Ditch the ‘lazy’ lockdown look, urges designer

Favourite of Duchess says it is time to slip out of the loungewear and learn how to dress smartly again

BRITAIN has become a badly-dressed nation after two years of lockdown laziness and needs to smarten up, according to a leading fashion designer.

Jenny Packham, whose red carpet dresses are favoured by the Duchess of Cambridge and Kate Winslet, said it was time to ditch the loungewear.

“I actually think, as a nation, we dress quite poorly at the moment. It’s amazing,” she said.

“My pet hate during the pandemic was that people tucked their jumpers into leggings,” Ms Packham said during an appearance at the Hay Festival. Listing UGG boots and flip-flops among the nation’s sartorial crimes, she said: “I don’t think the pandemic helped fashion much. We all got into this loungewear, and it is really time to get out of it now.

“I see a lot of people walking along the road in the morning and I think, ‘Why did you think that top went with those trousers?’ I’m very understanding of what people can afford. But I don’t go along with that.

“There are amazing charity shops everywhere. Everyone can look smart.

“But it is laziness. I really don’t understand this not caring about it. It just reflects an inner feeling that maybe worries me.”

Ms Packham was being interviewed by her brother, the wildlife presenter Chris Packham.

She recalled that their father was always smartly dressed: “I’d pop round and he wouldn’t even know we were coming, but he’d have a tie on.

“He was very smart, and it mattered.

It is about being smart and ready for whatever is coming your way.” Sales of loungewear soared last year as people continued to work from home.

John Lewis said at the end of last year that lockdown had “left a permanent mark on how we shop, live and look”, and the “work-life balance has shifted towards life”.

Ms Packham was appearing at Hay in Powys to promote her book How To Make A Dress: Adventures in the Art of Style. While British people remain wedded to casualwear during the daytime, Ms Packham said her eveningwear sales were picking up.

The pandemic was “obviously a terrible time for us – nobody wanted eveningwear and nobody wanted bridalwear. I don’t know how we go through it”.

But she added: “What we are seeing now is a real boom time. You come out of a period like that and everybody wants to dress up and celebrate being together.

“The boom is that everybody is coming to us for eveningwear because they don’t want to wear what they have got in their wardrobe. They want something new now.”

The designer dressed the Duchess of Cambridge in a gold cape dress for the premiere of the Bond film No Time To Die last year.

However, she said it remained a struggle to dress Hollywood stars, who often strike deals with fashion houses such as Gucci or Chanel. “At the moment it is very difficult, because at certain points brands are throwing a lot of money – a lot of the actresses that you see are getting paid, and their stylists are getting paid.

“Companies like us don’t pay people. I’ve never paid anyone to wear one of my dresses. I’ve never been able to afford it,” she said.

Stars who have worn Packham’s designs include Kate Winslet and Dame Helen Mirren.

“It has taken a decade of sartorial social climbing to even begin to dress the world’s leading ladies,” Ms Packham said.

“The only way to the top has been to edge our loans away from British TV stars in order to attract the majors: Hollywood actresses such as Angelina Jolie, Emily Blunt and Taylor Swift. This strategic move has sent us into the wilderness for a few years; to be rediscovered we needed to be forgotten.”