Homecoming queen
With Lily Allen and Kelly Osbourne among her fans, the designer Luella Bartley embodies a quirky and particularly British style. On the eve of her show at London fashion week, she tells Hadley Freeman about the drunken dare that led to a career in fashion and why she decided America wasn't for her
Hadley Freeman
Wednesday February 13, 2008
Guardian
So it is true: occasionally the best ideas are coined over late-night drinks. "I think we just got a bit drunk one night and my friends were like, 'Just do it! Just make your own fashion label!' and I was like, 'All right then! Yeah!'" laughs the fashion designer Luella Bartley. This alcohol-fuelled eureka moment happened about a decade ago. When we meet, she is sitting in the basement of her small and brightly coloured shop in Mayfair, perched like a snub-nosed younger sister next to the snobbish behemoth of Claridge's. Aged 34, her physical resemblance to Sissy Spacek would be unnerving if she wasn't chomping down her lunch with a cheerful lack of self-consciousness that makes her come across like a decidedly merrier teenager than Carrie.
Bartley's label, with its exaggeratedly British style, has become one of this country's most popular fashion exports. As well as being a favourite for photogenically cheeky celebrities (Lily Allen, Kelly Osbourne) and their aspirants, she has regularly been cited as a modern-day Biba and Mary Quant, on account of her youthful slant, English quirkiness and (relatively) reasonable prices. The label is adored in America, where she held her show for six years before returning to London last year, and the usually lofty and austere American Vogue described Bartley with gleeful hyperbole as "a star ... a poster child for London cool". "Well, Americans love British style because we're such opposites. Our unkempt hair and bitten nails probably seem quite brave to them," she smiles, personifying both of these qualities.
Bartley returned to London fashion week last September, partly because the commute was becoming too difficult with three children under the age of five, and her second show here will be held tomorrow. "Of course, there is a part of you that thinks, 'Oh God, will I miss out commercially by coming back to London?'" she admits, referring to London fashion week's perennial difficulties in attracting the international style press. "But I've gone away and proved myself and now I want to be back home."
Her shop, which opened last autumn, manages to out-English its setting, a London neighbourhood that makes Mary Poppins look like a documentary. There are paintings of horses, war medals (though on closer inspection they prove to be engraved with the solemn declaration: "Luella") and a cushion with an embroidered recreation of the Beatles. It is a perfect echo of Bartley's almost parodically English style, which mixes equestrian detailing with punk-influenced twists, creating clothes that look like a gorgeous wardrobe of a particularly cool aristocratic teenager, deconstructed tuxedo shirts mixing with neon-coloured prom dresses and proper hunting jackets. "I'm just fascinated by English style," smiles Bartley, as we sit in what she calls "her lair", replete with comically defaced antique portraits and a trompe l'oeil horse on the wall. "It is quite a romantic notion but I love all that tradition and the heritage. And then on the other side there's that unkempt rock'n'roll dishevelled look, and so much in between."
Bartley's parents split up when she was young and she was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon by her mother, a secretary, who Bartley describes as "safe, secure, with a real work ethic". Her father, by contrast, was a more off-the-wall character, an entrepreneur ("he made beanbags and did ridiculous stuff") who also managed a riding stable "and was almost this unattainable figure with horses and country houses and everything that just wasn't part of my life," she says. Her first fashion collection, in 1998, was called Daddy I Want a Pony. "It doesn't," she says, looking down at her lap with a wry smile, "take a rocket scientist to figure out there's something going on". She became closer to him when she moved to London to study fashion: "I think he felt that it was much easier to deal with me once I became an adult," she says.
If Bartley's aesthetic stems partly from a childhood idolisation of her father, that she went into design at all comes from love of her mother. Bartley's mother had her only child when she was 20, prompting her to drop out of art college. "She took a different path than I think she planned. Now that I have kids I know that you don't resent giving things up for them but, you know, maybe it's not the path you expected. So when I went off to Central St Martins [to study fashion] I was having the life that she didn't have and she was just so incredibly proud and excited."
