IS THIS THE END OF THE GALAXY
No, it’s not another Cop26 story ... but the stunning fall of Roland Mouret, the genius behind the world’s most iconic dress, after a Covid slump in sales — leaving major fashion houses in fear of who’ll unravel next
BEAUTIFULLY cut in wool crepe, with every dart carefully placed and a seductive square neckline which revealed the perfect amount of flesh, it was the dress which every woman wanted.
The Roland Mouret Galaxy made its debut in 2005. It was a hymn to femininity, celebrating curves where other designers had ignored them.
As the suave French-born Mouret, who lives in Suffolk and works in London, said: ‘When I design a dress for a woman, I also think of the man who is going to take it off her.’
Seen on everyone from Halle Berry and Cameron Diaz to Rachel Weisz and Sienna Miller, the sleek sheath seemed to bestow poise and confidence.
The secret to its seductive shape lay in the thick, elasticised mesh underlay, made from a material called Powerflex that was used in corsets in the 1950s. It pulled in the waist, pushed up the bosom and elevated the bottom.
Another part of its genius was the famous origami draped shoulders, which made it instantly iconic. It was also — most unusually for high-end designer fashion — available in sizes up to a 20.
Initially retailing at £990, it sold out at Harvey Nichols within a few days, and for months there was a waiting list.
Vogue wrote: ‘For weeks you couldn’t open a newspaper or a magazine without seeing another young Hollywood A-lister wearing it.’
Demi Moore had one, as did Scarlett Johansson, Nicole Kidman, and Jodie Foster. Victoria Beckham apparently had one in every colour, and wore the Galaxy’s successor, the Moon, in hot pink to husband David’s debut at LA Galaxy in 2007.
MoURET hosted an event at Selfridges in 2006 and was overjoyed when around 60 women turned up in the Galaxy. He said: ‘Each of them was complimenting each other. Tell me, when do women ever want to wear the same dress?’
It spawned thousands of imitations — at one point Topshop was selling 5,000 Galaxy-style frocks a week for £65.
The original dress is still available today, for £1,595 via the Mouret website and shop in Mayfair. This season’s colours include blood orange and baby pink.
However, if you’ve always wanted a Galaxy, the time to buy is now — the business has filed notice of its intent to appoint administrators.
It seems not even the loyalty of customers including the Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex has been able to save Mouret from the disastrous financial effects of the pandemic. And so the creator of the Galaxy has fallen back to earth.
For a man whose creations were adored by A-listers but were also just within the reach of ordinary women, his reversal of fortune shows how devastating the impact of Covid has been on the industry.
Several cancelled seasons, no social events, no international travel plus the end of duty-free shopping this spring — which, without the discounts available to tourists, delivered a hammer blow to London’s status as a fashion retail capital — compounded the pain.
Mouret, 60, said in an interview earlier this year that sales had plunged by 80 per cent. ‘We lost 20 years in one day,’ he added.
But he was determined to survive, and only two months ago promised he would be ‘the last man standing’ in British fashion, following the demise of such labels as Alice Temperley, Amanda Wakeley and Ralph & Russo. Indeed, only three weeks ago he launched his own range of activewear.
The Roland Mouret label is jointly owned by the designer and entertainment mogul Simon Fuller — for many years a major stakeholder in David Beckham’s brand business and still a stakeholder of Victoria’s struggling fashion label.
It was reported last month that Mouret investors, including its London landlord Grosvenor
Estates, were discussing financing options to keep it solvent.
In 2019 — the last year for which accounts are available, the label reported a very slender pre-tax profit of £242,667 on sales of £16.1 million. The company currently has 84 employees.
A former model, handsome Mouret lives in a thatched cottage in Suffolk with his sculptor husband James Webster.
The designer is known for his charming nature, and friends include Meghan Markle, who chose Mouret dresses repeatedly throughout her time as a working royal and wore one of his designs the day before her wedding.
British Vogue editor Edward Enninful is also a pal.
Yet Mouret’s story is one of the
most astonishing in fashion. He is almost untrained, having completed just three months of a fashion degree, and he only started up in business at the age of 36. Mouret grew up in a small village near Lourdes in France, the son of a chambermaid and a butcher.
He watched his father at work, cutting meat, and said it had inspired his love of fashion: ‘It made me love the muscle, the bone and the fat.’
