Mulberry doffs its hat to eccentric Britishisms
Jonny Coca has just the suggestion for any guest looking to make an entrance to the royal wedding on May 19: a Noel Stewart for Mulberry hat.
“Absolutely, I’d like to see women wear one for the wedding of Meghan and Harry,” the Mulberry designer said with a smile backstage after the brand’s spring-summer 2018 show which was one of the first on London Fashion Week’s opening day. “The hat makes a strong statement in terms of silhouette. It’s something fun and quite eccentric, and not too classic.”
Hats were just one of the quintessentially British flourishes visible in the show. The collection included a parade of looks inspired by garden parties, seaside stripes, country-house porcelain collections and other springy Britishisms, boosted by energetic colour combinations: powder pink with lawn-tennis green, mustard and fuchsia, waves of cobalt blue… “I wanted to make it quite sweet and quite fresh,” Coca said.
Of these, he had specific suggestions for looks he’d like to see future duchess Meghan Markle wear for any forthcoming outings: a suit with sculptural brass buttons, either in oatmeal or grass-green linen. “I love that for her,” he said.
Markle is already a fan of Coca’s designs – she’s carried several of his handbags, including the zipped Bayswater and the Clifton. Given that a Mulberry show is at its essence a showcase for handbags, she’ll find plenty more to admire in the new collection. Among the new styles are Marloes, a soft-sided satchel with a crossbody chain and “rider’s lock” closure; Lynton, drawstring-top bucket bag; and the Minety Clutch, a structured half-moon wristlet in croc-embossed leather.
But for a show about handbags, it was also strong on other accessories – front-rowers could be heard murmuring over the dramatic earrings, and the ruched leather glove shoes balanced on porcelain vessel inspired heels.
By the end of the show, the entire finely tuned collection was available to shop online in 192 countries via Mulberry’s website and worldwide network of stores. A spokesperson said the first sale – a cobalt blue Marloes satchel snapped up by a shopper in Germany – occurred “within minutes” of the finale.
“This strategy is about approaching our consumer, who is from the digital generation,” Thierry Andretta, the Mulberry CEO, said before the show, alluding to a youth ward shift in the brand’s customer base. “They want to have things immediately – they don’t want to wait…. It’s important that we’re able to communicate with the customer that from this moment on, you have the full collection available.”
Just as in a museum, visitors exited through a gift shop of sorts – a room where they could handle items from the collection and browse through the rest of the merch on an ample supply of ipads. The women queuing to scroll suggested the message was coming through, loud and clear.