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WHA T KATE WORE NEXT
Meet the founder of Eponine, the Duchess’s go-ot barnd
Seeing Kate in my designs was a shock. I didn’t know she had bought anything
The Kate Effect – those seismic sartorial aftershocks that follow whenever the Duchess of Cambridge appears in a new label, be it high street or designer, recycled or couture – is a sales-boosting phenomenon pored over by the press (guilty as charged) and coveted by fashion brands around the globe. While it helps LK Bennett sell nude wedges, Reiss to open a few more stores Stateside and Jenny Packham to shift sequins, the real megawatt power of the Kate Effect is in catapulting under-the-radar brands into the international spotlight. The moment of fame may be fleeting, but for founders of small fashion businesses it has the potential to make fairy tales come true.
Started two years ago, Eponine, a bespoke dressmaking business, was, until March this year, virtually unheard of by anyone in or outside the fashion world. Run from a family home in Kensington, West London, by Jet Shenkman – a 55-year-old former personal fashion stylist and part-time bereavement counsellor – the label had relied largely upon word of mouth to attract clients until Kate, and/or her team of secret squirrel assistants, somehow happened upon it. Kate then wore a Jackie O-style skirt suit by Eponine to visit a youth-mentoring project in East London and suddenly – somewhere between the duchess emerging from her car and disappearing into a building – all eyes and camera lenses were trained on this tiny British brand.
‘One moment everything is normal, the next the phone is ringing every five seconds,’ says Jet, still wide-eyed at the memory and the tidal wave of interest that ensued. ‘I was shocked. I had no idea Kate had bought anything. I rang my PR about ten minutes after it had happened [the phones started ringing even before Jet had seen the images of Kate online] saying, “Come over! I can’t cope!” We had one woman from Texas who kept calling and calling, we were getting emails by the hundreds and Twitter was going mad.’ She still isn’t sure how Kate knew of Eponine: ‘Word of mouth, I think – it is just amazing.’
And this is completely plausible, first because Jet lives (with her husband and three of her four grown-up children) near the duchess’s Kensington Palace home, and many of her clients are local and very well connected, but also because Jet’s designs – in particular her dresses, in colourful African prints – are the sort of thing you might cross the room at a party to enquire after. (Something I experienced when I wore a gold and green Eponine outfit to Royal Ascot this year and was chased by fellow race-goers wanting to know where it was from.)
In June, Princess Eugenie wore a red Eponine dress for the Queen’s 90th birthday service at St Paul’s Cathedral, stealing Kate’s fashion thunder. ‘Royal style wars,’ declared MailOnline at the time – Eugenie had out-dressed Kate, who was playing it safe in Catherine Walker, and, it was deemed, had been outshone only by up-and-coming fashion darling Lady Amelia Windsor in black Chanel.
We are discussing the Kate Effect but evidently, I say to Jet, there is something of an Eponine effect, too. ‘You are too kind,’ she says. ‘When I watched the news and saw Eugenie in that dress it was another jumping-up-and-down-in-front-of-the-telly moment. One of the most wonderful things about Kate and Eugenie wearing my pieces is that I am now getting a more diverse age of customer, which was always my hope.’
Her dresses are, on the whole, ageless: most take that classic nipped-in 50s shape, which looks good on all and rarely, if ever, goes out of fashion. ‘The idea has never been to be on trend, it is to be colourful and distinctive, different and exclusive,’ says Jet. ‘It’s not following a certain style. If it is anything at all, it’s just me!’
Jet’s personal style has always been sought after. Before launching
The most ageing thing you can do is be too matchy with your style
Eponine, she’d worked as a personal stylist in Tokyo, where the family lived for two long stints in the 80s and 90s, returning to London in between, and also in Hong Kong during the early noughties. Originally from Holland, Jet was working as a secretary for the Dutch Embassy in London when, at 21, she was transferred to Tokyo. Within months she had met her British husband, Greg, who was working as an investment banker there. ‘The day after he proposed I resigned,’ she says, lifting her hands in mock shame. It doesn’t sound like something many women would get away with today. ‘I know! It’s funny, but I hated my job so much and I was probably the world’s worst secretary, so I said, “That’s it, I am no longer working.”’
Instead Jet carved out a niche for herself by advising wealthy Japanese women what to wear. ‘I was called a “Western style specialist” – I’ve no idea where that name came from,’ she says. ‘It is hilarious, looking back – my clients would take me to fashion shows and I’d advise them on what to buy. It was a bit Trinny and Susannah. I would teach them that you don’t have to buy a whole look from Gucci or Dior, instead you can mix things up to create your own distinct style.’
