Building a solid fashion house is no mean feat, especially in our financially unstable times.
This is why reading the story of a fashion designer such as Caroline Charles, OBE, one of the first designers to take part in the early editions of London Fashion Week, is truly a pleasure.
Fans of British fashion may therefore want to add to their wish lists the recently published volume Caroline Charles – 50 Years in Fashion (ACC Editions) that celebrates her story and achievements.
Born in Cairo, Charles spent a couple of years at Swindon Technical College, before deciding she was going to be a dressmaker.
After a spell at couturier Michael Sherard where she started from picking pins (the lower step in the tailor/dressmaker's ladder...), she became a salesgirl at Mary Quant, worked with a fashion photographer, but kept on designing in the evening and in the early hours of the morning. Clients eventually materialised and she started working from her flat.
Charles made her first samples in an attic in Chelsea, then launched a collection in September 1963 with a quirky photo shoot on a submarine in Portsmouth harbour. London in the 1960s was a creative hub, the perfect location for talents from the most disparate fields, including film, fashion, art and photography.
Youthquake arrived, giving Charles & Co the chance to introduce to Britain and to the rest of the world a new, fresh, dynamic, and fun lifestyle.
After her second collection and her first orders, Charles, at the time in her early twenties, became the youngest English designer to catch the attention of buyers outside Britain, selling in New York, where she was invited by Macy's department stores, Stockholm and Paris.
Charles also created clothes for a new generation of celebrities: she made suits for Peter Finch and Mick Jagger; singer Cilla Black became one of her most loyal customers, together with Dionne Warwick, Petula Clark, Millie, Marianne Faithfull, Barbra Streisand and even Rudolf Nureyev. Charles also had the privilege of witnessing a Beatles' gig from behind the scenes and had lunch with Emmanuelle Khanh while shooting in Paris Vittorio De Sica's A New World.
The most iconic image from the Charles archives from these years shows Ringo Starr wearing one of her tailored suit in 1964.
Before the '60s were over Charles ha already travelled to India to source fabrics and embroideries, created uniforms for the Estée Lauder staff at Harrods and for Terence Conran's Habitat's (and later on for Boots The Chemist and the Gulf Air hostesses), she had had a BBC radio show and had appeared in a Vidal Sassoon shot for his book Sorry I Kept You Waiting, Madam.
The '70s were stylishly calmer years as they brought a brand new romance with fabrics and relaxed shapes and silhouettes, big sleeves and high waists. Business-wise life was instead particularly busy with new collaborations wth fabric and children's shoe companies, the first shop in Beverly Hills and expansion in new markets, a trend that followed in the '80s.
During this decade Charles intensified her trips to Japan starting licensing deals, but also researching new fabrics.
Further successes followed in the '90s including releasing an official scarf for HM The Queen's 40th accession anniversary celebrations, dressing Emma Thompson at the Oscars and BAFTAs ceremonies, and creating home and stationery collections.
The book also features quite interesting stories - from Charles meeting Anna Wintour portrayed as a young woman with a precise eye for fashion, to writer Jean Rhys doing a photoshoot for the fashion house.
Charles is pretty honest in recounting stories from her life and is also keen to admit her mistakes such as a hilarious research trip to Mauritius to study the needs of women in glamorous resorts for a cruise/holiday collection that she wrongly took with her team during cyclone season and that instead ended up inspiring a travel piece for The Guardian very aptly entitled “Fashion Victim”.
In a way this volume could be seen as a lesson to show how things changed in fashion: in the '70s the production was made in-house and the samples were then sent to a selection of factories in London that would produce small quantities and keep up with quality and delivery dates, things obviously changed as Charles expanded in other sectors even though she went back to producing small runs of hand-made clothes for her Studio collection.
Caroline Charles - 50 Years in Fashion is well-timed: this is the successful story of a British designers and at the moment London Fashion Week is globally considered one of the most interesting and freshest fashion events around.
The best thing about the book remains its format as it was conceived as a sort of scrapbook telling Charles' story through articles, drawings, studio sketches, illustrations, photographs from lookbooks, photoshoots, advertising campaigns, and the detailed diary of a 24-day music and fashion tour across the USA that took place in 1965 (if only that could happen again...).
The volume also includes a Q&A with Charles in which she reveals the keys to her success - making fashionable yet wearable clothes for working women and relentlessly researching for new fabrics and textiles all over the world. Fashion students and passionate fashionistas please take note.
Caroline Charles - 50 Years in Fashion is out now and available to purchase from ACC Editions.
Image credits
P. 29 - Ringo Starr in his Caroline Charles suit, 1964
p.13 - Caroline Charles holding design sketches, 1964
p.230 - ‘Bella’ dress in Italian Como print on figured silk, S/S 2011
All images courtesy of ACC Editions taken from the volume Caroline Charles - 50 Years in Fashion
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Born in the sphere of Cairo, Charles spent a connect of years by the side of Swindon Technical College, by deciding she was going away to survive a dressmaker.
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Posted by: Sunglasses blog | December 11, 2012 at 04:18 AM
There are some cool collections of caroline and its been really legend in the world of fashion.
Posted by: Fashion Design Program | December 11, 2012 at 06:21 AM
Awesome cool collections of Caroline! I really like your all collections. Thanks for sharing blog post
Posted by: Online Cloth Shopping | December 14, 2012 at 08:10 AM