Emilia Wickstead and 40 Years of London Fashion Week

0:05This is The Run Through, and I'm Nicole Phelps. Today on the show, we're talking London Fashion Week. This year marks the 40th anniversary of London Fashion Week. So, of course, we had to invite Mark Holgate, my colleague and Vogue's fashion news director, to give us a dispatch from the shows. We've also got a conversation with Emilia Wickstead, who has dressed everyone from Lady Gaga to Kerry Washington to Olivia Colman to a very special Vogue editor, which you'll be hearing all about. But first, hi, Mark. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Nicole. Nice to see you. It seems like yesterday that you were here in the studio with me, but you have since flown to London and seen many, many collections at London Fashion Week.

0:46So tell me what you saw. Well, that is exactly right. The joys of transatlantic travel. I got to London Sunday morning, bright and early. Well, early. I don't know if I was very bright. I dashed off the plane, got in my cab, and before I knew it, I was in the venue for the J.W. Anderson show at 11 o 'clock Sunday morning at Old Billingsgate. And Billingsgate, for those who don't know, and probably most people wouldn't know, was an old fish market. Thank God they'd managed to strip any residual sense of cod and tuna and salmon from the building. But it was a great show. I mean, what I loved about Jonathan's show was just the kind of absolute rigor and focus on a silhouette and exploring that, you know, short, sculpted, constructed, and then sometimes kind of a little more, I wouldn't say soft, but a little bit, a little more giving, but also very short and anchored with this incredible kind of cutaway biker boot and one bag.

1:52I seem to remember it was one soft suede kind of satchel shoulder bag with this detail that looked a bit like the band that you might see on a penny loafer, you know, where you put the penny into the, that was the kind of fastening he'd used on these suede bags. But, you know, tremendous energy, amazing soundtrack. And that kind of set the mood for the day. The weather was beautiful in London a little bit like it is, or was, I should say, during the New York shows. I went straight from that into Roxanda. And, you know, I was so happy to see Roxanda because she's obviously gone through a lot in her business in the last year or so, you know, with the collapse of matches and the kind of fallout from that.

2:32But, you know, she just always, I think, finds a kind of beauty and hones in on that. Incredible kind of color palette, kind of strong kind of jewel shades mixed in with this almost a kind of, how can I put it, almost a kind of canvas-y kind of sacking kind of color. That sounds terrible, but actually very cool. Well, you mentioned Roxanda's business difficulties. And I wonder, with the collapse of matches earlier this year, has that shaped the London Fashion Week? Is there a sense of designers coming together against these headwinds? Well, I think with London, you know, it's interesting. It's a city that has always kind of had to triumph against adversity.

3:19You know, I think London designers are very collegial and very ready to get behind each other, which is encouraging. It didn't dampen the spirit, because I think what they've done is poured a lot of their creativity and the energy and the desire to design and be a designer into those collections. Well, this happens to be the 40th anniversary of London Fashion Week. And our colleagues at British Vogue did this amazing slideshow with all these archival photos. Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, the Spice Girls back in the day. You were at some of those 90s shows. Paint a picture of what London Fashion Week was like back in the day.

4:00Well, when I started doing shows, which was cough, cough, the kind of early 90s. I was really young. I was about 12 years old and I was sneaking in. The week was quite abbreviated. I mean, we called it a week, but I think it was actually like maybe two and a half, three days, which obviously gathered pace as the 90s went on. And you saw people like McQueen and Hussein and Clemens Ribeiro, Burberry, you know, start to be really kind of be a huge presence in London. But, you know, the first show that I really remember going to that felt really special and kind of changing to me, life-changing to me, I should say, was Alexander McQueen's The Bird Show, which I remember was on a Sunday evening.

4:43I managed to somehow get an invitation. I also got an invitation from my friend Nick, who was doing menswear at the Royal College of Art. And we went to Bagley's Warehouse in the King's Cross area, which is north of the city. And it's very kind of glamorous and chic and gentrified now. It was not then. It was a very dark room. The runway was on the ground. It wasn't a raised podium or anything like that. There was, I guess, the kind of the luminescent white strip that you see on the road as the runway. And I just remember this grinding music kind of started, and the model came out with black contact lenses and white bumster trousers with a jacket over it.