Bartley herself, however, soon became disenchanted with college. "As soon as I got there I thought, 'Erg, these people are freaks!' Not freaks, I mean," she quickly corrects herself, trying not very successfully to stifle the inner 18-year-old. "But it was so competitive and serious and 'we're amazing' and you feel that what you do isn't worthy because it's not conceptual and everything. Of course," she adds, interrupting herself again, "I do have an appreciation for people who do amazing conceptual things, but I can't do it, and when you're 18 and don't have much confidence anyway, well ... "
It is hard to think of a less likely fit than Bartley, whose designs are happily girly, fun and commercial, and the fashion course at Central St Martins which, fairly or not, is often stereotyped as valuing artistry over wearability, giving rise to the old one-legged jumpsuit representing mortality cliche that so dogged British fashion, particularly in the 90s.
So after two years, Bartley left and went to work as a fashion writer on the London Evening Standard ("Just such fun - we got the champagne out every Friday") and latterly Vogue ("That was more about work"), before becoming disenchanted with office life and then, after a few drinks, deciding to return to fashion design.
It took a while before Bartley was taken seriously as a fashion designer - not because of the clothes, which always showed a clear vision and a unique style, but partly because of the image surrounding Bartley herself. Harpers Bazaar called her "leader of London's junior style mafia", which might sound like a compliment but in truth made her and her group of friends - which includes the fashion editor Katie Grand and the designers Giles Deacon, Stuart Vevers and Katie Hillier, and occasionally Kate Moss - sound like ephemeral dilettantes. The frequent photographs of them at parties did little to disabuse anyone of that image. Bartley admits she probably did get "caught up in the cool thing". "Back then, I wanted to do a cool fashion label and it was kind of led by ego, getting caught up in hype and ambitions and your own story, really," she says. "Now I realise those aren't the things that make me happy, or work. Now it's about doing something that's creative and fun and truly personal but also lets me spend time with my kids."
In fact, this whole group has proved themselves, almost uniquely in the world of fashion, to have been worthy of their youthful hype: Deacon is now the highlight of London fashion week with his Giles label; Vevers was the creative director of Mulberry until last season and is now in charge at the luxury Spanish label Loewe; Hillier is the accessories designer at Marc Jacobs; and Grand is widely recognised as one of the leading fashion figures in this country, having worked as the stylist for Prada and now the editor of the influential fashion magazine Pop.
One more problem for Bartley was that in 2002 she had a sudden burst of success when she launched her Gisele bag, which became one of the original It bags. Sales rocketed before the company had the structure to deal with the demand. Nonetheless, it is an irony that a tiny and essentially homespun label such as Luella helped to kick off the It bag craze, at least as much as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, although Bartley squirms at the thought. "Obviously the bag was great for us financially, but I find that whole status symbol thing hard to stomach, that you have to have a certain thing in order to be accepted," she says.
Another hurdle that most fashion designers must jump before gaining acceptance is an affiliation with celebrities. Bartley's shows in New York were notable for their popularity with the apparently endless array of bland, milk-faced and blond American twentysomething and teen celebs, who would perch pertly in her front row, each dutifully clutching a Luella bag. "I hated it, to be honest," says Bartley before, as usual, belatedly acting like her own PR. "I do appreciate it because it helps sales but ... " So it must be a bit of a nightmare, then, to see all those photos of Kelly Osbourne and Lily Allen wearing her dresses in magazines? "Oh no, not at all, and that's another reason why I'm glad to be back in London. The London girls are outspoken and are just themselves, particularly Lily and Kelly. It's that English girl thing. I love that they're fans, because the clothes are so inspired by them."
Eighteen months ago, this former poster girl for cosmopolitan cool moved to Cornwall, where she lives with her partner, the fashion photographer David Sims, and their three children, ranging in age from eight months to four years ("I must stop having children ... "). She did, she says, find it something of a wrench to leave London and at first she would find herself counting the days until she could come back to the capital where she could wear "something other than wellies". Now, however, she often finds that she comes back to London unthinkingly wearing her wellies with no other footwear options. Much of this maturity comes from having become a mother. "Yeah, that does change your perspective, of course it does," she says solemnly, but the cheeky teenager doesn't stay down for long: "God, I sound like a bloody Buddhist, don't I?"
