New Zealand-born designer Emilia Wickstead's creations have become popular with royals and celebrities. Photo / Getty Images
With precision cuts and attention to detail, it’s easy to see why the designer’s modern classics are high on royal wish lists.
Agonising over an outfit for an upcoming wedding? Spare a thought for the Princess of Wales. As the buzz about Saturday’s coronation ramps up, so will her outfit planning, with a plethora of public occasions, eagerly watched by fashion fans from all over the planet, lodged in the diary.
Kate, of course, will have it all in hand. She’s a seasoned professional when it comes to dressing with diplomacy, seamlessly navigating the fine line between elegance and propriety, and meeting the sense of occasion with her own sense of style intact.
Emilia Wickstead, a fail-safe in Kate’s favoured stable of fashion designers, is also a master in this regard. She has created a hugely successful brand with her breed of soft power dressing — the “art of a well-dressed life” serving as an unofficial tagline to the perfectly cut dresses and elegant separates she sells to stylish women across the globe, including Renée Zellweger and Florence Pugh.
“I built this business out of a passion for dressing up,” says the New Zealand-born Londoner when we speak a few weeks before the coronation. “We’re here to enrich every occasion with elegance and a unique kind of modern dressing.”
Wickstead, 39, won’t confirm or deny any involvement with the princess’s outfit choice for the big day (or make any comment on the royals), but she’s a worthy contender. Indeed, having dressed the King’s daughter-in-law for numerous occasions over the past decade, including a clover green dress for the Wimbledon women’s final and a wrap-front dress for the Queen’s platinum jubilee, she’s surely a front-runner, and a keen gambler might put money on an item with an Emilia Wickstead label stitched in making an appearance during next weekend’s festivities.
Since starting her brand in 2008 — with a little help from a £5,000 ($10,000) loan from her boyfriend (now husband) Daniel Gargiulo — Wickstead has built a loyal customer base of executives, A-listers and diplomats (the former prime minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern and the former first lady Michelle Obama are fans) who come to her for high-quality, precision-cut clothes that make them feel elegant, sophisticated and stylish.
Wickstead’s business, which started out with a made-to-measure service that she ran from her living room and advertised through word of mouth, is now a juggernaut with a flagship store on Sloane Street and wholesalers across the globe. The Emilia Wickstead aesthetic, Hitchcock heroine meets poised princess, is a go-to for customers who veer towards a groomed and put-together look. For its designer, who describes herself as an “old soul”, the aim of the game is melding tradition with modernity. “The woman who shops at Emilia Wickstead wants a well-dressed life but she’s also rooted to reality. I create clothes for women who are trying to do it all and succeeding,” she says. “I’m about comfort, I’m about versatility, I’m about creating beautiful clothes my customers will still be reaching for for years to come.”
As a working mother (Wickstead’s children are ten and eight) running an independent global fashion business, the designer is well placed to understand the need for clothes that succeed on a practical level as well as an aesthetically pleasing one. “I really believe that the power of clothes is not only how they make you look and function as a person, they influence the way you look at yourself, the way you feel in your own skin. Clothes can make you a better person,” she says. She’s engaged with the idea of the fashion fantasy too. “My job is to take those more fantastical aspects of an idea and make them into beautiful clothes that serve us in our everyday lives.”
Wickstead has a formal fashion education — she completed a design and marketing degree at Central Saint Martins and an internship at Proenza Schouler in New York before setting up her brand. But it’s the lessons she learnt from her mother, a designer who owned a fashion boutique that ran a successful made-to-order service for the well-heeled women of Auckland, which have enabled Wickstead to forge a unique path for herself as a designer — and honed her business sense too.
“Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in my mother’s store putting pins back in a pin cushion while she would fit client after client,” Wickstead says. “She was so focused on fit and making clothes that were made to measure in the truest sense. That has stayed with me and is deeply rooted in the core values of what I’m doing with my brand.”
While most modern designers rely on wholesale to sell their clothes, Wickstead started out selling directly to clients in the way designers such as Christian Dior did in the 1950s, and having this direct relationship with the women who wear her clothes has been her brand’s calling card.
For six years she was in her Sloane Street store every Monday to Saturday fitting clients and getting to know exactly what they wanted. “Knowing our customers’ wants and needs is a core part of what we do. We understand how their needs change and we adapt with them. I know what she wants because I am that woman.”
Wickstead is best known for her dresses — recent highlights include the metallic strapless number that Allison Williams wore on the red carpet earlier this year and Reese Witherspoon’s fuchsia midi — but more and more customers are coming to her for separates. Her recent spring/summer show, inspired by the photojournalist and visionary Lee Miller, unveiled everything from printed overcoats to button-down shirts on the catwalk, while the autumn/winter show, in February, included coats in sugary shades and sublime sequined pencil skirts.
The objective, she explains, is not just to appeal to a woman with a posh wedding on the horizon but to create a world that offers dressing solutions for all aspects of her life. Her recently revamped Sloane Street boutique is a physical embodiment of this idea, bringing everything from swimwear to made-to-measure and her hugely successful bridal line under one roof. Along with “off the peg” bridal gowns, Wickstead’s wedding outfit experience — a sort of Disneyland for high-spending brides — includes shoes and assistance creating a honeymoon wardrobe.
With a little help from her most famous customer (the so-called “Kate effect” is as powerful as ever), her clothing is developing a significant international clientele. The US is a key growth area and a recently launched collection with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop brand looks set to further expand Wickstead’s American following.
There’s homeware too. Along with architectural gowns, customers are invited to browse chandelier-print linen napkins and a range of ceramics that include a soup bowl (yours for £85) and the chicest bread plate on the planet. You could say it’s fit for a queen.
Written by: Karen Dacre
© The Times of London
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