5:27And from then on, it was just this, you know, amazing kind of mix of saran wrap dresses, tailoring, and attitude. The other one I was actually really thinking about was a Joe Casely Hayford show. Joe Casely Hayford was this incredibly talented designer, sadly, no longer with us. And I went to one of his shows. It was about 1995, I think, or yeah, but 1995, 1996. And I got told to move because someone very important was coming in. So I went into the second row and all of a sudden there was like a million bodyguards, a woman called Anna Harvey, who was the deputy editor of British Vogue with her was the Princess of Wales.

6:10And I remember her sitting down and the intensity of the flashbulbs and the just the shrieking and the screaming at her. And I remember thinking, goodness, that this is your life for five minutes. I cannot imagine what it must be like 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And the funny thing was, seeing Sarah's presentation yesterday, there was a picture of the Princesses Wales up on the wall, and in the corner, cropped out with my little face, looking startled. We need that framed. I think I took a picture of it, I will send it to you, but that just takes me right back to nearly 30 years ago. Again, cough, cough.

6:50Yeah, no, I mean, London had this just, you know, kind of can-do energy. I mean, you look at Hussein, who's, you know, a kind of genius designer. I mean, I think that was one of the first shows that you saw in London. Know that you go to one of his early shows as well. Yes. Yes. I so rarely go to London shows. But when I was an editor at Elle magazine, I got to go the season that Hussein Shalayan did the furniture show. And I mean, I was blown away. But in context, you know, going back 25 years, I'm even more blown away that I saw that because it's one of these iconic shows that lives on forever where this coffee table, a model stepped into the middle of it.

7:34She pulled up a couple of straps and it turned into a dress. And that was something that Hussain Shalayan was always experimenting with, these clothes that transformed. And talk about ahead of his time, you know, doing stuff with electronics and tech. And, you know, decades before, I mean, fashion really isn't even doing that yet. You know, he really was, he is a incredible, incredible innovator. I couldn't agree more. 40 years of London fashion, we could talk on and on, but we have a really great interview that our colleague Chomenotti did with Amelia Wickstead. And I wonder if you could give us any context about Amelia.

8:12Well, Amelia, I think, is someone who in the last few seasons has really kind of hit her stride. You know, she's a New Zealand designer. She came to London. And I think she intuited a kind of sense of modesty. And I mean, in a very positive way, when we started to see fashion move towards something much more covered up. You know, when we saw things like high necks and sleeves and longer hemlines. and she's also lent into a little bit more of an experimental approach with her tailoring and the formality of her clothes. I think she's somewhat of an unsung heroine of British fashion right now. She's really kind of, I think, led the charge for a kind of an exquisite make and an exquisite execution and construction in her clothing.

9:04You know, her own show had a real kind of chicness to it. And it's nice to see her align herself to be a little bit more experimental because she has such a strong base and such a strong foundation to work for. I'm quite the fan. I think she's terrific. Thank you so much, Mark. It's great to see you on screen and I'll see you in Paris. I'll see you in Paris, Nicole. Lovely to chat.

9:32Okay, we're going to take a quick break. But when we're back, a conversation between Chomonati and Amelia Wickstead on what to know about her show at London Fashion Week.

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10:25And we're back. Hi there, it's Cho Minardi. As Nicole said, I sat down with Amelia Wickstead, the Auckland-born London-based designer who launched her women's wear label in 2008 and first showed at London Fashion Week in 2011. We started off the conversation talking about our very own fashion market and collaborators director here at Vogue, Willow Lindley. Amelia designed her wedding dress, no less, and she described it beautifully. Amelia also talked about wishing she could have dressed fashion columnist and former editor-in-chief at Vogue, Diana Vreeland. So here is my conversation with the wonderful Amelia Wickstead.

11:08So Amelia, hi. Hi. Hi, I heard you were on a special mission recently at American Vogue for one of our editors. It was indeed. It was a very fleeting trip. I arrived in New York City in the morning and then ran to the offices and fitted lovely Willow. So she's a fashion market and collaborations director. And she's wonderful. Yeah. No, it was great. So tell us about the dress. It's made out of a silk brocade, which has like an indented lace that's built into the fabric. So it's quite unique and strapless. It has a built-in train that sits at the back. And the length of everything that we did for the dress was sort of ankle length.

