Phoebe English’s S/S13 collection stood out for its painstaking attention to detail, the impeccable cut, and her ability to create something so simple, yet so very beautiful.

Twin spoke to Phoebe and her business partner Rose Easton…

How did you two meet?
Rose: I saw a picture of one of Phoebe’s MA pieces in Dazed & Confused and emailed her relentlessly asking her to make me one. Phoebe wasn’t really answering emails at that point but finally she responded and made me the dress. I ended up totally trashing it at a party in a forest!

Phoebe: Soon after that Rose announced that she was going to quit her job and that we should go into business together, and I was like, oh okay, yes. It was very straightforward. That was the beginning of July 2011… we put S/S12 together in six weeks and then Dover St picked it up. We set up the business that day – it sounds really weird when I tell the story now, but at the time it felt so right it actually felt like a complete non-event.

So one year on, tell us about your S/S13 collection…
Rose: This season we worked with a jewelry designer called Reid Peppard, which was wonderful.

Phoebe: Because this was the first show we actually put on ourselves, rather than with Vauxhall Fashion Scout, we had more options as to how we showed the collection. It was less regimented and that had a big impact on the work that was made. The space in which we showed – The Freemasons Hall – greatly informed the design of the collection.

Rose: It was so exciting to be able to choreograph our own show. Phoebe lives with Caroline Evans and we had these long, amazing conversations with her about the history of the fashion show. People tend to think back about 10 years – as if nothing ever came before then – so we went right back to how people used to show in the early Twentieth Century. We added a bit of drama!

Have you started thinking about next show?
Phoebe: Yes, I actually start thinking about it the day after I show the last collection. The music and the styling for A/W13 is all ready to go. It’s just the collection now! That’s how I always work; I see the whole thing and then fill in the actual collection as I go.

What’s inspiring you at present?
Phoebe: I’m really looking forward to working more with knit, I think we can explore more with that. I’m really interested in how things are made and their engineering, and knit is a totally engineered surface. I find all the loops and knots so fascinating.

Do you have a particular favourite loop or knot?
Phoebe: I used to be a really big fan of crochet, but then I did too much of it and damaged my wrists. I really liked moss stitch; I’m a bit geeky with knit…

Geeky seems to work, the result is couture standard pieces for Ready To Wear…
Phoebe: That’s an interesting thing to hear someone say as I find the word couture quite challenging. Couture itself is a very specific event, with a very rigid set of rules and I think the word gets thrown around a bit too much. However, the ethos behind what we’re doing definitely comes from that.

Rose: It’s that laboured, painstaking construction. Ss13 is the first season for which we will, in any way, export some of what we’re doing outside the studio – although everything will come back through here and will be finished by hand. Up until now it’s been (predominantly) Phoebe, creating the whole collection by hand from start to finish, here in this studio. This is something we are incredibly proud of and something we continue to strive towards. Not everything needs to be mass-produced – maybe we only want to be a small label, and continue to stand by what we say and who we are. At the end of the day it is what we go home feeling like, rather than all the money in the world. It’s nice to still have faith and be proud of what you’re producing.

I see a lot of similarities between your work and that of early Comme…
Phoebe: That’s interesting… Maybe that makes sense in terms of Dover St being our first stockiest: it definitely aligns in terms of aesthetic.

Rose: We are interested in the approach Rei takes – deconstruction, reconstruction, recycling, anti-IT bag etc – although we come at it from a slightly different angle. We are a small label: we started out with nothing, we have never taken a cash injection and we have always worked within our means. As a result we have often had to work with the question: how you can make something that people would normally throw away, completely beautiful?

Phoebe: I think it’s really important that the work reflects what you’re doing and who you are at the time. We’re working with fabrics we can afford and that’s not an apologetic thing, we’re very proud of that because that is who we are right now in our business.

How is it working as women in the fashion industry?
Rose: We are a bit ‘girl power’; we both come from families with strong female role models. And fashion really is a very male dominated industry. Most of the people we work with are men, although we’ve just started working with a factory in North London with an all female workforce, and Purple (our PR agency) is quite female orientated. It’s actually really nice to have those strong female role models to look up to in the industry.

Phoebe: I think it’s so ridiculous that it’s like that and that that question even exists – women can do just as amazing things as men. There are so many layers to the modern woman and so many roles she has to play, regardless of age – must be sexy but serious, function as a strong individual in the workspace, but also be a good mother, a good sister. There are so many roles that women have to play between morning and night, clothes are like a costume for that play.

Do you have a specific woman in mind when you’re designing your collections?
Phoebe: It’s always a combination of who I am and who I’d like to be.

What makes you happy?
Rose: Phoebe likes trees 🙂

Phoebe: Rose likes a tidy house 🙂 … But really, when I feel that someone has actually got it, and understood it. That’s why I like working with Rose as she always, always gets it, she always knows.

phoebeenglish.com

Tags: Phoebe English