The new rules for confident dressing
‘Here come the shoes.” “Wall Street Barbie.” “Are you wearing underwear?” Incredibly, after everything that’s happened in the past 12 months to jolt us into an enlightened state about gender disparity in the workplace, these are all comments that some of Polly Mcmaster’s customers still contend with.
Mcmaster gets to hear stuff like this because, as founder of clothing brand The Fold, she has made it her business to create a sense of community among her clients. You can read their shared experiences on her website and see them browsing in the shop she opened this year in Knightsbridge.
I wish there had been more shops like The Fold back when I was getting my foot on the first rungs – not just of the career ladder, but adult life in general.
Not that I was ever battered by comments like the above, but still, discovering relatable role models is always motivational (don’t see it, won’t be it). Whether you’re an oncologist, a fashion writer or a CEO – or about to take on the world of freelance/portfolio working or semi-retirement – who doesn’t need a cache of clothes that makes them feel confident?
Actually, aged 20, I couldn’t have afforded The Fold. But once I got my first proper job (I use the word loosely: it was in journalism), with the remuneration to go with, I’d have been in there like a shot, inspired by the way that its one Pencil skirt, £210, and blouse, £160 (cefinn.com) and only store feels like a discerning club, with expensive looking fittings, kindly lighting, spacious changing rooms and helpful staff, while selling clothes that, price wise, are topend high street rather than Gucci. I would have liked the idea of clothes built to last and the commensurate feeling that I was investing in a project designed to last (ie myself). Interestingly, Mcmaster says the store didn’t cost nearly as much to kit out as people assume – a piece of artful budget management.
The Fold is one of those places
– still all too rare – where they do a lot of the slog for you. With just the one store and its website (she’s chosen not to wholesale to a mass of department stores to maintain an aura of special-ness), The Fold is selling between £5million and £10million of clothes a year – testament to its usefulness. Next stop: shoes, which they’re working on. Mcmaster, a former financial consultant, set up The Fold in 2012, primarily to help women find, in one place and one hit, stylish, pragmatic pieces that would cut it in a glossy office environment. Mcmaster’s background is instructive. With a Cambridge PHD in molecular biology and a London Business School MBA, she’s not one of those disillusioned city types who decide to make a business doodling pretty frocks. From the start, she hired experienced designers, sourced high-quality Italian fabrics, bought in patterns from the same suppliers that Valentino use, and meshed these with her knowledge of what women like her – serious about style but wanting to approach fashion in a grown-up way – need. “I loved my job, I earned a good salary,” she notes, “but it was so tough to find the right kind of clothes.”
The crux of all of this is confidence. Thinking back to the first piece of clothing that truly made me feel confident, it definitely wasn’t the tragic leg of mutton sleeve wool “interview” suit I bought that weighed a ton and smelt, the minute things got tense, like wet dog, and helped me get the sum total of zero jobs.
It’s taken me years to work out the the whys and wherefores of this catastrophic misfire. Essentially it came down to being averagely clueless about my body shape (no style police in those days), a truly dire array of options and an idea fixe (back then, success = shoulder-pads. End of story).
Even now, it’s easy to become blinkered about the kind of clothes that will make you feel powerful. Power, after all, comes in many guises, from softly maternal to the boardroom show-boater, and life is all about weaving between the extremes. When The Fold launched, power was almost entirely associated with the stereotypical female exec. Workwear meant, at least to many people, a bodycon dress and spiky heels.
“Now, unless you’re a lawyer or working in an ultra-conservative environment, the rules are ostensibly more relaxed,” says Mcmaster. “Even so, the brief, ultimately, is the same. It’s about giving yourself as much confidence as possible.”
Comfort (physical and psychological) are key components to confidence – self-evident you’d think, but easy to put to one side in the general fashion conversation. If your fabulous ontrend sock boots (yes, they’re back this autumn) are killing you, if that insanely chic check (so are they) pencil skirt is riding up, or inhibiting your freedom of movement or the Diana Vreeland-esque leopard print jacket, on reflection, makes you look like the deranged mother of Jackie Collins and Rod Stewart, and not in a good way, then you’ll understand only too well what I mean by a wardrobe confidence deficit.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to dissect trends – they’re valuable tools for modernising your staples. Shopping around is a professional obligation. But not everyone has the time to do it. And there’s so much emphasis on newness (quite a lot of which, as we’ve established, isn’t actually new) that fit, cut and fabric often get overlooked. I’m constantly surprised at how even some eyewateringly pricey brands use nasty fabrications and cut corners.
Also, for reasons unknown, the British retail landscape still doesn’t make it easy to find sleek, grown-up, modern capsules all in one place. Me+em, which now has five stores in London as well as its website, is one. Cefinn,
Samantha Cameron’s label, is coming on in leaps and bounds. Hobbs, Ghost, Whistles and Jigsaw are good hunting grounds, too, although none is quite as focused as The Fold.
True, The Fold zeros in on a specific type of woman – classic, groomed, go-getting – but its core tenets speak to a universal audience.
“There are so many variants in a woman’s day that every item has to multi-task,” says Mcmaster. “You might start the morning at your desk but finish it with business entertainment, be that Wimbledon, the theatre or a dinner.”
Six years ago the central Fold item was a tight dress with long (a novelty) narrow, tailored sleeves. That still exists (at least half their styles are carried through so that devotees who know what works for them can update their favourites). But things evolve. A customer who might once have considered a fitted dress the holy grail is now adding in soft dresses, or matching tops and trousers that can be worn as a jumpsuit or separately. “The commonality with all our customers is that no one wants to look too corporate – and everyone, whatever their age, wants to look relevant and modern.
“You might be 60, but if you’re working in a company that sells to 25-year-olds you have to look as though you know what’s current in the world.”