THE OSMAN COMETH
British designer has talent for making women look great
It probably won’t come as a terrible shock to learn that many actresses are paid to dress the way they do. International mega-brands — with VIP departments, deep pockets and headquarters on the Avenue Montaigne or Madison Ave. — fork out heavily for the pleasure of these exclusive “relationships.”
How utterly refreshing, then, to discover that the label behind (literally) so many of Hollywood’s current red car-peteers is a tiny independent based in a district of Central London’s yet-to-be-gentrified-or-even-sanitized Waterloo.
Osman Yousefzada is the name on that label, and even though he has abbreviated it, professionally at least, to Osman, it still doesn’t trip off every tongue lightly. That may be because, until recently, he was the insider’s little secret. Fashion editors and art-world types were his crowd — fashion events brim with Osman-wearers. After Beyoncé wore an Osman catsuit to the 2013 Grammys, the style police unanimously declared it one of her best looks.
The ability to dress different shapes and disguise imperfections is probably his most distinctive talent, along with his gift for draping. In an industry populated with a surprising number of male designers who are unable to come to grips with bosoms, thighs and flesh in general, he has always relished finding the perfect dress for every woman. By perfect, he doesn’t necessarily mean a directional statement from his catwalk shows. “Of course I start with a vision,” he says, “but fundamentally you want someone to look their absolute best in what you make for them, so you adjust.”
The surge in his Hollywood ratings began last October, when the British Fashion Council took him and a handful of other designers out to Los Angeles for a meet-andgreet with the city’s most powerful fashion influencers. He is now working constantly with all the stylists who feature in the Hollywood Reporter’s Top 10, and his hit-rate is astonishing.
From Lupita Nyong’o (who proclaimed his trousers her new best friends) and Margot Robbie, to Alexa Chung and Emily Blunt, the formerly under-the-radar Osman appears to have become the favourite go-to for any actress keen to position herself as a style avatar.
Women who wear Osman tend to look as though they’re having fun. Or at least as though they’re comfortable. He’s the master of uncontrived glamour: I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Osman design that looked too tight, too trussed-up or, for that matter, too embarrassingly revealing.
And so, for the moment, the Gagas and the Kates (Hudson and Bosworth) keep calling — a state of affairs that must be disorientating for a designer who initially set out wanting to make clothes for museum curators and galleristas. But, as he reasons, “actresses and singers are craftspeople, too. They’re very dedicated to getting what they do right.”
That may sound as though he’s trying to convince himself that he hasn’t sold out, but the truth is he’s genuinely delighted to dress these famous luminaries — and to be in the position where he can pick and choose. He’s also realistic. When Emma Watson not only wore his black high-waisted trousers and pink top recently on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, but name-checked him, too, he was deluged with industry congratulations. “But when you’re as small a business as I am, that kind of exposure doesn’t always translate into sales,” he points out. “I don’t have my own shop, so unless other retailers have that particular outfit on their rails, it’s not necessarily going to shift more clothes.”
What it undeniably does do is focus attention on pieces from his collection that may have previously been overlooked, as well as provide a fresh viewpoint. A conventionally pretty actress can make an outfit much more appealing to the laity than an “edgy” model in “bruise” makeup. Osman is the first to point out that his catwalk shows don’t always do him justice. “I’ve had a bad habit in the past of sabotaging my collections the night before with bad styling decisions,” he says.
That may be because he graduated through the British fashion system at a time when being “commercial” was still regarded as a veiled insult.
But his was never going to be a purely abstract vision. The son of an Afghan carpenter father and dressmaker mother, he grew up using his hands to make things. “My favourite errand as a kid was running to the haberdashery for her.”
One of five high-achieving children (one brother’s an ophthalmic surgeon, one sister works as a spin doctor), he studied anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies and then Cambridge, before conceding defeat to fashion and enrolling at Central Saint Martins. He set up his own label in 2007 and from the start attracted women with an eye for the subtly unusual. Thandie Newton was his first famous patron. He’s also dressed U.K. first lady, Sarah Brown.