It feels good, too, to see Burberry flying its check flag in the States; a
corner of Wilshire Boulevard between Niketown and Ralph Lauren that remains
stoically British. “I’m glad you said that,” Bailey enthuses. “I feel very
British and I always feel pride when I see one of our stores: this little
piece of England, planted there in Beverly Hills.”
Indeed, with his wholesome good looks and strawberry-blond quiff, there is
something of the Bridesheads about Bailey himself. That morning he had
opened the shop for key press and buyers, shaking hands and grasping
shoulders in his trim blazer, smart black jeans and shiny shoes (all
Burberry). Over the PA he played an idiosyncratically British mix of
Guillemots, James and the Inspiral Carpets, while the LA sun beat down
outside. “I love those bands,” he beamed. “Carter the Unstoppable Sex
Machine are brilliant.” Which is not a sentence you imagine Karl Lagerfeld
has ever uttered.
Burberry had already sponsored the London run of Vanity Fair Portraits,
a retrospective of photographs from the magazine’s 95-year history. Now it
has transferred to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Its launch, the
night after the Burberry store event, is a simultaneously grander, yet
somehow less high-wattage affair. I arrive to find Bailey staring at a 1991
Helmut Newton portrait of Mrs Thatcher. “It’s my favourite,” he beams. “In
London it was bigger. She looked more…” Scary? “Yes!”
An assistant pulls him aside. The singer/actress Mandy Moore wants to say hi.
“Good to see you again!” Minnie Driver wanders over. Robert Evans, the film
producer, shuffles past in a bootlace tie, blue-tinted specs and velour
tracksuit bottoms. Mario Testino gives George Hamilton a big bear hug – they
are complementary shades of orange.
Over in the gift shop, two female assistants are cooing and giggling. They’ve
just sold a catalogue to Aaron Eckhart, the buff Thank You for Smoking
actor. The event is a hit; a good match for both brands and another box
ticked in Burberry’s gentle brand-raising US assault. Over there is Graydon
Carter, the Vanity Fair editor, looking stately in a gold-buttoned
blazer and flyaway Second World War pilot’s hair. Does he have a word for
his evening’s sponsor?
“It’s been an honour to work with him,” he booms. “Both our brands are about
style and great photography, so it’s a good match. Plus,” – and this is
becoming something of a theme – “he’s as nice a man as you can hope to meet.”
Christopher Bailey is an anomaly among his peers. He has not developed a
gym-toned body, or produced photography books on Pete Doherty, or cultivated
a penchant for wearing dark glasses and wafting a fan. “People have this
expectation that you should be a fey, cape-wearing, frivolous person,” he
says one afternoon. “I often think people assume I’m some scallywag, and the
sunglasses-wearing real designer is trotting along behind me.” Bailey grew
up in working-class Yorkshire, the son of a carpenter and a mother who was
head of visual display at Marks & Spencer. At 18 he won a place on a
two-year fashion course at the Royal College of Art in London, and graduated
with an MA in 1994. Donna Karan loved his book and, at the seasoned age of
22, he was on a plane to New York to become part of her team. He joined
Gucci as senior designer of womenswear just as Tom Ford was leading the
brand through unprecedented reinvention and expansion. “His sketches were
terrific,” Ford says. “Plus, someone told me to only hire people you want to
have dinner with.”
He remains happiest in Yorkshire, among “the cows and trees” of his childhood
or playing with his dog, George, a brown labrador. In 2005, his “situation
changed from black to white” when his partner, Geert Cloet, brand director
of Miu Miu, died of a brain tumour. “That experience puts everything in
perspective. It makes you love life every day. It completely changed the way
I approach everything. Life’s too short to be doing things that make you
unhappy.”
For Bailey, that means his all-encompassing work with Burberry. He oversees
more than 15 collections a year, from £1,700 ruched georgette dresses to
iPod covers, and even designs the stores, choosing the panelling and
carpets. “That makes me sound like some egomaniac. But there’s nothing I
love more than wandering round a construction site with a hard hat on.” What
would it take for another label to poach him? “I don’t feel I am poachable,”
he says. “I’m the unpoachable Yorkshireman! Burberry’s become my family as
well. I’m emotionally involved.” He doesn’t lust after seeing his name along
Wilshire Boulevard? “God, no,” he says. “That’s the last thing I’m lusting
after.”
It is Thursday evening, and Bailey is due at Cipriani, the upper-crust eatery
on Wall Street, in New York. Fashion’s major players have come together for
the Night of Stars, where the Fashion Group International, a body overseeing
the industry, salutes the year’s best designers. The actress Kate Bosworth
was to present the Designer of the Year award to Bailey, but she and her
boyfriend, the model James Rousseau, got stuck in traffic on the way to
collect him. Now the three of them are stuck in traffic on the way to
Cipriani. Inside, reporters line up to get their two cents’ worth with the
celebrity guests before they sit down to dine.
The designer Isaac Mizrahi is explaining his tips for evening dressing. “You
start with the shoes,” he reveals. “Then everything goes from there.” Karl
Lagerfeld appears. Is he looking forward to the night? “I am nearly sick to
death with food poisoning,” says the stick-thin man who once said, “I almost
never eat.” Donatella Versace arrives. “I love your dress!” coos
Mizrahi. Then it is time to sit down. But on table 36, the places for Bailey
and Bosworth remain empty. Hugh Dancy is stuck out on his own. The speeches
start. Bailey and Bosworth appear at the door. “We’re so late,” Bailey says,
grabbing my arm and giggling.
Backstage, there is more giggling. “It was much more heavy-hitting than I had
anticipated,” says Bailey afterwards. “There was Donatella, Karl, Anna
Wintour, [Italian Vogue editor-in-chief] Franca Sozzani, [Condé Nast
chairman] Jonathan Newhouse, Kate and myself; all these major people
reciting their lines. We all got the giggles.”
The last time I speak to Bailey, he is back at Burberry’s London HQ, running
between design meetings and a talk with the French perfume house that is
developing Burberry fragrances. It is too early to gauge the impact of
America Week, but he deems it a success. “People were excited about the
opening, and lots went back to the store afterwards.” All three events have
received extensive, positive press coverage. “I do love the American
enthusiasm,” Bailey concludes.
He particularly enjoyed the lunch he’d thrown for Neiman Marcus’s best
Burberry customers in New York. “They were so excited, enthusiastic
and positive that I left on a real high.” A few had even offered him design
tips. “But my friends do that all the time,” he laughs. “‘Why don’t you do
this, but in such-a-such a fabric?’ You take what you can from that and
disregard the rest. That’s a really nice thing.”
For the unpoachable Yorkshireman – Designer of the Year, but also Designer of
the People – it is all in a day’s work.
