Bare-faced cheek KILDARE at VILLAGE
Stylist Tallulah Harlech goes ‘pantless’ to launch the latest collection at the outlet centre
TALLULAH Harlech is a slasher — not in the horror movie sense but in career terms. The daughter of fashion stylist Amanda Harlech who collaborated with John Galliano both at his label and Dior, and then later with Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel and Fendi, it is not surprising that she has followed her mother into a career in fashion.
Or should that be careers — the multi-talented Tallulah has worked as an actor, model, stylist, and fashion journalist for Vanity Fair and Vogue. She has definitely inherited her mother’s exquisite eye for a striking look as shown in her styling of the recent spring summer showcase for Kildare Village.
The show was a sleek affair with a focus on enduring pieces like
‘The village now stocks new season looks too’
sharp tailoring and striking statement dresses. It featured looks from Glenn Martens at Diesel, French favourites, Claudie Pierlot, Maje and Sandro, knitwear brand Missoni, and Irish designers, Paul Costelloe, Louise Kennedy, and Sinead Keary. For the first time, Kildare Village now stocks current season looks as well as previous season stock.
Harlech indulged in what she christened, ‘a pantless extravaganza’ for the ‘leggy’ fashion event by showing tailored blazers, bomber jackets and gilets without any garments on the bottom half.
Her inspiration was the infamous Miu Miu show which featured models wearing prim twinsets paired with sequined knickers over sheer tights. While the ‘pantless’ look has since appeared on numerous red carpets this was its Irish debut. It certainly made the audience sit up and pay attention on a chilly spring day.
The spare styling also reflects Harlech’s passion for minimalism, she loves pared back looks and simple clean silhouettes. She says her love of minimalism has been influenced by the designer Karl Lagerfeld, who led her aged 11, onto the catwalk to share his bow at the end of a Chanel couture show. It was just one incident in an amazing childhood which included being taken to John Galliano shows as a baby, hanging out backstage with the Supermodels in Paris and holidaying in style with Karl Lagerfeld in the South of France.
Tallulah says, ‘So, obviously being kids, I didn’t even really know the gravity of that and kind of amazingly and quite frankly I had a very kind of countryside 101 existence. And although fantastic people came to stay, and I was at fashion shows when I was teeny tiny. I guess the industry wasn’t like it is today. It was much more organic in that time and of course Ma always held her absolute anchor in the countryside with her horses, with her garden, with the seasonal veg in the polytunnel.’
Because of her mother’s parallel life focusing on her ‘compost rotation’ and seasonal flowers and bulbs, Tallulah saw that ‘there’s this very anti-fashion way of life that I can always go back to that was always instilled in me.’
Despite her starry childhood and gracing the Chanel catwalk at a tender age, Harlech is warm, funny, and self-deprecating. She confesses that her favourite thing about going to the fashion shows was getting to hang out with the ultimate cool girls, the models.
She admits: ‘My favourite thing … was being backstage with the models of the time having their hair and make-up done and how they were hanging out and reading books and talking to each other and I was just so in love with the models — Devon Aoki, Trish Goff, Maggie Rizer, Kate Moss and Nomi Campbell. Oh my God, I loved them. … I just wanted to hang out with the models — that was the best.’
Tallulah has an affection for Ireland because her late father, Francis Ormsby-Gore, 6th Baron Harlech had friends here, and also because of her friendship with London based Irish designer, Michael Stewart of Standing Ground.
Harlech has styled many of his
‘Fashion is my mainstay and my beating heart’
fashion shows and is a vocal champion of the Clare man who is currently short-listed for the LVMH Prize for Young Designers. (Stewart was sponsored by Kildare Village to complete his MA at the Royal College of Art.)
When asked about what if takes to succeed at an international level today in fashion she says, ‘You just have to have a really good point of view – you really have to have the tenacity to keep going and that rigour and that point of view’.
She says keeping a brand going as a small independent designer is a ‘very, very, very rare capability’ but that her ‘fingers are crossed’ for Stewart’s success. She continues, ‘I do believe he and Standing Ground are going to win and LVMH prize, one of them.’ She sees Stewart’s success as part of Ireland’s current creative moment observing, ‘It’s so interesting – what’s in the water? What’s going on? There’s definitely something up.’
Harlech’s own diary is very full as she is about to launch a brand of her own (she won’t divulge the details just yet) and she is also getting married.
She does affirm she will continue to keep a foot in the countryside while working in fashion and sees the future as ‘really exciting’. For now, for her, ‘Fashion is probably my mainstay and my beating heart.’
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