DOTTI PATUREL

Store manager at Simone Rocha, Mount Street

A BUYING AND RETAIL VETERAN, BRITTANY-BORN Paturel (pictured right) has earned her stripes under fashion’s biggest names, including Yohji Yamamoto and Alaïa, but it’s with the Rocha family that she truly found her home. She worked with Simone’s father, the Hong Kong-born and Ireland-based designer John Rocha CBE in the 2000s, until she was introduced to his daughter’s work. Paturel went to Paris to sell Simone Rocha’s graduate collection, and was then invited to open and run Simone Rocha’s Mount Street store ahead of its 2015 opening. She’s been there ever since. Paturel had an instinct that Simone Rocha was going to be big from the moment she set eyes on her first collection: ‘What can I say?’ Paturel says, with typical French nonchalance. ‘I knew.’ A decade later, she is Simone Rocha’s official flagship store manager and unofficial ear on the ground. Nowhere to be seen on social media, Paturel’s power comes from her little black book full of fashion-collecting clients’ contact details. These include singer-songwriter Paloma Faith and architect Farshid Moussavi, among others. ‘I have a very loyal and lovely clientele, who have become like friends,’ says Paturel. ‘I am constantly texting them.’ Paturel is one of the first people in the Simone Rocha studio at the beginning of each season. A quick peruse will tell her exactly what her clients will want and soon she has the pieces in her customers’ sizes, ready to be tried on in-store. Procuring items for her faithful buyers gives Paturel ‘total satisfaction’, as does ensuring they find the piece of their dreams. For a very select few Paturel will bend over backwards for what she calls ‘special requests’: if they don’t have a piece in stock, she will hunt it down. If a piece does not yet exist, she will work on a bespoke order. And, rarest of all, is when she asks Simone Rocha herself to recreate items from seasons past. ‘It’s amazing to be able to do that,’ she says modestly. ‘Dotti has been a part of my team for many years,’ Rocha says. ‘She knows my collections from the very beginning of my career, so her knowledge and warmth are invaluable. She is really there for our clients in every way. She is a beautiful woman, inside and out.’