I love fashion. I love it, everything about it. I love the fabrics and the drama of Haute Couture, I love the satisfaction of seeing a woman transformed by the right clothes, I love the surrounding palava - all the models & marketing & retail that revolve around fashion.
It seems frivolous, it's certainly not brain surgery (thank goodness) but it also has a serious side. After 4 years of studying 12th to 16th Century Italian and Flemish art, I ended up writing my final year dissertation about fashion (I know, what fun!) I looked at the influence of Japanese designers like Rei Kawakubo and Yoji Yamamoto on Western fashions, looking at fashion as an indicator of the current zeitgeist. Sounds like a load of rubbish, doesn't it? Actually it was based on solid references and meant I could pour over back copies of Vogue and call it study. I'm no fool!
My first attempt at creating fashion was interesting. I was 7 and had been given a reconditioned Singer sewing machine for Christmas. As I've mentioned, I was obsessed by making things - anything. I loved my wee hand operated Singer. It was so beautiful and solid and cold to the touch. It was the first time I'd ever owned a proper machine and I was fascinated.
My skirt was created using scraps of fabric that my mum donated. Simple seams and elastic threaded through a gusset to form the waistband, great. I continued to make my own clothes until I started working full time. My tastes were odd, to say the least. I had a penchant for making trousers out of curtain material. Completely hideous! I have photographic evidence somewhere but I'm not going in search of it. My poor son also fell foul of my dressmaking experiments. Linings for his Moses basket were turned into dungarees - when he lay down he disappeared.
Fortunately my procurement of a Management Trainee position at Jenners Ltd, Princes Street, Edinburgh put an end to my creative (and generally unsuccessful) attempts at fashion design.
I realised that after 5 years of study, my eye was more discriminating than my hands and decided to concentrate on buying as a career.
The rest, you may say, is history.
Let me try to describe to you in more detail what it is about fashion that I love so much: I have a bit of an obsession with form & function - I love things that are beautiful and practical in equal measure, and clothes fit that bill. I love that our clothes are an indicator of who we are, how we wish to be regarded by our fellow men. Even someone who purports to have no interest in fashion is still making a statement about who they are by the clothes they choose to wear. Fashion can give real pleasure to people and give us a psychological boost that can change our perception of ourselves. Fashion is therapy, hence the name of our shop. I have had meaningful, life changing conversations over the sale of a pair of jeans and I've made some good friends along the way.
Haute Couture is my passion. Literally meaning high fashion, it is to clothes what Da Vinci is to postcards. Haute couture is a dying area of fashion - too expensive, not enough artisans, not enough patrons - just like fine art. But like fine art, Haute Couture is the stuff of dreams. From such heady creations as those of the late Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent et al come the latest High Street trends. We need the highest level of fashion design in the industry because without it there is nothing to inspire the next generation of young designers or fuel the voracious appetite of the celebrity emulators.
Louise suggested I start a Therapy Blog so I'm working on that. Let me know what you'd like to see. New trends, problems solved? Let me know!
x
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