Maureen Doherty
Fashion designer whose cult Knightsbridge boutique Egg became a favourite with the cognoscenti
MAUREEN DOHERTY, the fashion designer, who has died aged 70 after a fall, was mentored by Issey Miyake and opened the first Miyake shops in London; she went on to found the cult Knightsbridge boutique Egg, building a label-free “brand” beloved by the fashion cognoscenti.
Preferring to call herself “a developer”, rather than a designer, Maureen Doherty opened Egg in 1994 in Kinnerton Street, a Belgravia backstreet, in quirky premises converted from what was once a working dairy.
As well as clothes, customers could buy unusual objets: a Japanese tea caddy, for example, or soap manufactured in Yorkshire by the oldest soap-maker in Europe, or carefully chosen jewellery. She sought out artists too, particularly ceramicists (she had herself studied ceramics in Paris), and in 1998 gave Edmund de Waal his first show. “Back then, his pots cost £80,” she recalled in 2018 with some incredulity.
The Egg “modern ethnic” aesthetic, often inspired by workwear seen on her travels – the baggy white suit of a Rajasthani milkman, a French gardener’s jacket or the amply-cut black trousers of a Japanese monk – was less keenly priced, but promised to do wonders for the circumferentially challenged.
The theme was soft layers, volume and luxurious natural fabrics – baggy trousers worn under long wraparound skirts, loose-fitting shirts worn under jackets worn under coats – in linens, cottons, silks and cashmere. Zips were nowhere in evidence. “My clothes are about comfort. You don’t have to think about your stomach because something is tight-fitting. Or whether you need tights because your skirt is above the knees,” Maureen Doherty told The Sunday Telegraph in 2017.
Partly because they paid little heed to the body’s natural curves – or to the latest catwalk fad (one fashion writer described them as “more ‘conceptual’ than haute couture”) – her designs were ageless, timeless and pleasingly chic. They were expensive but would last for years.
Devoted customers included the actors Dame Maggie Smith, Tilda Swinton and Diane Keaton, her fellow designers Donna Karan and Giorgio Armani, the artist Bridget Riley – and Britain’s former prime minister Theresa May, who in 2017 sported a slouchy Egg red canvas coat (£450) and handframed grey cashmere sweater (£1,200) for a photoshoot with US Vogue.
Maureen Doherty was born in London on December 10 1951 to James Doherty, a structural engineer, and his wife Elizabeth. She claimed that, being the youngest of three daughters, it was not until her 18th birthday that she wore anything that was not a hand-me-down or homemade.
In her teens Maureen studied pattern cutting at the London College for the Garment Trades (now the London College of Fashion), and, hoping to be a film costume designer, temped as a runner for David Lean. In 1970 she met the businessman and designer Eric Shemilt with whom she opened the first Elle shop on Sloane Square and later a shop dedicated to Fiorucci designs.
It was on a buying trip to Paris that she first saw a collection by the Japanese designer Issey Miyake: “It made the hairs on my arm stand up. I just thought, this man is a genius.” They began a long association, interrupted in 1982 while Maureen Doherty decamped to India for a year. Miyake persuaded her to run his operations in Europe and she worked on exhibitions, on special projects such as ballet costumes, and helped him to create his perfume – L’eau D’issey. She also set up three London stores, hiring the architect David Chipperfield to create the interior of the flagship Issey Miyake store in Sloane Street.
Maureen Doherty left Miyake in 1985 and for a few years had her own tiny shop in Paris. Back in London in 1992, she became head of design for Jigsaw before opening Egg at No 36, Kinnerton Street, with her business partner Asha Sarabhai. A second Egg shop was opened later across the road.
Maureen Doherty never had an interest in cultivating a mass market. Before the internet, she would send loyal customers photographs of seasonal arrivals she thought might be of interest. Yet Egg had a considerable influence, inspiring other retailers to mix and match, setting collections of clothes amid eclectic displays of furniture, artwork, pottery and books.
“The philosophy of Egg is, for me, to treat a shop like life,” she said on her website. “Real life, not shows with perfume that smells of accountants and exclusivity deals, but freedom and laughter...”
For many years Maureen Doherty led an itinerant life, staying in hotels, with friends, or with her daughter in Paris. But in 2017 she bought a small, two-storey former stable adjoining the original Egg store and enlisted the architect Jonathan Tuckey to turn it into a home.
Maureen Doherty’s marriage to Brian Walker, a buyer for Jaeger, was dissolved. Their daughter survives her.