CHARLIE CASELY-HAYFORD + ALICE CASELY-HAYFORD
‘FAMILY IS EVERYTHING TO US,’ SAYS designer Charlie Casely-Hayford. ‘Some people might think it’s too much. We lean on each other across everything. We always have done, in terms of our personal lives and professional ones.’
The Casely-Hayfords are a tight-knit, formidably talented bunch. Charlie’s younger sister Alice is Net-a-Porter’s content director, uncle Gus is the director of V&A East and mum Maria is the brand director of Casely-Hayford, the label Charlie co-founded with his late father – the legendary designer Joe – in 2009.
At the 2023 Fashion Awards, Joe Casely-Hayford was posthumously given a Special Recognition Award. ‘What he was doing was vital, it was powerful and it had a really strong impact on a lot of people. I know that because people come up to me every day, and want to express the impact that either his work, him as an individual or what he stood for has had on their lives.’ Collecting the award, Charlie said of Joe, ‘he very much believed in everyone coming up together, rather than every man for himself’. In testament to that spirit, a Joe Casely-Hayford MA scholarship has just been launched.
Charlie and Alice also live by that principle. Their success is underpinned by an elegant way of operating in the world: with humility, warmth and generosity, a ‘value system’ inherited from their parents. ‘We welcomed their education and their experience, their knowledge and their openness to treat us as equals. We just soaked up their energy and world.’ It parlays into the brand, too. Knowing that the tailoring world can be intimidating and snooty (‘we don’t roll like that’), the Casely-Hayford boutique in Marylebone – designed by Charlie’s wife, the interiors whizz Sophie Ashby – is made to ‘feel like an apartment and not an old man’s club,’ says Charlie.
There is a respect and integrity with which Charlie inhabits the CaselyHayford name and business. ‘I feel like I’m a custodian or something. I’m just holding onto it and trying to maintain it; to better it a little bit, hopefully, and pass it on,’ he says. ‘It’s bigger than me. It’s not my name, it’s a name that I’m fortunate enough to have been born into’.