As a girl who loves a bit of extravagance when it comes to getting dressed I’ve always preferred the theatricality and drama that London Fashion Week provides over the minimalism of New York or the brash sexiness of Milan. The spirit of innovation is the lifeblood of London’s sartorial history; a heady combination of heritage techniques and striking street style that drives bloggers wild. From Savile Row to the homegrown talents and dark sensibilities of designers like McQueen and Pugh, London has a distinct aesthetic; a creative edge manifested in a pleasing combination of function and form that stretches back centuries.
Take for example Lock and Co. who have been fitting hats on royal heads since 1676. Their store on St James Street is a cornucopia of millinery apparatus and artifacts, from a hat owned by Wellington to Victorian instruments for measuring and drawing your head (still in working order). They also hold the esteemed position of having created a hat that came to represent the entire British Isles – the Bowler. First made by Thomas and William Bowler in 1850 for a Norfolk farmer, it was intended to protect gamekeepers’ heads from tree branches as they rode around country estates. The practicality and strength of the hat caught on, and before long no business man was fully dressed without one. It’s safe to say that artists from Charlin Chaplin to Liza Minnelli and Malcolm McDowell all have Lock & Co. to thank for their signature look.
Liberty is another store that for many people has come to symbolise the creativity and beauty of the London shopping experience. This retail institution has its humble beginnings in the form of an ‘Oriental Warehouse’ in the Farmer & Rogers department store on Regent Street. Soon outgrowing the space, Arthur Lasenby Liberty opened his own shop in 1875 and by the 1880s he was importing plain silks from the Middle and Far East and dying them in Britain, creating a range of muted ‘Liberty colours’ that immediately became associated with the Aesthetic movement of the late 19th century. The association was so strong that when Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera ‘Patience’ premiered in 1881, the costumes were made from Liberty fabrics and they were also advertised in the programme. Initially consider an anti-fashion statement (Artistic Dress which prefigured Aesthetic Dress was characterised by a partial rejection of the corset in favour of unstructured lines, and the use of natural colours rather than the garish aniline dyes that were in vogue at the time), late Victorian society soon realised they wouldn’t be seen dead in anything other than Liberty’s distinctive take on Far Eastern prints.
Less well known but equally as influential is the Edwardian fashion sensation Lady Duff Gordon, whose professional name Lucile came to dominate fin-de-siecle society from her base in Mayfair, with stores springing up in Paris, New York and Chicago. Her innovations were boundless, from creating ‘personality dresses’ to suit the character of the client (arguably the first instance of individualism in fashion) to widely syndicated fashion reportage for titles such as Harper’s Bazaar and Good Housekeeping. She revolutionised fashion PR by staging ‘mannequin parades’ to flaunt her wares – which later evolved into catwalk shows – and through a series of licensing deals that saw her designs offshoot into areas from affordable, mail-order collections for Sears Roebuck to interiors for Chrysler cars.
This innovative, rebellious spirit continues today; rock’n’roll cobbler Terry de Havilland’s shoes have both inspired and been inspired by London’s subcultures since he was a child and his father made blackmarket heels for Windmill showgirls during the Blitz. Hailing from Barking, by 1972 he had moved far enough west to open his first store, Cobblers to the World, on the Kings Road where his creations went on to grace the feet of Bianca Jagger, Marianne Faithful and Patti Boyd amongst others. Milliner Piers Atkinson carries the mantle of spectacular headwear; his background with Zandra Rhodes and Andrew Logan sees him fuse kitsch sensibilities with a grounding in pop culture that has been featured everywhere from Italian Vogue to Tatler. And the idiosyncrasies of London’s retail landscape are kept alive by The Last Tuesday Society whose Little Shop of Horrors takes inspiration from 17th century Wunderkabinetts. Part museum, part lecture hall and part shop, the varied collection of naturalia, zoology, taxidermy, juvenalia and osteology would even make Pitt Rivers proud.
London offers a creative edge that the more economically-established fashion centres such as New York and Paris are often missing. It has long been a centre of stylistic innovation which is often overlooked, dismissed as shock tactics or design naivete. But thankfully champions of British fashion such as Colin McDowell and Lulu Kennedy of Fashion East, along with initiatives like NewGen and Fashion Fringe look to be succeeding in their mission to support and nurture young design talent. Now London not only has the edgy aesthetic and strong streetstyle culture that it is known for, but it is also able to compete with the collections in New York, Paris and Milan in terms of sophistication and finish. And that’s why London will always be the place for me.
Image source: From top Viktor Wynd outside his Little Shop of Horrors, Lucille, Lady Duff Gordon by Arnold, Broken Hearts in Terry de Havilland shoes, Piers Atkinson SS12 ‘Hot Voodoo’ collection
