How I became a fashion designer aged 79
Prue’s specs appeal
Prue Leith is as surprised and amused as anyone that she will be adding fashion designer to her CV at the age of 79.
“It’s funny,” the doyenne television chef and CBE says of her new venture. “But people kept asking me where I get my glasses from. Then I won the only award I have ever won for doing absolutely nothing, at the Spectacle Wearer of the Year awards. My husband said he’d have preferred it if it was ‘Rear of the Year’, but sadly not. I love business so I thought this could be a good opportunity.”
Her debut collection of glasses for the Ronit Furst brand launches this month, with no fewer than 72 styles on offer. Leith has worn Furst’s luxury, hand-painted frames for more than a decade, but the designers now want to bring her vibrant style to more faces at a lower price.
“The thing I don’t understand about women generally is that we are all mad about shoes and handbags, but these accessories spend their lives under the table,” Leith reasons. “Specs are on your face and are right there when you’re looking at people. I pick which frames I want to wear each day to go with my outfit, like anyone else might with earrings.”
Leith’s penchant for bold accessories is well-documented, even more so since she joined The
Great British Bake Off as a judge in 2017, when the series moved to Channel 4. The Michelin-starred restaurateur has inspired Twitter memes with her “Kerplunk”-look plastic necklaces and jazzy glasses in the tent. While the specs are always by Furst, her jewellery comes from everywhere; she owns styles inspired by her birthplace in South Africa, sentimental pieces made by her three grandchildren, semiprecious Lola Rose stone necklaces and crafty works made from plastic, rubber or paper that she’s picked up in the gift shop at the V&A museum.
She has more than 200 colourful necklaces hung from hooks across two walls of her Oxfordshire home, and is planning to increase her glasses storage system accordingly, ahead of her new collection launching.
“I’ve always liked the bright glasses and big, vulgar necklaces,” she says. “I’ve got 11 pairs of specs at the moment and I’ll pick 11 more [of the 72] from my own collection. I’m extravagant, I know, but I’m thinking of having a felt-lined drawer put in to keep them all in.”
Leith has honed her distinct personal style over 34 years as a television presenter. Arriving in London from Cape Town in 1960 to attend the Cordon Bleu Cookery School, she says she was infatuated with free love, beaded waistcoats and the concept of wearing five loaded necklaces at once in Swinging Sixties London.
She opened Leith’s, her Michelinstarred restaurant, in Notting Hill in 1969 and in the Seventies she channelled her love of wearing colour into kaftans. “No one was wearing them, but I found them so comfortable and I liked the patterns,” she says.
“In the Seventies a lot of designers were asked to nominate people who they thought dressed very well for their age or size, and who had their own style,” she remembers. “Norman Hartnell nominated me. I had never bought anything from him – I couldn’t have afforded a Norman sock – so I was astonished to discover that he named me because of the kaftans. I think I have always, generally, been quite individual.”
Hiring a stylist, Jane Galpin, at the age of 74, has made a big difference to the way that Leith shops now. She says that she completely recommends indulging in a “wardrobe mistress”, especially if you are “quite vain, like I am”.
“We met when I was on a programme called My Kitchen Rules in 2014,” she explains. “The best thing about the whole show was that I was given her as a stylist. Usually, when I was on Great British Menu
[from 2006-2016] for example, all the stylists were about 25 and they always wanted me to wear the sort of clothes they looked good in. Even then I was in my 60s, so I didn’t want to wear silly clothes, I wanted to look like myself and wear colour.
“Meeting Jane was an absolute joy because she is in her 50s and she just got me. She’s helped me a lot. I’ve always liked clothes, but I’ve never liked shopping, so now I don’t have to do that.”
Taking over from Mary Berry in 2017 was another turning point. Replacing Bake Off’s national treasure, in her pastel cardigans, neat pearls and Zara jackets (which often sold out after she wore them), Prue’s bold style stood out and defined her as a fashion star in her own right for audiences to love. It never crossed her mind to tone it down for the show. Why would it? “People watch Bake Off because the bakers are brilliant, not because of what the judges are wearing,” she insists. “But I do get that there is interest generally in my necklaces and specs. I’m egotistical, and I like colours that you can see and that make you feel cheerful.
“I love vibrant clear colours, I’m not very keen on bottom-of-thepond fashionable shades like taupe, or Farrow & Ball’s murky greys. I do see that they’re hugely elegant if you’re beautiful, young, slim and wearing jewellery. But when it’s dreary and everyone else is wearing black, that’s exactly when I feel you need to be in yellow.”
Leith says that her second husband, John Playfair, a retired fashion designer and manufacturer (her first husband, the South African writer Rayne Kruger, with whom she had two children, died in 2002) encourages her to be experimental with her style. And she feels proud when women over 50 tell her that she has encouraged them to have more fun with their clothes.
“I quite often say to my husband, ‘do you think this is over the top?’ and he always says ‘no’,” she laughs. “I do realise that I’m inclined to go over the top. I think it’s the South African in me.
“I have a garden terrace which is all red and orange, whereas an English garden is very pale and sophisticated, elegant mauves and pinks and gentle colours. I like them, too, but I much prefer to shout.”
She cites the Queen as her style inspiration – “she’s been into violent colour her whole life and wears neons that even I wouldn’t have the courage to wear” – and took great interest watching Theresa May’s necklaces grow bigger during her time at Number 10.
“I think Theresa May did very well [with the styling], she never overdid it,” says Leith. “If she’d worn necklaces or glasses like I wear, she’d have got ribbed. It would have been too much of a statement. I think she always does something strong without overdoing it, and I admire that.”
The only aesthetic adjustment that Leith has made as she’s getting older – aside from a cosmetic eyelid lift in her 50s to remove what she called “great drapes hanging over [her] lashes”– is to wear more flat shoes.
“I’m clumsy, I’m quite likely to fall over,” she says. “Obviously I want to be comfortable, so I don’t wear heels unless I’m on the red carpet or at some party. I have to be quite careful, realistically. I’m very old now, you know?”
Prices for the Prue by Ronit Furst range start at £180; pruebyronitfurst.com