Emilia has proven to be able to dress the Duchess in graceful, fit-and-flare silhouettes, pretty but not uniform colors. Emilia has also proven to be the first new London designer to be cracking the arcane rules of high society British formal dressing, while also modernizing them. Suddenly, women from all over the world are beating a path to her serenely impressive store in Cadogan Place. The brisk rise of this sparkling, constantly all smiles 29 year old has probably been due to the fact that she didn't take the typical English-designer route to the runway. Building her brand through private sales, she only ventured to the fringes of London Fashion Week last year. Born in New Zealand but raised in Milan, she learned work ethic at the knee of her mother, Angela Wickstead, who ran a successful bespoke dressmaking service in Auckland as Emilia was growing up.
After studying fashion design with marketing at Central Saint Martins, Emilia spent her year interning at Proenza Schouler, Narciso Rodriguez, and Vogue. Then, she opened her business at age 24 with £5,000 given to her by her boyfriend (now husband) by inviting friends and family to buy her made-to-measure pieces from her flat.
Word of mouth soon spread about Emilia’s breezy, problem-solving designs and effervescent personality—and the prices which she deliberately kept reasonable. Those relationships—helped by the fact that Samantha Cameron turned to her when she first arrived as the Prime Minister’s wife at Downing Street in 2010—have deftly placed her at the peripheries of a rising social circle her own age. It’s been a case of perfect timing. As a new generation of young British women have suddenly found themselves in dire need of non-mumsy public-appearance clothes, Emilia’s expertise has been providing clever solutions to all the performance anxieties that go with having to look good, possibly even (nightmare) with a hat on your head.
Below is an interview by Sarah Mower, where Emilia opens up about the secrets of her beginnings—and how she’s figured out how dress for those high-stress, high-profile occasions on the British calendar.
How did you start your business?
My mother said, “There’s no way I’m dealing with you going to university to do design unless you have the business side!” so I studied fashion design with marketing at Central Saint Martins. The course is great because you have a year out in the industry. I went to Proenza Schouler, Narciso Rodriguez, and American Vogue. After that, to Giorgio Armani for three months. I came out wanting to design what women want to wear, and to sell.
You returned to London when the financial crisis hit—not the best timing for setting up. How did you do it?
I knocked on the door of a small store in Fulham Road, which turned out to have lost their designer, so they said why don’t you do it? I basically didn’t know what I was doing, but I was designing, overseeing the production, and selling to all these Chelsea women and learning what they wanted—though I never said I was the designer. I was constantly on the phone to my mother asking questions! It started going well, so my then boyfriend, now husband, said he’d give me £5,000 to put a small collection together and show it to friends and family. So my clients started shopping with me in my living room.”
You lived in Chelsea?
Well, no—but we knew the customers in the area, so we rented a flat nearby, lived in the bedroom, and used the living room as a showroom! I was working four nights a week at the door of a nightclub to pay the rent, and designing freelance for the company I’d been working for. I was only 24, young, and naïve, and I made lots of mistakes. But it went from strength to strength through word of mouth. What was quite important was that we couldn’t afford to carry stock, and we started when the credit crunch hit, so no-one was really taking chances with new designers.
You decided to begin with made-to-measure?
Yes, but I was certain I wanted to make it affordable.The majority of our clients are British. They want to wear things time and time again. That’s something that’s exciting for me because, at the end of the day, I’m 29—I’m not going to spend £2,000 on a dress myself, and I wanted to make sure a woman could buy a beautiful crepe dress for £800—and that was hard to find. So that approach worked in our favor, women started to really love it—and suddenly we were in a two-flat situation. Then we were able to move into this store which was in exactly the right neighborhood for our customers and had become vacant because of the crisis. We were dead for weeks and weeks—and then it started!
How did you start to evolve what your customers were looking for?