With Lily Allen and Kelly Osbourne among her fans, the designer Luella Bartley embodies a quirky and particularly British style. On the eve of her show at London fashion week, she tells Hadley Freeman about the drunken dare that led to a career in fashion and why she decided America wasn't for her
Hadley Freeman
Wednesday February 13, 2008
Guardian
So it is true: occasionally the best ideas are coined over late-night drinks. "I think we just got a bit drunk one night and my friends were like, 'Just do it! Just make your own fashion label!' and I was like, 'All right then! Yeah!'" laughs the fashion designer Luella Bartley. This alcohol-fuelled eureka moment happened about a decade ago. When we meet, she is sitting in the basement of her small and brightly coloured shop in Mayfair, perched like a snub-nosed younger sister next to the snobbish behemoth of Claridge's. Aged 34, her physical resemblance to Sissy Spacek would be unnerving if she wasn't chomping down her lunch with a cheerful lack of self-consciousness that makes her come across like a decidedly merrier teenager than Carrie.
Bartley's label, with its exaggeratedly British style, has become one of this country's most popular fashion exports. As well as being a favourite for photogenically cheeky celebrities (Lily Allen, Kelly Osbourne) and their aspirants, she has regularly been cited as a modern-day Biba and Mary Quant, on account of her youthful slant, English quirkiness and (relatively) reasonable prices. The label is adored in America, where she held her show for six years before returning to London last year, and the usually lofty and austere American Vogue described Bartley with gleeful hyperbole as "a star ... a poster child for London cool". "Well, Americans love British style because we're such opposites. Our unkempt hair and bitten nails probably seem quite brave to them," she smiles, personifying both of these qualities.
Bartley returned to London fashion week last September, partly because the commute was becoming too difficult with three children under the age of five, and her second show here will be held tomorrow. "Of course, there is a part of you that thinks, 'Oh God, will I miss out commercially by coming back to London?'" she admits, referring to London fashion week's perennial difficulties in attracting the international style press. "But I've gone away and proved myself and now I want to be back home."
Her shop, which opened last autumn, manages to out-English its setting, a London neighbourhood that makes Mary Poppins look like a documentary. There are paintings of horses, war medals (though on closer inspection they prove to be engraved with the solemn declaration: "Luella") and a cushion with an embroidered recreation of the Beatles. It is a perfect echo of Bartley's almost parodically English style, which mixes equestrian detailing with punk-influenced twists, creating clothes that look like a gorgeous wardrobe of a particularly cool aristocratic teenager, deconstructed tuxedo shirts mixing with neon-coloured prom dresses and proper hunting jackets. "I'm just fascinated by English style," smiles Bartley, as we sit in what she calls "her lair", replete with comically defaced antique portraits and a trompe l'oeil horse on the wall. "It is quite a romantic notion but I love all that tradition and the heritage. And then on the other side there's that unkempt rock'n'roll dishevelled look, and so much in between."
Bartley's parents split up when she was young and she was raised in Stratford-upon-Avon by her mother, a secretary, who Bartley describes as "safe, secure, with a real work ethic". Her father, by contrast, was a more off-the-wall character, an entrepreneur ("he made beanbags and did ridiculous stuff") who also managed a riding stable "and was almost this unattainable figure with horses and country houses and everything that just wasn't part of my life," she says. Her first fashion collection, in 1998, was called Daddy I Want a Pony. "It doesn't," she says, looking down at her lap with a wry smile, "take a rocket scientist to figure out there's something going on". She became closer to him when she moved to London to study fashion: "I think he felt that it was much easier to deal with me once I became an adult," she says.
If Bartley's aesthetic stems partly from a childhood idolisation of her father, that she went into design at all comes from love of her mother. Bartley's mother had her only child when she was 20, prompting her to drop out of art college. "She took a different path than I think she planned. Now that I have kids I know that you don't resent giving things up for them but, you know, maybe it's not the path you expected. So when I went off to Central St Martins [to study fashion] I was having the life that she didn't have and she was just so incredibly proud and excited."
