The woman with designs on your knickers
The co-founder of Agent Provocateur is back with a new label – and a new definition of sexy, Fiona Golfar reports
One can certainly learn a lot from one’s children. Serena Rees, the whip-smart, smoky-eyed, raven-haired co-founder of infamous lingerie brand Agent Provocateur had only to observe her own daughter, the effervescent 21-year-old model Cora, her extended family of stepsons and their collective of cool friends to come up with the idea for her new venture, Les Girls Les Boys (LGLB). A unisex underwear and streetwear brand, it launched last year and – just as she did with Agent Provocateur 25 years ago – Rees has intuitively captured the mood of the times.
“I came up with the idea for the collection a couple of years ago,” says Rees, pouring us green tea from a pale blue china tea service bought from Claridges Hotel. “I wasn’t really planning on getting back into the business, but I was inspired by all the kids that have been growing up around me, hanging out in my kitchen.” You could say it’s become a family affair, as Cora attests: “my good friends are all involved,” she says. “They photograph it, model it and one even does the make-up. It’s exciting having a brand so close to home that we care about and can contribute our ideas to.”
The idea is pairing lingerie – teeny baby pink lacy bras, high-waisted ribbed jersey knickers
– with sweatpants and hoodies, imbuing it with a street cool. Most recently Rees has added swimwear to the offer. Again it has a fresh fun Eighties Flashdance vibe: high-sided swimsuits with tiny spaghetti straps worn with wide cropped tees. It’s not always necessary to wear it on the beach; layered under a pair of shorts, the aubergine velvet bikini is set to be a festival favourite. Having run Agent Provocateur with her ex-husband Joseph Corré, son of Vivienne Westwood, since 1994 (following the couple’s divorce, the company was sold in 2007 for £60million), Rees knows her undies.
The message Rees and Corre sent out in the Nineties was powerful and it worked. “Sex kittens, sex bombs, secretaries, naughty girls,” were all terms used to describe the brand. Les Girls Les Boys couldn’t be more different. The easy-to-wear brand has launched at a time when streetwear is everywhere, and in the light of the #Metoo and Time’s Up movements, traditional notions of “sexy” seem woefully outdated. The recent sales figures for Victoria’s Secret show a 5 per cent decline, and the brand’s hyper-sexualised message has never seemed more out of step with today’s cultural reality.
Nor do you have to be a waif to enjoy it: the well-curated website and engaging Instagram account show models who look like they live in the real world. Gender fluidity is also something the brand embraces. “It seems so normal to these guys to share everything – opinions, clothes, feelings. People complain about this generation being on their phones all the time but I also see that it lets them be so immediate with each other,” says Rees. “It’s a sexually comfortable revolution.”
We are chatting on a deep blue velvet sofa in an enormous sitting room in the vast Georgian house in Marylebone that Rees shares with her long-term boyfriend Paul Simonon, bassist of The Clash. Think YBA – art dealer Jay Jopling lives next door – meets rock’n’roll style. Next to us, above the Robert Adams fireplace, “LOVE” is spelt out in red roses. In the adjoining open-plan kitchen, where two jungle paintings by Simonon flank a large window that overlooks a verdant internal courtyard, Cora – the original fit model for the brand – is wearing top-to-toe LGLB, black sweatpants and hoodie with a snake lace bra, and making herself a very professional-looking mushroom and feta omelette for lunch.
The collection has proved to be an immediate hit not only with the kids Serena Rees so keenly observes, but also their parents too, which is clearly down to the fact that Rees has never lost her innate cool factor. At 50 she still has that straight talking toughness you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of, and nor is she the kind of woman I would ever expect to see in a pair of sweatpants, even if she did design them. She likes to dress up. Today she’s wearing a pair of high-waisted Vivienne Westwood jeans, cone-heeled ankle boots and a black star-print pyjama jacket by LGLB, her glossy black hair is loose and immaculately waved. But just to show that her new brand has multi-generational appeal, she gives me a sneaky flash of the pretty black lace bra she’s wearing from the spring/summer collection. And tells me that she’s wearing the matching briefs – “never a thong, if you don’t mind!” – and obligingly stands up to demonstrate that there is no knicker line cutting into her bum.
Serena and Cora are very similar – friendly, gossipy, funny and clearly very close. They also look ridiculously alike. Despite its size, the house is warm and inviting: a couple of English toy terriers are padding around. Downstairs there is a warren of rooms currently being used as brand HQ. Serena and Paul are known for throwing fabulous parties, and Cora’s friends – including Rafferty and Iris Law, models Montell Martin and Daisy Maybe – are an integral part of the mix. “My friends and I love fashion,” Cora adds, “and they love what Mum is doing. It’s kind of understated-cool-sexy. This brand offers me and my friends of both sexes something which we can all interpret in our own way, and that’s how we like it.”
If time really is up for oldfashioned definitions of what is sexy, Les Girls Les Boys might just be the dress code of the future. Serena Rees strikes gold again.