Monday, 16 November 2009

No wonder Luella went bust. British fashion is too snobby by half!


Does my wardrobe contain anything by Luella Bartley? One of the bags she designed for Mulberry back in 2003, perhaps? No. Too many pockets and fiddly bits.

One of her own Gisele bags? No. Far too expensive. A trouser suit covered in the alphabet? Oh dear God no.

Personally, I have always found the designer, who announced last week that her label has ceased trading, to epitomise the worst of British fashion.

Disproportionately huge amounts of praise from the fashion press, legions of celebrity followers, but very little real wearability.

After studying fashion at St Martins, Luella Bartley worked first in the fashion departments of the London Evening Standard and Vogue before she left, on a drunken dare, to set up her own label.

Her first collection, for spring/summer 2000, was a British-inspired collection entitled Daddy, I Want A Pony and was shown at her friend's flat; her model mates gave their services free of charge.

The fashion press adored her take on the English eccentric: floral sprigged frocks and slimline mod suits, all with a hint of tomboyish punk.

They loved her rock-chick cool, her messy blonde hair, her gaggle of photogenic children and photographer husband. And then it all went horribly wrong.

Last Wednesday, Luella Bartley Limited was forced out of business after its main investor and global licensee, Club 21, withdrew financial backing.

The label was also hit by the recent collapse of Carla Carini, an Italian manufacturer that made her products.

This means Luella Bartley is unable to deliver orders for her spring/summer 2010 collection, which is a huge shame, given it was her strongest showing yet:

'Where for the past few seasons every dress had been multicoloured, flower-printed, beribboned, buckled, or frilled up in various pop-ironic ways, for this outing her clothes have become almost straightforward, in a mid-Sixties Sundaybest sort of way,' trumpeted Style.com.

Note that I am quoting Style.com for the glowing verdict on Luella's final show. I begged for a ticket, but was told I would not be welcome.

Even during a global recession, the designers, the fashion press and the PRs still set too much store by how cool and 'niche' a label is, whether or not Pixie Geldof and Alexa Chung are perched in the front row, and which DJ is spinning the tunes at the after-party.

This newspaper was deemed too ' mainstream' to view what would turn out to be her final collection, while I was judged too potentially critical.

The thing is, I don't care how cool the clothes are. What we really want to know is: are they well made, do they fit, and what is the provenance of the fabrics?

Will they look smart for work, sexy on a date, and will they last and prove good value or will they fall apart?

Sadly, these requirements seem to take second place when it comes to British fashion. Take the clamour that surrounded the show by Henry Holland during London Fashion Week in September. The clothes did not live up to the hype.

I attended the show. God only knows how or why I was allocated a ticket, but I was.

But I was not allocated a ticket for Matthew Williamson, or Jonathan Saunders (I was once forcibly ejected from one of his London shows), Antonio Berardi, Duro Olowu, Giles Deacon or Christopher Kane.

Frustrated beyond belief at the end of London Fashion Week's 25th anniversary celebrations, I wrote to the chairman of the British Fashion Council, Jaeger boss Harold Tillman, complaining at the attitude of the designers and their publicists.

'While I commend your efforts to put London Fashion Week on the world stage, I must tell you it remains elitist, putting being "trendy" before its more important role as an employer of very many people in retail jobs.'

I also pointed out to Harold Tillman that I never have a problem with labels such as Dior, Chanel or Prada. I have not, as yet, received a reply.

It is tragic for everyone she employed that Luella Bartley has gone out of business, but it is a shame, too, that more established British names - such as Amanda Wakeley, Caroline Charles, Betty Jackson and Paul Costelloe - are largely ignored by the fashion press, simply because they have fewer celebrity friends.

I have written before about the fact that an 'edgy' (what an awful word) male stylist, upon leaving a classically beautiful Jasper Conran show, sighed: 'I don't see the point of Jasper Conran.'

That is the sort of exasperating, out-of-touch attitude that will be the death of our home-grown industry.

British fashion schools produce so many young people with talent. London has always led the way when it comes to new ideas. But if we want our industry to succeed, it needs to have more substance and much less style.

Why not encourage our art schools and fashion colleges to concentrate on skills such as weaving and spinning and pattern cutting, not new wacky ways with stretch PVC?

One of the reasons Stella McCartney has flourished is because she honed her tailoring skills on Savile Row. Paul Smith is another rare British success story.

The brand has doubled its turnover in the past five years, posting a 15 per cent rise in profits in 2008. You could never imagine Smith embarking on anything for a drunken dare.

The 63-year-old said recently, 'I've always preferred the creative process of designing and selling clothes to the idea of putting on a poncey fashion show. It's their 15 minutes of fame: pure, self-indulgent theatre.

How many girls were there this year in horns or neck braces with bare breasts? It wouldn't matter if they didn't take it all so seriously, but the fashion world is a dangerous, superficial and fickle place.'

In September 2007 I wrote on these pages: 'I find it unhelpful and frankly suicidal that new stars including Duro Olowu, Marios Schwab and Jonathan Saunders barred me from their shows, preferring to restrict the guest list to fashion editors from cutting-edge magazines with plenty of cool but absolutely no readers; some of these designers will inevitably go bust.'

London's desire to be 'cool' above all else has just claimed yet another casualty.

Article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1228052/LIZ-JONES-No-wonder-Luella-went-bust--British-fashion-snobby-half.html

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