11:51So it was quite flirtatious and modern and also quite relaxed because we're quite dressed up as a brand. And it's quite a relaxed version in terms of length and silhouette and style. And it was beautiful. But Willow was the most relaxed bride. She was getting married two days later. And it was wonderful. So how does dressing a Vogue editor for their wedding compare to art? Because I imagine, I mean, a lot of your business has started off as bespoke and dressing. And it's like that very intimate, this intimate relationship when you're dressing someone with a custom piece. How does it compare to dressing other brides?

12:36And what's special about doing a bride in general? Do you know what? I've always, always loved dressing brides because I think when I started the business, which was very much bespoke and I worked in the store, and saw everybody that came in the store really for the first five to six years of the business. So the birth of the business was all about that. And I always loved a bride because it's such an intimate experience understanding what in theory is the most important dress of their life. And you get to meet their entire family. You get to understand the intricacies of their desires, everything that they dream of.

13:11They've been thinking about this dress for a long period of time, but also the trust that they have in you as the designer and why they're coming to you for that most important dress that they're ever going to wear. Nice. Well, you seem very calm given that we're only weeks away from London Fashion Week. Tell us a bit about where you're at with the collection and how you're feeling and what headspace you're in at this point usually right before London Fashion Week. because summer vacation's over for you, I imagine. I think, listen, it's such an exciting time and especially I always love a September show because you have had a little bit of time out in theory over the summer and you come back into it and you just fall in love with the process.

13:58And I think in the past, I mean, I've been doing it for so long now that I used to really dread the process. I really love it now. And you sort of arrive and it's sort of the scary feeling if you haven't seen a lot of the collection, It's arriving either from factories or we have an atelier in-house as well that produces a lot of the collection. And you're seeing things for the first time. And we actually had a fitting on Tuesday. And it was great. And it's always a really pleasant reminder of why you love what you do and why you get out of bed and do what you do. And I think that it's that moment where it kind of feels like your wedding or it feels – I always describe it as like giving birth to another child.

14:36And my husband's always like, but it's twice a year every year. I'm like, I know, but that's the feeling. That's how much I care. And it's just a wonderful feeling. And it is really stressful. And it does cause you season upon season, year after year, to sort of care so much that you can't sleep and that's all you think about. But I think that's what keeps you going. So how am I feeling? Mixed feelings. And always really scared. But I think that's also what's quite enticing about the whole process. Yeah. We'll see. We have a fitting tomorrow with our stylist, Harry. Harry Lambert. Harry Lambert.

15:12Friend of Vogue. Amazing stylist. Oh, he's amazing. And he'll come in with a fresh eye. Energise the bunny. Oh, 100%. I mean, you probably don't want to give too much away, but a little bird told me that your newest collection is inspired by the photographer Giselle Freund. Can you tell us a little bit about her work and what drew you to her? Absolutely. I always love to find or fall in love, should I say, with a muse, with a person. And I love the fact that you can fall in love with a muse and a person that can be your inspiration for a collection, even though you don't know them. So in this case, with Giselle, I think I became obsessed with her as my subject because I think she draws upon, with her photography, she draws upon this sort of strength and vulnerability in the way that she photographs her own muses.

16:04and the women that she photographed, I think, she photographed them in such a modern way that they used to say, or they still say about Giselle, that she could feel their soul, you could read their soul through her photographs. Describe her work, I'm not quite familiar. So it's portraiture. So what era are we talking? So she actually, if we're talking about sort of what she brought to life, and we're talking about in the 1930s, she bought colourful photographs. How do you describe that? Introduced colour photography, excuse me, that sounds a bit more sophisticated, to South America. So that was in the 1930s.

