Charles nets fashion guru to become his style counsel
LIFE Is Short star Stephen Merchant, who towers over fellow comedians at 6ft 7in, is fed up with tall people being the butt of jokes. ‘I’m the same height as footballer, now TV star, Peter Crouch,’ he says. ‘He’s a trim, athletic guy, but he was mocked.’ Merchant, who made his name writing The Office with Ricky Gervais, adds: ‘I’m never going to have giant muscles — I don’t have the DNA for it. Imagine how many calories I would have to take in to have Popeye-style muscles? It wouldn’t make sense.’
DAPPER Prince Charles has often appeared on ‘bestdressed’ lists over the years, but even his admirers were surprised when he launched a fashion line last year.
That 18-piece luxury capsule collection could, though, represent just the start of his sartorial ambitions as, I can reveal, he’s recruited one of the fashion world’s biggest figures to work for him.
he’s appointed Federico Marchetti, who created online fashion giant
Yoox, which became the largest e-commerce fashion company in the world after buying net-A-Porter in 2015.
Marchetti, 52, will be a director of the heir to the throne’s company A.G. Carrick, which has sold everything from £60 stuffed corgi toys to £65 cushions emblazoned with the motto God Save The Queen via his highgrove shops and websites.
‘Federico’s guidance will be invaluable,’ a courtier tells me. ‘his record speaks for itself and he will help increase revenue at the company and make it more professional.’
Fellow directors at A.G. Carrick include Michael Fawcett, Charles’s controversial former valet, who has resigned temporarily as chief executive of his charity empire, the Prince’s Foundation, while an investigation is carried out into the ‘cash for favours’ scandal.
A.G. Carrick, which is named after the pseudonym the Prince uses to sign his watercolours, had a turnover of £4.6 million last year.
The first royal fashion collaboration was unveiled at Dumfries house, the 18th-century Palladian stately home in Ayrshire which he saved for the nation. On the project, Charles partnered with the Yoox net-a-Porter group, which Marchetti ran before handing it over to a new boss this year.
Of his own sense of style, Charles has said: ‘I am rather like a stopped clock in terms of fashion. I seem to come into vogue about once every 25 years or so.’