I was very aware of the fact that I was a young designer, and I didn’t want to fall into the trap of “mother of the bride” dressing and “occasion-wear.” I wanted to make sure that girls my age were wearing it, and that there was a cool factor to my clothes. I used to watch old Christian Dior films. I wanted that whole feeling for our presentations. I would show only for my clients, 30 to 40 looks, no press, showing them how to wear things, and then everyone would book their appointments. I’d like to think my made-to-measure is a modern take on that. You don’t have to wait for four months. You can have it quite quickly. You’re not having an old-style suit made, making you look older than you are. It’s something young and fresh.
Your big break came when Samantha Cameron wore a blue Emilia Wickstead dress on the day her husband became prime minster. How did that happen?
Luck! When I was interning in New York, I lived with Lohralee Stutz, who ended up marrying Will Astor, Samantha Cameron’s brother. When Samantha came here, she wanted something classic but with a little bit of a twist—she’s a great character. This was four years ago, and she was pregnant at the time. She bought from my first collection at the shop. So it was pretty big. Now, I have three seamstresses in the store who do our bespoke part, and the made-to-order collection, which women can have in a few days in fabrics and colors of their choice. And now, there’s my ready-to-wear collection which I show at London Fashion Week.
Luck! When I was interning in New York, I lived with Lohralee Stutz, who ended up marrying Will Astor, Samantha Cameron’s brother. When Samantha came here, she wanted something classic but with a little bit of a twist—she’s a great character. This was four years ago, and she was pregnant at the time. She bought from my first collection at the shop. So it was pretty big. Now, I have three seamstresses in the store who do our bespoke part, and the made-to-order collection, which women can have in a few days in fabrics and colors of their choice. And now, there’s my ready-to-wear collection which I show at London Fashion Week.
Talk me through the criteria you think about? What makes a modern formal outfit today?
I love the idea of a dress or a coatdress rather than a suit with a jacket. I also sell a lot of button-back blouses with full skirts or pencil skirts, which look clean and easy but have presence. It’s lighter and makes you feel better because you don’t have all those layers of a suit. And I think it’s very chic to have a sleeve. I’m a true believer that you don’t have to reveal all, that sexiness can be about a high neck and a fitted sleeve. I love doing fittings and seeing women look really confident in their clothes, because they’re not wearing something too boxy, but that really shows off their figures. Everybody has a different figure—it’s important to design for different shapes.
What rules do women need to keep in mind when dressing for the Royal Ascot Races? It’s difficult to pull off.
I love the idea behind Ascot. It’s wonderful. But I can’t say I like the outfits that many British women traditionally wear, so it’s a bit of a challenge. I like to think I’m dressing them in a completely different way, a chic and tasteful way, and they’re going to go and be noticed amongst everybody else because it’s not necessarily over the top. A lot of the time now, I’m creating a dress for a client as opposed to a dress and a jacket, or a dress and a coat. My Mercedes dress—small waist, full skirt—has been a very big hit. I do it sleeveless or with sleeves, and a scoop neck. It’s a great all-Around dress; we’ve made it in crepe, organza, all sorts of fabric. It’s a nice style if you aren’t necessarily stick-thin, because it gives you that feminine shape, but you’re hiding a lot too.
How do you calculate what will look good in pictures on the day of the event?
One thing to consider is that you don’t know if it will be rain or shine. We do live in England! I have a ginormous range of fabrics and colors to choose from. I would suggest a crepe, because it doesn’t crease when you get in and out of a car. Single or double wool crepe, silk crepe. I train the girls to create a whole look with the client, shoes, bag, hat—but often, I still see clients myself.
Which colors do you recommend?
I go through phases. At the moment, yellow! Also, if you don’t want to be safe and do navy or black or chocolate, I always suggest nude and dusty pinks—which are very flattering to a lot of women.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not a great hat person. But we suggest Jane Taylor. And the Duchess of Cambridge has made hats a heck of a lot chicer and more appealing. She’s brought back wearing hats as opposed to fascinators—and she’s also brought back a sense of ladylike dressing.
How do you define your style?
I love ladylike dressing—so that is working in my favor!
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