He moved to Paris and spent three months at a Parisian fashion college in 1979. He then worked as a model, before becoming a stylist and later creative director at the magazine Gai Pied Hebdo.
Eventually, he moved to London, where he ran a bar. But fashion continued to fascinate him. He believed he could create ‘irresistible’ clothing. ‘I love the way fabric feels... I love how clothes fall over the body,’ he enthused.
At 36, he decided to pursue his dreams. ‘I thought if I didn’t do it, I was going to be really bitter,’ he told the Financial Times.
He applied for a job with Jean Paul Gaultier and was rejected. ‘I was told: “You’re not good enough for us.” From that day I refused to be employed by anyone — I didn’t want to be rejected again.’
WITH a loan of £2,000 he created a debut collection in 1997. The dresses were made on a home sewing machine without patterns: he just wrapped the fabric around the models.
He recalled: ‘I couldn’t do blouses; Italy did it cheaper. But if you extended [the design] a few inches, you’d have a dress, and I could make money on dresses.’
He became a part of the ‘demicouture’ movement, along with such designers as Alexander McQueen and Julien Macdonald — shaking up the fashion world with an outsider’s sensibility.
Mouret told Forbes magazine: ‘It was brilliant to be part of something that didn’t exist before.
‘However, at that point, I had to face the reality that I was near bankruptcy, but I couldn’t stop: I was hooked.’
He took investment from Scottish businesswoman Sharai Meyers and her banker husband, Andre, in 1998, and started to reach big retailers.
By the time the Galaxy came out, he had forged a reputation for creating gorgeously wearable clothes.
Linda Fargo, fashion director of New York department store Bergdorf Goodman, said: ‘Women love to wear Roland because it has a unique way of being both sexy and sophisticated at the same time.’
In 2006, with the Galaxy still a sensation, came a defining crisis: he quit his own label over ‘creative differences’ with the Meyers.
He turned to the world of showbiz for his comeback with Simon Fuller, former Spice Girls manager, investing in his RM by Roland Mouret line, which launched in 2007.
Fuller put in 50 per cent of the money, Mouret the other 50 per cent — with the designer retaining full creative control.
The first show featured ‘easy chic’ dresses which were — in a great innovation — available to order the following day. ‘Why should they have to wait?’ said Mouret.
AT THIS point, Fuller was nurturing Victoria Beckham’s fashion ambitions, too — with his backing, she launched her own label in 2008. Her first collection was a surprise to all, featuring beautifully tailored dresses, many of them similar to Mouret’s famous sleek silhouettes. Mouret said he had been a mentor to her and nothing more.
His own business was notably successful. The Galaxy was followed by the Moon and Titanium designs. More recent dresses, featuring the signature draping, have been worn by the Duchess of Sussex.
In 2010, he bought back the rights to his own name and opened a standalone store opposite London’s Connaught Hotel a year later.
Many other designers branch out into cosmetics and handbags, but Mouret stuck to dresses and separates — and made money on repeat sales to loyal customers.
‘As a designer, you have to understand why that woman is going to come to you. I know where I fit; I know my space,’ he said.
Women — from Beyonce to Theresa May — felt powerful in his dresses. There was never an ideal form. As he said: ‘You either do clothes for the fashion world or you do clothes for people who don’t live like in the pictures.
‘I am not a fattist — I accept all bodies. I cut my dresses and fit on models of every size. The real success is not the dress — it’s the sizing and its consistency.’
He added: ‘I love to make nice a**es. I have to be honest. It is the best part of the body. My way of knowing if I did something good is if the customer has a nice a**.’
He’s not been afraid of the mass market, either, and has had collaborations with Banana Republic and even a dress for Gap.
However, the pandemic wiped him out. He cancelled his autumn/ winter 2020 show, and there was restructuring to cut costs, with the Manhattan store closing and a move to focus on e-commerce.
In June, Grosvenor Britain & Ireland announced it had taken a minority stake to help ‘grow and diversify the business’. The funds were used to launch Mouret’s sportswear line last month.
Just weeks earlier, he said he feared it could take five years to recover completely from the pandemic catastrophe. Sadly, his time seems to have run out sooner.
Celebrity clients will no doubt be hoping, with his history of bouncing back, Mouret’s iconic designs won’t be consigned to a galaxy far far away for too long.