SUPRIYA LELE . . DEPTFORD MARKET
Supriya Lele has been visiting Deptford market in southeast London regularly since she moved from Edinburgh to study fashion at the Royal College of Art eight years ago. ‘My boyfriend would come here. They used to have boxes and boxes of records and he’d rifle through them, so he suggested I come along for inspiration.’ Since then, the 31-year-old has unearthed no shortage of amazing pieces: ‘old military clothes, leather jackets, trench coats, doctors’ uniforms. They have great sportswear from the Nineties, too.’
Vintage garments are often the foundation of Lele’s collections, which fuse ultra-feminine, Indian-influenced drapery inspired by her heritage, with sporty and subcultural references based on her teenage years growing up in the West Midlands. Lele works those references into cool, minimalist separates overlaid with silk chiffon and neon stretch satin. It’s utility made romantic.
The best finds end up in her studio 2O minutes away in Bermondsey, where they inspire ‘a stitching detail or fabulous pocket’. A poacher’s jacket found on one of the market’s crowded rails, for example, informed the silhouette of her AW18 collection.
For AW19, she’s exploring medical uniforms: ‘There’s a tiny part of one stall that has random bits: nurses’ dresses, paramedic uniforms,’ she says. It’s a subject that also taps into Lele’s family history: ‘My grandmother was a doctor in Jabalpur,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t really the done thing for a woman to study when she was young, but she did anyway. My grandmother was really quite independent – a fiery matriarch.’
Ultimately, says Lele, what makes the market so rich a source of inspiration is the essentially random nature of it, with vintage stalls jostling for space alongside fruit-and-veg stands. As she puts it: ‘You never really know what you’ll find.’