It’s a right royal fashion knockout
It’s always glamorous at London Fashion Week, but nothing can match a night at Buckingham Palace, says Lisa Armstrong
Despite her reputation as a fashion superstar, the Duchess of Cambridge has assiduously followed a non fashion-y route. Where her late mother-in-law was a buccaneering fashion spirit, Kate, apparently steered by William, has specialised in the high-low mix, “relatable” footwear and a normal-for-norfolk weekend wardrobe. She has never attended a fashion show, avoided fashion parties, and we probably won’t be seeing her in a £56,000 Ralph & Russo gown any time soon.
Yet there she was on Monday – peak socialising night for London Fashion Week – co-hosting a fashion event at Buckingham Palace with Sophie, Countess of Wessex. The Countess in eco-compliant Burberry. The Duchess in Erdem lace and not-normal-for-seven-months-pregnant very high Prada court shoes. She looks exactly as she does in the pictures, except even taller and far more animated (the Countess looks thinner and daintier).
To one side of the Duchess was Anna Wintour – than whom it is hard to be more fashiony – and to her other side Stella Mccartney. In the foreground, Naomi Campbell, whose voluminous ball-gown threatened to take out anyone who within a three foot radius.
Is this a gear change for the Duchess? Have the royals suddenly woken up to the soft power of fashion and decided to utilise it to promote UK inc? After all, the Queen attended the Richard Quinn show (Who he? Until yesterday you may well have asked), her first fashion show since the Fifties.
The last time Buckingham Palace hosted a fashion event was 2010. The Queen and Prince Philip presided, and the equerries (who in my memory were dressed like Hugh Laurie’s Prince Regent in Blackadder, but couldn’t have been, surely) seamlessly herded us into horseshoe-shaped groups (are you appreciating the consistency of equine imagery?). Her Majesty appeared, Doctor Who like, in each horseshoe, spending an impressively long time conversing with designers from Dalston and Notting Hill.
The party on Monday was packed with the designers of Dalston and Notting Hill, too, but couldn’t have been more different in tone. For one, equerries were in relative mufti and all looked about 20. The horseshoes kept disintegrating. There was a line of mannequins running down the centre of each state room which hindered the flow. By the time the Duchess reached our horseshoe, more a doughnut by now, she confessed she was losing all her spatial awareness.
How weird it must be to be royal. You might read all kinds of disobliging nuggets about yourself, but really everyone just wants to meet you.
Some guests had red dots on their name badges that guaranteed time with the Duchess or Countess. The choreography in the packed state rooms by seasoned royal event-goers, who were doing their best to position themselves in the Duchess’s path, and block others from doing so, made rush hour on the Hanger Lane gyratory system look like child’s play.
Still, it was, mannequins included, all for a good cause (how often must they tell themselves this when they kick off their heels at the end of a particularly long canapé session?).
The Duchess and Countess were launching the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange, an initiative set up by the indefatigable eco-warrior Livia Firth, to put designers and artisans from the Commonwealth in touch with one another with the aim of celebrating, and in some cases reviving, traditional crafts and bringing them into the international spotlight.
Alongside the London crew were designers and artisans from 51 other Commonwealth nations, including Vanessa Winston, a leather artisan from Dominica whose house was destroyed by November’s hurricane.
When she was skyped by Meiling Esau, a Trinidadian designer who’d seen her work on the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange website, her first reaction was “I can’t do this. I don’t even have a house.” Winston’s intricate wide belt worked a treat with Esau’s black hand-sewn organza dress. Esau was thrilled with the results.
“I think our visions work so well together. I’m looking forward to doing more with Vanessa.”
Fashion can so often seem remote and relentlessly elitist, interested only in a narrow demographic (thin, rich, “cool”) but the collaborations on display on Monday (they can be viewed by the public from February 22 until March 6, and also online) are a reminder of how joyous and inclusive it can be.
Take Marama Anne Papau, a New Zealand TV presenter who promotes the crochet piecework of her native Tuvalu in the Pacific Islands, and who was wearing a fire-red hibiscus patterned dress from Kiwi designer Mena and a floral headdress. Via the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange website, Papau made contact with Shivam Punjya, an Indian who runs Behno, a contemporary priced, quiet designer label based in New York.
Behno is quite a minimalist line, yet somehow the electrifyingly bright crochet panels blend seamlessly well with it. Both Punjya and Papau are keen to collaborate again.
“If the young in Tuvalu see there’s appreciation for this kind of craft in global fashion capitals, they might want to revive it,” says Papau. “That’s important, because right now, it’s dying.”
When I asked her how much the crocheted jackets she showed me cost (a journalist must cut to the chase), she looked nonplussed for a few moments. “The ladies who make these pieces don’t really like to charge for them, because that sucks the joy out of the experience.”
If fostering connections are important to the Exchange, so are ethics – from protecting and nurturing skills, to fostering good work practices and educating participants’ sustainability (Burberry and Stella Mccartney are both partners in the project).
Not that the smaller artisans need many lessons in ecology. Tuvalu’s mainly female crocheters use plantbased sustainable fibres. Vanessa Winston, the leather belt maker, was wearing a chunky necklace and saucer-sized earrings she had designed and made herself from coconut shell and huge pearls.
“The industry has to get away from this idea of trends,“says Livia Firth. “Some of these pieces take months to make and they’re conceived to last a lifetime. It’s not this idea that you can only look a certain way to be fashionable. One of the designers in the exchange also makes clothes for carnival – and they don’t see any division.”
Although the project took up Firth’s every waking hour since last summer, recruitment was never a problem. “There’s so much talent and enthusiasm for creating beautiful work,” she says.
A darling of designers and film stars (through her husband Colin Firth, and, it must be said, her forceful charm, she has an enviable contacts book), Firth knows that good intentions are not enough.
“The finished items have to hold their own in international stores. But if you look at a Gucci show these days, it’s full of craft from all over the world.”
Later this year, a selection of the outfits from the exhibition will be available to buy on the upmarket matchesfashion.com.
The other big sell of the Exchange is its youthfulness, 60 per cent of the Commonwealth’s 2.3 billion inhabitants are under 30. The entire fashion industry, given its current obsession with millennials, might do well to join the project.
Maybe the Commonwealth Fashion Exchange’s broadening of fashion’s self-imposed definitions chimes with the Duchess’s own trajectory. It’s not in her nature to start wearing edgy fashion statements from Vetements (nor in most other women’s). But if she can see a way of connecting fashion with a wide audience,
I think she might be in.
‘If the young in Tuvalu see there’s appreciation for this kind of craft, they may want to revive it, because it’s dying right now’