Bartley herself, however, soon became disenchanted with college. "As soon as I got there I thought, 'Erg, these people are freaks!' Not freaks, I mean," she quickly corrects herself, trying not very successfully to stifle the inner 18-year-old. "But it was so competitive and serious and 'we're amazing' and you feel that what you do isn't worthy because it's not conceptual and everything. Of course," she adds, interrupting herself again, "I do have an appreciation for people who do amazing conceptual things, but I can't do it, and when you're 18 and don't have much confidence anyway, well ... "
It is hard to think of a less likely fit than Bartley, whose designs are happily girly, fun and commercial, and the fashion course at Central St Martins which, fairly or not, is often stereotyped as valuing artistry over wearability, giving rise to the old one-legged jumpsuit representing mortality cliche that so dogged British fashion, particularly in the 90s.
So after two years, Bartley left and went to work as a fashion writer on the London Evening Standard ("Just such fun - we got the champagne out every Friday") and latterly Vogue ("That was more about work"), before becoming disenchanted with office life and then, after a few drinks, deciding to return to fashion design.
It took a while before Bartley was taken seriously as a fashion designer - not because of the clothes, which always showed a clear vision and a unique style, but partly because of the image surrounding Bartley herself. Harpers Bazaar called her "leader of London's junior style mafia", which might sound like a compliment but in truth made her and her group of friends - which includes the fashion editor Katie Grand and the designers Giles Deacon, Stuart Vevers and Katie Hillier, and occasionally Kate Moss - sound like ephemeral dilettantes. The frequent photographs of them at parties did little to disabuse anyone of that image. Bartley admits she probably did get "caught up in the cool thing". "Back then, I wanted to do a cool fashion label and it was kind of led by ego, getting caught up in hype and ambitions and your own story, really," she says. "Now I realise those aren't the things that make me happy, or work. Now it's about doing something that's creative and fun and truly personal but also lets me spend time with my kids."
In fact, this whole group has proved themselves, almost uniquely in the world of fashion, to have been worthy of their youthful hype: Deacon is now the highlight of London fashion week with his Giles label; Vevers was the creative director of Mulberry until last season and is now in charge at the luxury Spanish label Loewe; Hillier is the accessories designer at Marc Jacobs; and Grand is widely recognised as one of the leading fashion figures in this country, having worked as the stylist for Prada and now the editor of the influential fashion magazine Pop.
One more problem for Bartley was that in 2002 she had a sudden burst of success when she launched her Gisele bag, which became one of the original It bags. Sales rocketed before the company had the structure to deal with the demand. Nonetheless, it is an irony that a tiny and essentially homespun label such as Luella helped to kick off the It bag craze, at least as much as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, although Bartley squirms at the thought. "Obviously the bag was great for us financially, but I find that whole status symbol thing hard to stomach, that you have to have a certain thing in order to be accepted," she says.
Another hurdle that most fashion designers must jump before gaining acceptance is an affiliation with celebrities. Bartley's shows in New York were notable for their popularity with the apparently endless array of bland, milk-faced and blond American twentysomething and teen celebs, who would perch pertly in her front row, each dutifully clutching a Luella bag. "I hated it, to be honest," says Bartley before, as usual, belatedly acting like her own PR. "I do appreciate it because it helps sales but ... " So it must be a bit of a nightmare, then, to see all those photos of Kelly Osbourne and Lily Allen wearing her dresses in magazines? "Oh no, not at all, and that's another reason why I'm glad to be back in London. The London girls are outspoken and are just themselves, particularly Lily and Kelly. It's that English girl thing. I love that they're fans, because the clothes are so inspired by them."
Eighteen months ago, this former poster girl for cosmopolitan cool moved to Cornwall, where she lives with her partner, the fashion photographer David Sims, and their three children, ranging in age from eight months to four years ("I must stop having children ... "). She did, she says, find it something of a wrench to leave London and at first she would find herself counting the days until she could come back to the capital where she could wear "something other than wellies". Now, however, she often finds that she comes back to London unthinkingly wearing her wellies with no other footwear options. Much of this maturity comes from having become a mother. "Yeah, that does change your perspective, of course it does," she says solemnly, but the cheeky teenager doesn't stay down for long: "God, I sound like a bloody Buddhist, don't I?"
