In the mid-Nineties a tanned, good-looking boy from Central St Martins College of Art and Design started nipping into the Vogue offices on Hanover Square during the lunch break to sell the Voguettes embroidered sarongs that he'd had made in India. Charm and cheekbones are never a bad combination. The fact that there was a nascent trend for hippy deluxe clothing brewing at the time didn't hurt either. Even so, I don't think that he'll mind me saying that, back then, no one thought that Matthew Williamson would become one of the UK's most successful designers, not least because he kept forgetting to charge.
But the fashion gods move along mysterious flightpaths. The Matthew Williamson label, of which, with his business partner Joseph Velosa, he owns 52 per cent (Baugur and TSM Capital own the rest), turns over £10 million a year, which propels it into the top 0.02 per cent of designer British fashion labels and Williamson, now 37, into an enviable lifestyle complete with house in Primrose Hill that's a shrine to saturated colour and a gift to interior magazines. But if it's dazzling numbers you're after, then here goes, for tomorrow, Williamson's 20-piece H&M collection, in all its exuberantly, take-that!-recession, peacock-patterned glory goes on sale in 1,600 H&M stores around the world.
Even though the peacocks have been a nightmare to reproduce in industrial quantities - something to do with placing them just-so on the fabric - this, by any definition, is a win-win situation. Williamson, although familiar to the readers of Hello! and OK! through his friendships with Jade Jagger and Kate Moss (off-on), Madonna (still on), Gwyneth and Sienna (ditto), Helena Christensen and Cat Deeley (besties), Cheryl Cole (early days) is about to ascend to a whole new level of fame, thanks to the H&M ads, in which our chiselled hero features alongside the model Daria Werbowy.
Possibly more gratifying than the fame is the kudos. Through canny choice of fashion legends, from Karl Lagerfeld to Comme des Garçons, and the considerable force of its global reach, H&M has elevated its designer collections way above other high street collaborations. H&M's are the ones that have queues around the block. While production numbers have been kept deliberately low in the past, perhaps to ensure instant sell-outs, the numbers for Williamson's collection are vast. The pressure must be unbearable.
Williamson, it must be acknowledged, does not look like a man buckling under unendurable stress, though that might be because when we meet, he's recently stepped off a plane from Cape Town. His is not the socialite's yacht tan of Valentino, by the way, but the far more modern badge of the adventurous traveller - and even though a bit of me wants to say, “Matthew, hello, wrinkles?” the rest has to concede that a tan does look lovely against his fetchingly expensive-looking paisley print jacket that turns out to be from the men's part of his H&M collection. If it looks like something that he would wear through choice, that's because H&M asked him to replicate his wardrobe. “The menswear is British boy goes to Cuba,” he says. The women's, meanwhile, is British female goes to Ibiza and raids Jade Jagger's wardrobe.
But back to Matthew, who looks like someone who is getting quite a kick out of the prospect of women who don't have Madonna's budget or Gwyneth's contacts getting their hands on the feather print fuchsia cardigan (a copy of the one Kate Moss wore in his first ever catwalk show) or a magenta Cole-esque cocktail dress. “The idea this time is that every girl who walks into an H&M, whether she's in Kuala Lumpur or Croydon can go, ‘I can buy this' .”
I think he's also happy to have closed the door on his three years at Pucci. Actually happy might be an understatement, although he raised its turnover and fashion profile. So, mission accomplished. But Pucci is part of LVMH, a notoriously porous leviathan into which many a talented designer has disappeared, wilted and ultimately fled in order to spend more time with their accountants. Luckily, Williamson kept his label going and his deal with Debenhams, “but it was like reading two books in different languages at the same time”.
This is where the savvy side comes out, for while he says that he never went into fashion to make money - and I believe him, in fact I think I probably owe him for a sarong - the flip-flop, kaftan-wearing, flat-vowelled Mancunian would-be hippy of old, has become a flip-flop, kaftan-wearing, flat-vowelled Mancunian would-be hippy with an acute understanding of where his brand sits. “It was always quite clear to me that there are two career trajectories for a British designer. Hyped and bought out, or bankrupt and forgotten. I didn't see any middle ground. London is a great place to start - none better - you get huge support from the press and retailers at the start. But then they're like, ‘next!'. From a commercial point of view, it gets difficult and interest moves on. So then it becomes about turning the hype into a sound business - and realising gradually that you're probably not going to get bought out by Gucci and facing a few hard facts about how you sustain a company.”
Williamson employs 30 people in the Mayfair townhouse that his company occupies and another ten worldwide, and has 160 stockists. From its launch 11 years ago, the brand has turned a profit and never dipped into the red. Last December the London store took a record amount of money. In addition to the London flagship, a 4,000 square-foot boutique recently opened in New York's Meat Packing District, next to Alexander McQueen, with two more stores opening in Dubai and Kuwait.
Much is down to Joseph, a former flight attendant, his one-time romantic partner, now his best friend and the company's CEO. But Williamson does his business duty by digesting weekly breakdowns from his buying teams across the world, who tell him exactly what is and isn't selling. “I never thought commercial was a dirty word,” he agrees. “I've never not wanted to dress a celebrity on the grounds that they were too mainstream. I love that Cat's got that girl-next-door appeal.” As for Cheryl, she came for a 30-minute meeting, stayed three hours and the rest is X Factor history.
The celebrity link-ups could make him ghastly and on the make , there being no faster route to the pages of the national press - other than a multimillion pound ad campaign - than a spontaneously posed photo op with Madonna. But Williamson's friendships have an air of genuine serendipity. Helena and Kate loved the clothes - that's why they agreed to be in his first show. Madonna
invited him to one of her first ever parties in London. Later at one of her kabbala dos he met Demi Moore and Margareta van den Bosch from H&M, who later signed him up. Last year, Prince performed at his tenth anniversary show - basically because he wanted to.
Perhaps celebrities like Williamson because he's laconic and witty and relatively down to earth. Until she moved back to Manchester recently to be a full-time grandmother, his mum Maureen helped to run things. “It was a bit cosy,” he says of the dinner parties that he and Joseph threw, even when they were living and working from two rooms in Clerkenwell. Celebrities like someone who's undeterred by inequality in real estate status. It makes them feel cool and grounded.
Interestingly, he says, their endorsements, while undeniably valuable, don't guarantee sales. “Cheryl wore an asymmetrical olive dress to some TV awards and we didn't sell any. Then I was on a TV thing with Mary Portas and we sold, like, five ...but it's not really about sales. It's about working with people you like.”
If he's honest, it probably is about sales. “I know what I do looks like a bit of chiffon thrown together in a vague kind of way but it's actually very technical. In the fashion hierarchy there's a clear barometer of what's cool...And I know that there are some people who think I've sold out to the mainstream.”
Hah! Selling and making money - that's the ultimate revenge.
