Style City How London Became a Fashion Capital Style City How London Became a Fashion Capital
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STYLE CITY HOW LONDON BECAME A FASHION CAPITAL STYLE CITY HOW LONDON BECAME A FASHION CAPITAL Robert O’Byrne CONSULTANT Annette Worsley-Taylor FrANCES LINCOLN LIMITED PUBLISHErS The Publishers wish to thank Wendy Dagworthy and CONTENTS the Royal College of Art, and also the British Fashion Council, for their help and support in the production of this book. Introduction: THE WAY THINGS WERE 6 Frances Lincoln Limited 4 Torriano Mews PUNK EXPLOSION Torriano Avenue & NEW WAVE London NW5 2RZ www.franceslincoln.com 26 Style City: How London Became a Fashion Capital THE NEW Copyright © Frances Lincoln Limited 2009 Text copyright © Robert O’Byrne 2009 ROMANTICS For copyright in the photographs and illustrations 64 see page 247 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be THE BUSINESS reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, OF FASHION in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, 98 photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either prior permission in writing from the Publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such A TIME OF CRISIS licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 142 Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London ECN1 8TS. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data COOL BRitANNIA A catalogue record for this book is available from 180 the British Library ISBN 978-0-7112-2895-5 Postscript: THE NEW MILLENNIUM Picture research Sian Lloyd Fashion picture editor Kathryn Samuel 230 Designed by Maria Charalambous Printed and bound in China Bibliography 246 Picture credits 247 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Index 248 Introduction: THE WAY THINGS WERE n the evening of 15 September 2008, 10 Downing Street, headquar- ters of the British government and home of the Prime Minister, was O the setting for a reception celebrating a national industry annually worth more than £40 billion and a twice-yearly event worth £100 million to the capital’s economy. The industry was British fashion and the event London Fashion Week. Both had come a long way over the previous three decades, from a time when they were barely noticed either at home or abroad to a point where Sarah Brown, the Prime Minister’s wife, could assure her guests, ‘the government will work with you to develop the creative talent. We want to work to make the UK the creative hub for the next twenty-five years and beyond.’ Britain’s fashion industry is now acknowledged to be the most innovative and exciting in the world. Writing in the Guardian in February 2009, Vogue’s editor, Alexandra Shulman, affirmed that ‘British fashion, unlike many of its counterparts, remains resolutely inventive, uncategorizable and challenging.’ This is certainly true, but for much of its history British fashion has also been severely challenged, not least by an obligation to convince the British public of its own worth. It took a long time to do so. In a witty feature on British style written for Vogue in June 1991, Sarah Mower had rhetorically asked, ‘What does a Frenchwoman do when she buys a Saint Laurent jacket? She rushes home to show it to her husband. What does an Englishwoman do when she buys a Romeo Gigli jacket? She rushes home, feels ill, and hides it under the bed.’ Mower went on to note that, ‘In Britain buying expensive clothes is a vice. Where the French expect quality, the British suspect a rip-off. Where the Italians demand luxury, the British see vulgarity. Where the Japanese consume labels, we diagnose insanity. And where Americans buy clothing to give themselves class, the British argue, “but we have it already!”’ Mary Quant’s name is synonymous with ‘I just knew that I wanted to concentrate London fashion of the 1960s, although she on finding the right clothes for the young had opened her original shop, Bazaar, on to wear and the right accessories to go the King’s Road in 1955 and continued to with them.’ This shot taken in Embankment enjoy success and a high profile long after Gardens shows the designer with models the sixties ended. ‘I didn’t think of myself as wearing clothes from her autumn/winter a designer,’ she wrote in her autobiography. 1972 collection. THE WAY THINGS WERE • 7 When it came to clothes, British women had a tradition of being reluctant This attitude towards clothes on the part of the local consumer helps consumers. In August 1983 Malcolm McLaren – music impresario and former to explain why for much of its history the British fashion industry was so partner of Vivienne Westwood – told writer Georgina Howell, ‘The British dependent on exports. The 1989 Kurt Salmon Associates survey showed that consider themselves above fashion. If you want to design interesting clothes the indigenous market then accounted for only 35 per cent of British designer you must make them in a bed-sit and sell them from a market stall . .’ Five clothing sales, with Japan absorbing 16 per cent, Italy 14 per cent, the United years later, in his book The Fashion Conspiracy, Nicholas Coleridge amusingly States 12 per cent and Germany 9 per cent. Designer Edina Ronay is typical came up with a list of other items on which the average British woman would in reporting how at the height of her business during the late 1980s and early rather spend her money – everything from a new horse trailer to her son’s 1990s some 80 per cent of what she produced went abroad; for a period she school fees – before concluding that, ‘A dress, in the final analysis, is viewed even had her own shop in Los Angeles. Likewise, Betty Jackson estimates that as an indulgence, not a necessity. If you go to a ball in the same purple chiffon over the same period ‘80 per cent of our business was overseas.’ Even in the that you’ve worn for seven years, then chances are no one is going to notice, new millennium, designer John Rocha, for example, says that some 70 per cent and if they do notice, and think less of you in consequence, then they’re not of his own-label clothing (as opposed to the ranges he designs for the depart- the kind of people you wish to know anyway.’ ment store chain Debenhams) goes to retailers outside Britain. Designers based in Britain had to learn the limitations of the domestic Both a consequence and a cause of British parsimony with regard to fash- market. ‘Fashion was never part of British culture, unlike in France or Italy,’ says ion is the domestic consumer’s historically symbiotic relationship with what designer Roland Klein, a Frenchman who in 1965 moved from Paris, where he is known as the high street: the chains of inexpensive clothing outlets found had worked with Karl Lagerfeld at Patou, to design for a small London ready- throughout the country and popularly exemplified by Marks & Spencer. ‘British to-wear company called Nettie Vogue based in London. He has remained in retail has an interesting profile,’ says Harold Tillman, current owner of Jaeger Britain ever since. ‘Fashion here was always pooh-poohed,’ he adds. ‘It was and chairman since 2008 of the British Fashion Council. ‘The density of the never considered the right thing for a woman to spend a lot of money on population in a relatively small country allows companies to penetrate the fashion.’ To some extent, the situation remains unchanged today. ‘In Paris consumer market in quite a short space of time and make sure the branding of and Italy, they take fashion seriously, it’s a business,’ remarks London-based their product is out there.’ High street businesses are able to produce large runs milliner Philip Treacy, ‘whereas here it’s a bit of frivolity.’ of inexpensive, albeit often not terribly imaginative, garments to satisfy domes- In 1989, at the request of the British Fashion Council, Kurt Salmon Associates tic demand. Former fashion editor Sally Brampton comments ‘There is no other undertook a survey of the designer fashion industry. They found British high street like ours in the world. I think it comes down to psyche and tempera- consumers far less likely than their European counterparts to spend money on ment. You go back into the British psyche and look at how we buy clothes. In clothes by a named designer. At that time total designer and diffusion sales in somewhere like Italy they’ve a different attitude to clothing, but they have a Britain had an annual value of £265 million, while the equivalent figures for really rubbish mass market.’ Her remarks are echoed by Betty Jackson: ‘I do Italy and France were £1.85 billion and £1.4 billion respectively. A London- think you have to look at the market in Britain, which is totally reliant on what based fashion analyst bluntly informed Janet McCue of Cleveland’s The Plain is happening on the high street. The British public demand cheap fashion.’ Dealer in October 1990 ‘They’re hard to dress, the British . The middle-class ‘In most countries,’ noted an editorial on the state of the local fashion woman doesn’t buy designer clothes because she won’t, or can’t, pay designer industry in the Economist in March 1987, ‘the manufacturers are king, and prices.’ The following March Martin Taylor, chief executive of Courtaulds small independent retailers – which account for the vast majority of shops – Textiles, was equally frank when he informed the Independent ‘British consum- are happy to buy labelled goods.’ However, this was not the case in Britain, ers are constipated about buying clothes.’ A year later the same newspaper ‘where retailers are more powerful.’ The piece went on to report that the C&A reported that five per cent of consumer spending was on clothing – just under chain had 4 per cent of the total domestic market for clothing sales, the Burton half of what went on cigarettes and alcohol combined.