The luxe children’s label that mums can wear, too
The paint colour on Eva Karayiannis’s sitting-room walls is 292c, a perfect fawn from Papers and Paints, and the scented soaps in her downstairs bathroom are mini-tablets of emerald green through to bubblegum pink, from the Conran Shop, where they sell a Pantone-worthy array of colours.
I know this because Karayiannis is a sharer of style tips, which is just as well, since over the years she has been repeatedly asked for her secrets.
This generosity has been the basis of her design career – first as the force behind Caramel, the chicchi childrenswear label she launched in the Nineties, when her own daughters were tiny, and lately, as the creator of Caramel for grown-ups.
The adult model, isn’t a scaled-up version of the original tiny tots styles, she insists. Good. That would be twee and rather creepy.
However, Caramel for grown-ups is steeped in the muted colour palette that made her children’s line so distinctive (cast back two decades, when most children’s clothes were in varying shades of bilious). It relies, too, on the basic menu of tweeds, cashmeres, linens and muslin that she always favoured for children, but with adult flavours such as brocade and Lurex, all conceived to be worn in eclectic layers, all year round. That explains, partially, its appeal to the fashionista set – a green brocade dress, a tweed skirt (Miss Marple-ish in spirit, but altogether sexier and slinkier in execution) and a frill-fronted organdy midi-dress are proving favourites this autumn. Another attraction is its idiosyncratic refinement. The fabrics are clearly high quality, but unless you’re familiar with the collection, it’s difficult to identify where the clothes come from, and that chimes with a growing desire among discerning shoppers to move away from ubiquitous, overexposed status pieces. Karayiannis’s own style is quietly convention-breaking without being forced or gimmicky. A strappy Lurex camisole in autumn? Why not? When you’re layering it under V-neck sweaters, which have been designed to slide slightly off one shoulder, it’s the perfect day-to-evening combination. “I like to wear something slightly unexpected, and I rarely change to go out at night, so I build contrasting layers that make an outfit work in any situation,” she explains. Comfort is key in the Caramel world, which is why she favours drawstring waists with pretty velvet ribbons and lightweight fabrics. “I used to love Céline and Marni, but their fabrics have got heavier and heavier, which look very expensive and couture-y but aren’t very nice to wear.”
The fact that Karayiannis has no formal design training and relies on personal experience and instinct seems to help, rather than hinder.
“When my daughters reached their early twenties, I started noticing how differently they think about fashion from the way I did,” she says. “They love it just as much, but they’d be hard-pushed to name 10 big designers. They’re more interested in finding beautiful clothes that don’t come from big labels. That made me realise you don’t necessarily have to have an orthodox fashion training to design.”
Bullseye on that front. Her CV is anything but orthodox. A Greek Cypriot – her father was a politician – she was sent to boarding school in Athens at the age of eight, shortly after the 1974 war. She studied law in Greece, escaped to London to study art at Sotheby’s, and developed an impressively pernickety shopping habit that took her all over the world. “At that time, there was so much you couldn’t buy in London,” she recalls.
It was while she was sitting in Cova, the coffee and cake institution on Milan’s Via Montenapoleone (she was on a shopping trip to Prada, which didn’t have a UK store at the time), that she decided to open a Cova-inspired café in London (there were no coffee chains either), but with add-on products. She took herself to Inner Mongolia to source cashmere, Scotland for Harris tweeds, Italy for linen, Paris for plates and glass teapots from Astier de Villatte, Mackintosh for miniature duffel coats, all of which she stocked in a tiny 30ft square shop in Brompton Cross… The coffee part of the equation was eventually jettisoned, and her own line of Caramel babywear was introduced. The childrenswear now sells in 110 shops from London to New York, Moscow and Japan – and is about to launch in Harrods. Over the years, it has exerted a stealth influence over childrenswear, making it both more luxurious and less gaudy. When she first launched a range of cashmere baby clothes, many mothers were bemused at the notion of anything so extravagant. Not someone to let the semantics of pricing get in the way of aesthetics, Karayiannis kept the mark-ups so small that she barely made any profit. “I just wanted to sell beautiful things,” she shrugs. It’s the same impetus that drives the grown-up clothes. “It’s not that this is a vanity project,” she points out, “but I’m happy for it to remain small and niche.” With that she’s off to sort out her six-year-old son’s malodorous fish tank. Turns out a Lurex cami is ideal for that job, too.