‘It’s hard being an older woman at work’
Twelve months after Jane Shepherdson quit as Whistles CEO to take an ‘adult gap year’, Kate Finnigan hears what happened next
During a weekend in Margate this summer, Jane Shepherdson – the former CEO of Whistles – was sitting in a garden with her long-time friend, Jane Kellock. They were doing what they always do whenever they get together.
“We were banging on about fashion,” recalls Shepherdson. “And one of our husbands looked at us and said, ‘You two have got a lot of opinions. You should do a podcast.’”
If there’s anyone qualified to bang on about the state of fashion today, it’s Jane Shepherdson. The 57-year-old businesswoman, who received a CBE in 2014, has been at the forefront of retail, and what British women really want to wear, for three decades. Rising from buyer to brand director at Topshop – where she met Kellock, then a designer, who now runs her own fashion consultancy, Unique Style Platform (uniquestyleplatform.com) – she took the previously teenage high street brand onto the catwalk and into the pages of Vogue. After she quit in 2007, Shepherdson rehabilitated the more grown-up womenswear brand, Whistles, until 2016, when she stepped down to take an “adult gap year”, touring America with her husband.
The podcast is the first public thing she has done since her return, and it’s a refreshing dive back into the world of fashion – although, tellingly, it’s called Out of Fashion, a reference to an industry that is built entirely around the idea of being “in”.
“People can feel a bit ground down by fashion and a bit excluded,” says Kellock, who is every bit as talkative, informed and opinionated as her podcast partner. “There’s so much pressure. But it shouldn’t be about that. It should be about feeling good about yourself and having fun.”
Today they’re at Kellock’s cool, plywood office space in Hackney, having just recorded the third episode. Each one serves up a loosely scripted discussion that sashays through what they’re wearing, what they’ve been watching (Killing Eve was a biggie for both of them), the books they’re reading and any exhibitions they’ve seen – as well as tackling ideas about careers and the big issues of the moment – sustainability is a topic that keeps resurfacing.
The Janes are an excellent doubleact that make for compelling listening. They are particularly good on the world of work, having both made significant changes in their fifties. Kellock, 55, only set up her own business five years ago. “I found it hard working for men who didn’t want to listen to me,” she says. “That’s what’s wrong with the workplace for older women. I do the same things my children do – I look at Instagram, I go out, but I’ve also got the experience. But, so often, that gets no respect.”
Shepherdson is equally candid about what it feels like to walk away from a high-powered job. “The downside of freedom is that no one gives a s--- what you do, and that’s really hard to get used to.”
Although both are equally interested in the power of image, they dress very differently. When we meet, Shepherdson is minimalist in black Celine trousers, a white shirt, white trainers and a Whistles sheepskin jacket; Kellock is grown-up art-school in a black sweatshirt over a black floral dress and hiking boots from Grenson, with punky pink socks peeking out. They’re the embodiment of what they discuss on the podcast – self-expression and what Shepherdson calls “the transformative power of clothes”.
“I just love it,” she says with an infectious enthusiasm that underlines just how she got us all spending a fortune in her stores. “We were just talking about this Acne trench coat I’ve been lusting after. I have picture of what I’ll be like when I have it, and how I’ll be a different person. Of course, I won’t be. I’ll be exactly the same but with a lovely coat. But even now I still believe it.”
They agree that the sheer amount of stuff now available on the high street makes it difficult to navigate. “Style very much depends on your confidence level,” says Shepherdson. “If you know where to look you can buy from lots of different brands easily. But if you lack confidence it’s very difficult because you have to decide ‘what is my style? Am I a Mint Velvet or a Cos?’”
“In the past you knew how to dress at a certain age because you had certain shops that you went to at that age, but we don’t shop like that now,” adds Kellock. “People lose confidence in their own style, particularly as they get older, and that’s a real shame. There’s a sense in fashion that you can get it right or wrong, when in fact, you just need to be yourself.”
The podcast isn’t an ode to shopping, though. More often, it’s the opposite. Both Janes are deeply worried about the damaging effects it is having on the world.
“It’s the biggest problem for fashion right now,” says Shepherdson. “For this industry to be the number two polluter in the world? It’s really shocking.”
Not that she hasn’t long been aware of the issue – in 2007, she became a non-executive director of the ethical clothing brand, People
Tree, and has also worked with Oxfam to make their shops more enticing for consumers. She believes that Fashion’s Dirty Secret, the BBC Three documentary presented by Stacey Dooley, which aired this month and revealed how the industry has polluted the Citarum river in Indonesia, has been “a game-changer” in raising awareness. “I think it’s really caused people to question what they’re doing,” she says. “Nobody who saw that could not want the industry to change.”
She feels that ethical and sustainable design is now improving. “What’s annoyed me in the past is that I’ve tried to seek out ethical brands where the design is credible, and it’s been really hard,” adds Shepherdson.
“So I’m now feeling like the next step for me is doing an ethical brand, or curating a website of those kind of brands, and trying to show that great design can be sustainable and ethical – but it’s not easy.”
“It’s a mindset, too,” adds Kellock. “As I used to say to my daughter: shopping is not a hobby. We need to find our gratification in other things.”
“We’re also very hypocritical,” adds Shepherdson, quickly, “because we are in the fashion industry.”
Before her midlife “gap year”, Shepherdson got rid of most of her clothing, except for her most expensive and useful pieces by the likes of Prada and Celine, which she put into storage. While she was away, the former queen of the high street bought only two items – a striped top and a pair of shorts. “It was so liberating!” she exclaims. “We were in the countryside, we were canoeing and hiking; why do you need fashion?”
It’s a big question. Maybe they can tackle that one in the next episode.