Monday, April 5, 2010

British designers cause a stir at Vogue party

Has British designer fashion come of age?
In all the time I’ve been watching British designer fashion, it has never received the kind of establishment recognition that it’s been getting lately. London’s young designers are still reeling from the fact that the Queen invited 300 members of the “clothing” industry to Buckingham Palace two weeks ago – and included them. Then, last week, Anna Wintour threw a Vogue party at Pulino’s for 20 emerging London talents who’d flown into New York to exhibit their clothes at the Soho Grand Hotel. Young British Hollywood talent turned out in support, too, in the shape of co-host Emma Watson, wearing one of Christopher Kane’s embroidered leather and lace dresses. For a section of industry that has long been ignored, this kind of celebratory acceptance by the upper echelons of royalty, fashion and celebrity represents a rush of extraordinary breakthroughs.
The pinch-us sensation began last year, when Sarah Brown threw her second reception in a row for London Fashion Week at No 10, and she – and then Samantha Cameron – were seen at some shows. Behind the paparazzi shots of glamorous people drinking champagne, something has started to shift. Now that they make beautifully crafted British products that the best stores in the world hang alongside Lanvin, Balmain, Céline and YSL, designer fashion is finally beginning to win respect and political recognition as a serious exporter.
And some of it is coming in the form of Government assistance. For the past 18 months, the UKTI, Britain’s export department, has sponsored the London Show Rooms in Paris, where NewGen talents get to sell their clothes after fashion week. Together with British Airways, it stumped up the funding to underwrite the New York trip. And during the time these small businesses have been helped to take their clothes to market, most of them have doubled, or tripled, their orders. Right in the depths of the recession, they’ve bucked every trend by delivering original, pretty and luxurious clothes that people have clamoured to buy.
Best of all, the revenues are coming straight back to be redistributed in the form of British jobs. Over the past five years, our community of young designers has been working with small British clothing factories in and around London, and with traditional Scottish cashmere manufacturers. Christopher Kane, Erdem, Peter Pilotto, Mary Katrantzou, Mark Fast and many others have helped develop the skills of a British workforce that can now sew, knit and embroider to meet the standards of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, and Printemps and Colette in Paris. Young, creative Britain isn’t a myth, and it’s capable of generating employment.
In light of the general trepidation over spending cuts to come, money to help the fashion industry might seem the obvious thing to do away with. Whoever wins the next election, though, ought to think about stepping it up to underpin a valuable culture. At the least, the export support should continue. While the UK may be in for another dip, the signs are that the US is slowly on the up. That’s the young British designers’ biggest market. To keep growing, maintaining and creating jobs, they need to be sure to reach it.
Girly and gaudy, Accessorize has us all worked out
You don’t need to be a data-crunching, market-researching business analyst to understand why Monsoon, the company owned by Peter Simon, has had a recession-defying sales spurt in the past year (5.3 per cent up, to £710 million). All you have to do is go into Accessorize, where I was with my daughter last weekend. Generations of females from five to 85 were cheerfully coo-ing over the colourful, hippy-meets-Slumdog Millionaire ethnic patchworth bags and jewellery, swimsuits and beach dresses, fascinators, frilly retro knickers and cutesy trinkets. Everything seems to cost between £10 and £35, which makes it a guilt-free spending trip. But Simon’s cleverness is not simply in making it Primark cheap, which was the way to sell in the binge-spending years. These days, you have to be a hawk-eyed specialist in both psychology and practicality to win. Accessorize is an example of a retailer inhabiting a customer’s mentality and providing, in a tiny space, all the bits and pieces she needs for weddings, christenings, birthdays and holidays. Simon completely gets Britishwoman’s aesthetics (girlie and just this side of gaudy), our practicality (useful, fun-yet-modest holiday kit all in one place) and our indulgence towards daughters, granddaughters, nieces and all their little friends. Congratulations to Simon – as a nation, he has us worked out.
An animal-print cardigan to tame the Easter chill
I can hardly bear it that we’re finding ourselves more in need of knitwear than summer frocks at Easter, but as we face the last blast of this never-ending winter, a British woman’s thoughts desperately turn to cardigans. Since Michelle Obama’s “cardie diplomacy” visit to London last April, a few labels have seized on the First Lady’s favourite knit and transformed it into a cheering, fashionable piece. Last week in New York I ducked into a branch of Mrs O’s beloved J. Crew, where the genius-owner, Mickey Drexler, is now interpreting cardigans with fabric ruffles, in the season’s pastels. The J. Crew catalogue shows their cardis “brought down” against ribbed vests and washed-out, olive-khaki cotton, which looks no-fuss natural in the way only Americans can. In fact, the hybridisation of knitting and fabric isn’t original – it’s something two of my favourite Japanese labels, Sacai and Toga, have been developing for the past few years, but I’m glad it’s catching on, and gladder still that Net-a-Porter will be making J. Crew available in the UK in May. Until that happens, I think an animal-print cardigan would hit the spot. I found one at a Spanish store called Blanco. Diane von Furstenberg and Sonia Rykiel have designer versions, I notice, but the one I’d really like this week is a brown and beige, oversized, leopardspot cardigan on the Boden website. Curses! Turns out everyone else has already identified how hot this cardigan is. It’s a sell-out – and has an 11-week wait for new deliveries, when there should be no need for cardigans, anyway. But the way things have been going, I wouldn’t bank on it.

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