Meet the Author
How To Make A Dress, Ebury, £22
She has dressed the world’s most glamorous mums, from the Duchess of Cambridge to Hollywood star Angelina Jolie. Now fashion designer Jenny Packham is sharing her life in fashion with all those women who, on this Mothering Sunday in lockdown, want to add a little sparkle to their lives.
The designer – whose 56th birthday coincides with the launch of her memoir How To Make A Dress – is the creative genius behind Sandra Bullock’s soft pink tulle at the 2011 Golden Globes; Kate Winslet’s black number for the Titanic 3D premiere in 2012; and the stunning coral dress worn by Caterina Murino, the Bond girl in Casino Royale.
Packham, whose clients also include Taylor Swift and Adele reveals that looking good is paramount even in lockdown and lounge-wear is a no-go.
“I’m not enjoying it,” says the London-based designer.“i like to feel quite smart. I do dress up for work every day. I don’t love loungewear or casual dressing.”
And it seems other women agree. The online business she runs with her husband Mathew Anderson is doing well despite the pandemic.“i’ve been incredibly surprised at the sales we have done,” she says.
She first fell in love with costume design visiting a museum on a family holiday in Scotland. The daughter of a marine engineer and a legal secretary mother who made her own clothes, she was also mesmerised by the costumes worn by Anne Boleyn (Geneviève Bujold) in the 1969 film Anne Of The Thousand Days. Jean Harlow and Marilyn Monroe provided early inspiration too.
She even designed shirts for her older brother, the naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham, in his early days of The Really Wild Show. He still has them. She reveals:“we’ve always been there for each other, spurring each other on.”
The support of her family has buoyed her over three decades in the business in which she says she suffered burn out after a rash of shows in New York. And she has had encountered bad reviews.
She says:“creative people are sensitive people and I wouldn’t like to have a thick skin. That would be detrimental to my creativity. You need to decide which bits are valid.”
In the book she writes acerbic fantasy letters to her detractors, detailing the sort of things she wanted to say but never did.
She married Anderson – her partner of 30 years and with who she has two grown-up daughters – five years ago. She designed her own wedding dress, a lacy dove grey number.
Why did they leave it so long?
“We were just too busy. We started the business when I was 23 and Mathew was 25, and the first 10 years were pretty hardgoing. Then we had kids.”
Two years ago they broke up for four months, which she puts down to the stress of the business.“the pressures of our little world had caused cracks in our relationship and we were lost,” she writes in the book. “We just made that extra effort and I’m very pleased we did. We are very happy. Our relationship is much better now.”
She’s looking forward to the return of red carpet events and believes people will still want to shop for clothes in stores in the future. She tells P.S:“THE last item of clothing I bought was a pair of Missoni espadrilles in the sale – they are zig-zag, black, red, orange and yellow. I’m thinking about brighter days… and I’m thinking,‘i’m going to wear those this summer’.”