggy mixer was when their venue at a Venice art festival literally sank. “We were DJing, and I looked down and I thought, ‘Oh, my feet are wet’,” Carl laughs. “The water was rising and we quickly alerted the sound team, because the wires were about to go below the water.”
Hale Zero are ardent gatherers of creative bow-strings. “Social media allows you to showcase things,” says Carl, “you’re able to create your own world. People are more open to the idea of perhaps you can be a polymath and it can actually work.”
Having conquered the fashion party world, they’ve now set their sights on the charts, recording tracks with models such as James Corbin on the mic and releasing their first single, Obsessed, on October 10. “Every now and then, a track we’d do for a runway show, we’d listen to it and think, ‘I could hear that on the radio,’” Rafael explains. “After a while, we had a collection of these tracks that we plucked from different runway shows, and they started to form a sound.”
They also plan to start soundtracking art. “We would always have the discussion when we were younger, ‘What does this painting sound like?’” Carl says. “Can you add a new dimension or update it by adding a sound element?” Best start carving David some glowsticks…