This has always been Jet’s fashion mantra. ‘To me, the most ageing thing you can do is be too matchy,’ she says. ‘I’m not afraid of colour clashing, or mixing smart with casual, old with new. I just look at my wardrobe and wear what I want to wear.’
In addition to wearing colourful patterned dresses most days, which she teams with vintage cashmere cardigans (‘I daren’t say where I buy them as the secret will be out!’) and an artfully tied headscarf (‘They hide my hair, which, since I started getting hot flushes, has got thinner’), Jet nearly always wears trainers. ‘I first started wearing Converse All Stars 20 years ago when very few women were buying them, but now everybody is! It’s the same with Stan Smiths, so I had to find something else.’ When we meet she is in a green suede pair by Golden Goose, but her current favourites are from a collaboration between Rihanna and Puma.
She may be in her mid-50s but she is far from middle-aged. Rihanna trainers are a case in point, but so is the fact that she launched a business at an age when many others start dreaming of retirement. ‘I think age should be wiped away, it isn’t relevant,’ she says forcefully. ‘For me, it was the right time. I had to mature. Working on a collection is very personal and when you are older you have the strength to think, “Well, if someone doesn’t like it, that’s OK.” I think many women my age have untapped talents,’ she says. ‘After your children grow up there is this “What now?” feeling, and if I can inspire just one other person to do what I have done then I’d take huge pleasure from that.’
She started Eponine, which she and her children named after the character in Les Misérables (‘She is great – fearless but sensitive’), on the encouragement of friends, after people regularly admired her colourful, youthful style and the vintage gems she’d find at London’s Portobello Road. Like many people brave enough to launch a business, Jet has had invaluable support from her family, whom she is very close to. It was the loss of her
brother-in-law’s daughter to depression aged just 21 that led to Jet training as a bereavement counsellor, something she continues to do alongside Eponine. ‘The fashion side can sometimes seem fluffy; it’s good to balance it with more serious stuff,’ she says of her twin careers. ‘I also believe that when something bad happens like that, you have to find something good to come out of it.’
Her husband Greg helped Jet with an initial investment to buy materials and hire a trained fashion designer to assist with the technical aspect of dressmaking – though she sources fabrics and develops ideas for styles, she is not a trained seamstress, so a small team of skilled employees has been essential. Her children – Emma, 28, Nina, 26, both actresses, Josephine, 24, a talent agent, and Christopher, 22, who is at university – are now well used to the living room being taken over by rails of dresses, and the basement becoming sewing studios for her team. The home is a large townhouse on a very smart street, but running a business from home does change the domestic dynamics. ‘Eponine has invaded everyone’s space. No one can come downstairs in their pyjamas any more in case I have clients. But they want this to work for me, so they put up with it.’
The intimate, made-to-measure and quite literally in-house service that Jet provides is the antithesis of popping into Zara in the nearby Westfield shopping centre and grabbing a dress without even trying it on. All Eponine pieces are made-to-order, though not all are made-to-measure (which means not all customers will meet Jet to be fitted – hence the duchess avoiding detection). But the couture element, acting as a traditional dressmaker in an otherwise fast-fashion world, is what gives Eponine an edge, even over more high-end competitors. ‘Our job when we fit a dress is to understand a woman’s shape and listen to her concerns. People say, “I don’t have a waist” – well, we can find you a waist,’ she says. ‘I’m very much against the “big sack” look. And sometimes I feel the whole concept of femininity is disappearing, so we try to make dressing easier. For example, in the summer we can make dresses longer for when people don’t like showing too much leg. Or we can cover arms carefully – lots of women hate that part of their body.’ There is, of course, a price tag to all this bespoke attention – the made-to-measure service starts at £595, while couture dresses, for which you ideally need to visit Jet for measuring and fitting, cost upwards of £1,100. And you can guess that Jet’s compassionate, counsellor side will manifest itself in her fitting sessions with clients – ‘You do get to know people very well,’ she acknowledges – and in a nice touch, a little metal medal sewn on to offcuts of fabric is included with every dress. ‘It is just a little thing I thought up. It’s known by Catholics as the Miraculous Medal and it promises protection and blessings to anyone who wears it. One of my clients emailed me and said she had put it in her bag and it will be there for ever.’
I wonder what Kate did with hers? Jet laughs. ‘Do you know the nicest thing to come out of all this? That it will be a wonderful story to tell my grandchildren. I think, “Goodness, how amazing will that be?”’
eponinelondon.com
People say, ‘I don’t have a waist’ – well, we can find you a waist