British Designers @ FashionCapital Boutique

A few posts ago I mentioned Bath’s plans to open a boutique that will reveal emerging fashion talent. Well, The British Designer’s@FashionCapital  boutique is now open and ready for business! I went along to the launch the other week and I can safely say it is a right hip little joint.

In keeping with the rustic aesthetic of Bath, the boutique is like a tranquil sanctuary of white washed walls, wooden beamed ceilings and the occasional bit of bare Cotswold stone. Kevin McCloud would be foaming at the mouth. The clean and minimal layout means there are only a few designers with a select few of their items showcased at one time, but this makes the place fresh and super stylish, and it achieves this feeling without being austere like some of the big time billies of Sloan Street. Although I only visited for the launch, I don’t think there’s any worry that this could be the kinda place where you’d feel awkward about the deafening sound of your heels on the polished floor … or that the shop assistant would cast you out, leaving you with no option but to cry to Richard Gere about it until he has a word…  Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, there’s no pretention here.

And as for the clothes – despite the fact that LFW designers are in one room whilst recent fashion grads and up and coming designers are in the other, unless you know the labels it’s actually quite hard  telling which is which – such is the quality of the grads’ work. The dresses by Vjera Vilicnik were beautiful and delicious! As in, I literally wanted to eat the colourful and intricately embroidered beading on an epaulette of one of her dresses. Hardly surprising when her objective is to produce ‘hand crafted, beautifully investigated and soul stitched’ pieces. Soul Stitched. Gosh.

Over in the corner were some striking and vibrant tribal looking dresses courtesy of &Co of Knock On The Door – an organisation which sources new designers and helps them create and showcase their pieces ethically, as founder, Charlotte Bramford explained to me.

Even for those that aren’t fussed about ethical produce (but pretend they are), something to bear in mind, is that the fabrics used for &Co’s dresses have been hand dyed by African community enterprises and therefore the patterns and colours vary from one dress to another – so how’s that for exclusivity? There’ll certainly be no embarrassing same dress sagas on the red carpet with &Co, we can be sure of that. Check out Knock On The Door here to be up on the latest emerging designers or to kick start your designing career!

Charlotte with the Knock on the Door collection – modelling one of the &Co dresses.

Knock on the Door Designer – Camilla Kennedy inbetween PPQ and Felder Felder

Fashionable Bath

Gotta love the fashion capitals of the world… Paris, London, New York…. Bath? Well, yeah actually Bath is pretty fashionable. Ok so it might not be home to the garment district or Boulevard Haussmann or have its own fashion week…. but it does have a reputable fashion department at Bath Spa University, a fashion museum and numerous independent boutiques lining its antique streets, not to mention an influx of 4.4 million tourists every year. (It is also home to love of my life Crispin Mills of Kula Shaker… but we won’t go into that now.)

So with all this in mind it seems right that Bath should house a boutique that showcases some of the best new British talent. Following Bicester Village’s lead with its British Designers Collective pop-up shop, Bath will now have a permanent British Designers Boutique, quenching the fashion thirst of several core markets, from the affluent residents of The Royal Crescent to fashion savvy students – because the boutique will not only stock the work of established designers but it also aims to expose local talent, and will be working with the Universities.

The boutique is the brainchild of JoJo IIes, journalist and PR, and Vanessa Isaia, Development Manager at Fashion Enter, who has explained that the point of the store will be to enable people to buy designer pieces that are rarely found outside of London. What’s more, it’ll offer big reductions on pieces from previous seasons. Dear JoJo and Vanessa, please may we have one of these in every town across the country? Thanks.

Images from the Fashion Capital and stockhillhouse.co.uk