The Ghost of fashions past
In the 1990s, any fashion girl worth her salt wore Ghost. Decades on, it’s making a comeback, says Charlie Gowans-eglinton
Sometimes, a brand taps so well into the mood of a moment that when that moment is over, well, so is the brand. In the 1990s, Ghost was the off-duty uniform of it-girls. Founded by Tanya Sarne in 1984, the idea was to have ghost-designers working underneath Sarne to create an easy-to-wear, feminine brand. It worked. During fashion week shows in New York, LA and London, all the supermodels – everyone from Kate Moss to Naomi Campbell – walked the Ghost show.
“As a student at Central Saint Martins in the Nineties, I lived in my bias cut dress, flung on with adidas Gazelles”, says fashion stylist Charlie Harrington. “It was a throw on at 7am get back at 1am kind of dress; anything was possible. It wasn’t flashy; Ghost tapped into a no-logo generation”.
From fashion students and editors to mothers of the bride, these were clothes for everyone. The Daily
Telegraph’s fashion director Lisa Armstrong swore by Ghost dresses during pregnancy. Widely flattering, near-impossible to crease, this was occasionwear that didn’t take itself too seriously. “The sample sale preview was one of the hottest tickets of the year,” remembers stylist Arabella Greenhill. “Everyone had something from Ghost in their wardrobe – and many a Nineties bride, bridesmaid and guest wore Ghost.”
Which was, perhaps, the beginning of the end. As Ghost began to be seen as a bridal staple, it lost its fashionable edge. In 2004, Ghost had 11 boutiques, eight perfumes, and plans to expand in to swimwear and denim – by 2006, Sarne had left the brand. Ghost disappeared from the fashion week schedules, and was bought from administration by millionaire investor Touker Suleyman (owner of Hawes & Curtis) in 2008.
Since then, Ghost has been quietly making sales, positioned in the bridal section of John Lewis. Not that they haven’t been trying, of course. In 2009, there was a collaboration with design-duo Modernist; in 2012, a ‘reinvention’ that introduced a custom dyeing service; in 2014, the brand launched a capsule collection at Urban Outfitters. Three years ago, Sameera Azeem came on board as fashion director – and it looks as though this time, Ghost has got it right – online sales are up 95 per cent in three years.
Under Azeem, the brand has gone from one UK shop to four, is stocked in 32 bridal shops in the UK, and sold online at Harvey Nichols and Selfridges (and John Lewis of course). “Following on from the huge catwalk negligee trend, Ghost – famous for its original bias cut slip dresses – is back,” says Heather Gramston, womenswear buying manager at Selfridges, who started stocking the label in April.
According to global fashion search platform Lyst, searches for the label hit an all-time high this year, up 31 per cent from last year. Brides-to-be have always searched for the longer gowns, but still-rising searches for blouses (up 43 per cent) and casual mid-length dresses (up 37 per cent) suggest that customer demand for the brand is shifting towards everyday dressing. Only now is the ready-to-wear collection that Sarne was known for coming back into its own.
Certainly, catwalk reiterations of slip dresses and bias cuts at Calvin Klein and Prada must certainly have boosted Ghost’s appeal. But the second – and perhaps most effective – prong in this attack is the brand’s growing number of Instagram ambassadors. In the Nineties, the models were the ones designers fought to dress, but with more and more brands choosing the new breed of fashion “influencers” to promote their brands, Instagram has become a vital tool in reaching a new audience. 253,000 followers saw Lucy Williams, author of fashionmenow.co.uk, in Ghost’s pink slip dress; 92,000 saw banker-turned-blogger Hedvig Sagfjord Opshaug of the-northernlight.com in the floral maxi.
Whether or not you’re one of the growing number of women using Instagram to window-shop, Ghost’s appeal is clear. Instagram’s wellness-focused fashion stars might seem a new direction after the party-mad supers of the Nineties, but at the crux of it all, here is a brand that really knows how to cut a dress.