16:42So we're talking about a long time ago. And when you look at her photographs, I think that they are so very much, they could have been taken today. And I think, you know. Who did she photograph? Oh, she photographed everybody. So a lot of politicians. And that's what I loved as well. So very serious individuals and muses. and I love the masculinity and the seriousness of that. But then she photographed, for example, Evita. Wow. Many artists, Frida Kahlo, for example. Wow. And so really riveting women that I feel were very influential women of their time. I guess I've continued down a path where all of her muses and all of the individuals that she's photographed have almost become muses in our storyboard as well.

17:28Well, speaking of muses, I feel like you've dressed such a range of different people. I think of Kristen Davis wearing pieces in The Sex and the City is just like that. And you've had Cynthia Erivo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lady Gaga, Kerry Washington, Olivia Colman. I mean, the list goes on. And I think you're clearly a staple of Princess Kate's as well. what does it feel like seeing your clothes out in the world and how how meaningful is it for you as someone who's an independent designer and do these do these moments move the needle like what have been the moments that have moved the needle as far as when when you have someone in the limelight wearing your clothes I think a hundred percent it it moves the needle because I think that we live in a world very much now that is very much focused and centered around individuals in the limelight and that is how we showcase our creativity right that is that is the best way to showcase and even you know when I even started the brand we didn't really have social media when I think about it so um it's it's a great way to showcase to the world your designs and um and I love it but I also have to say that some of my proudest moments is if and I'll use an example but going to a coat check I remember standing there and I think three of the coats that came out immediately randomly one after the other were all Amelia Wickstead coats.

18:55That is crazy what a value you are. And I remember it was actually it was an event in Mayfair it was a charity event but I just remember thinking god I feel like I've made it because it was like three and you and I didn't know the women collecting their coats and I think and I think it's almost as well sometimes I'll see someone out wearing an Amelia Wickstead piece and I'll say, oh my gosh, I love your dress or I love, you know, whatever they're wearing. And they'll say, oh, thank you so much. It's Amelia Wickstead. And I just, I honestly, that for me, no, most of the time not. And I just think, but I think, I think there's something so special about that.

19:30And I feel, I feel like that we've really made it. And I think that when I have those moments and the pinch me moments are also people on the red carpet or in the public eye. And of course, it's sort of, you know, when we talk about who are your muses and when we talk about Giselle, you know, gosh, yeah, I would have loved to have dressed her in the 1930s and for her to have talked about the fact that she was wearing Amelia Wickstead. And it's the same dressing someone in the limelight. It's like if someone compliments them or they feel good or they feel empowered in what they're wearing or they've worked really hard on a project or on a film or they're representing something for, I don't know, an award or for a charity event or whatever it is, no matter who it is, the fact that they've chosen for a special, really important occasion for themselves to wear your brand, that's your biggest accomplishment, I think.

20:18I know you'd love to dress Giselle, but is there anyone else dead or alive that you'd love to see wearing Amelia Wickshead? I've always, always wanted to dress and kind of be her as well, Diana Vreeland. Yeah So I'd say she's definitely top of my list And I think in terms of Who would we want to dress I feel really, really lucky that we dress Incredible women A few of whom you've named already And then there was a moment where we dressed Malala During the Oscar season What was that like? Oh my gosh, it was amazing It was absolutely Just dressing women of all walks of life Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co-host of Little Gold Men.

21:05Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood. There's a hundred wrestlers in the room, but only one can be Oscar nominated. Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

21:33Tell me, you moved to Milan when you were a teenager and that was where, because I know you're from New Zealand. I mean, the accent says it all. Is it still there? You've lived here a long time and it hasn't disappeared. I love it. But what was that experience like and how did your family end up in Milan? So my grandmother is actually Italian, right? So my mother's half Italian and my mother, my father passed away when I was very young, when I was four and my mother met an Italian man who was working in New Zealand at the time, so when I was very young. And then at 14, she decided to take the plunge, move to Italy and married this Italian man.

22:13And so I went with her. And so it was always just myself and my mum. I grew up with a single mum. And we moved and all of a sudden I was living, I didn't live in Milan, We lived outside, two villages outside. But I went to school in Milan. And I had never seen... So you speak fluent Italian? I do speak fluent Italian. Amazing. I would say it's a little bit pigeonized now, but, you know, still practicing. But I went to school there and I had this art teacher who was just absolutely... He was brilliant and I was mesmerized by him. And I'd never had a teacher like that before. and he sort of taught me how to sketch and I don't know, sort of I was always creative and artistic, but it sort of took it to the next level.

23:00And so there was that experience happening at school at 14 and then I'd never seen a designer store in my life. What was the first one that you went into? Do you remember? I think, oh God, I don't remember the exact store, but I used to go into Miu Miu quite a lot, I remember. It was back in the day where they had... Having a big moment now. Or having a big moment. And then. But they had all of the, I don't remember what collection, but it was all elasticated necklines and waist and paper bag styles. And I remember my mother used to take me in and we'd just look and touch the garments and walk through store by store, couldn't buy anything.

23:35And then she would pull the garments inside out and show me the quality inside of the garment and how everything was made. So that was like the beginning of my education of constructing a garment. Did you know then you wanted to be in that world? I knew that I wanted, I was definitely an artist. My father was a painter. He was an artist. And it was definitely in my blood. I'd watch my mother have her business and build it. She started her business literally from the garage when I was a baby. And she'd work through the night and build collections. And so that's all I ever knew. She was always working.

24:07And I was with my grandparents a lot. And then I would go to her work after school and fill her pinkish and sit and wait her clients. So it was always ingrained in me. I don't think it was what I wanted to do. I used to say to my mum, whatever you do, never leave me your business. Because I think I used to see the hardship of it and how difficult it was. And I used to see her, you know, be quite elevated, but also have really, really hard times. And, you know, we would move around a lot and nothing felt ever that stable, really, because everything, you know, it was hard. It was tough. And it was tough for my mum.

24:42And she had a great little business and she worked so hard. But I really wanted to work in the arts and I wanted to study fine arts. And my mother said, absolutely not. And I think it was this teacher. Your mom didn't want you to study fine arts? Fine arts, fine arts. No, not fine arts. I think it's fine arts. She would have loved that. No, fine arts. And I wanted to be a painter. And she said, no, I'm not going to, you know, no. And it was this teacher, Dennis Cooper, at my school. That was his name. He was British. and he, I think, really inspired me with art, with my creative vein, I guess, that was always dormant and he brought it to life.

25:20And then he used to get speakers that would come to the school and because we were in Milan, speakers that worked in fashion and I just became infatuated and he'd teach me to sketch and I very quickly fell in love with fashion. But my mother did say, if you're going to study fashion, you're going to study marketing as well. So I did that also. So where did you study? At Central St. Martins. Right. So that's how you ended up in London. That's how I ended up in London. And I applied and didn't think there was any chance in hell that I was going to get in. And yeah, happened. So after Central St.

25:57Martins, did you go and intern for a brand or did you open up your shop? I mean, it's quite unconventional when you think about what other students do. and you were obviously designing clothes that were not what most of the students were designing. So tell me a bit about Striking Out on your own and what that was like. So the wonderful thing about my degree course was it was fashion design with marketing. And so part of the degree course was you spent a year in the work industry. And every summer prior to that, I'd also done a lot of work experience. But that year in the industry, I went and worked at American Vogue.

26:33I worked at Prenza Schuller. I worked at Narciso Rodriguez. And I worked at Giorgio Armani. And I worked at Luella. So you had quite a packed busy schedule. I packed it in. Where do you, I mean, what is the dream for you as far as, like, what's next? Like, now that you've got, you know, you've got this big brand and... Not big enough yet. Not a long way to go. We've got a long way to go. What is the dream? The dream is to roll out stores. Our store, now that we actually opened just after the pandemic, is a very grown-up store. We've had stores, but this is it now. So where is your store? We're on Sloan Street.

27:17We're on the corner. And it's wonderful. So it's a rollout of stores. It's to break through massively in America, to be perfectly honest. 50 % of our sales are in the U.S. and to have a presence in, you know, as many countries as possible where people love the brand and love Amelia Wickstead. But I think our next stop will be to have a presence in America. So your dream would be open a store in New York? In New York City. Where would you, which area? Madison Avenue. Of course. Probably realistically just off. But, you know, you have to dream. Listen, I dreamt about Sloan Street and it happened.