I don’t get the impression that Christopher Kane goes in for much
self-introspection. If he did, surely he would have asked himself why, at
27, he’s in such a hurry. He was a student when Donatella Versace, seeing
some of his sketches, sent him some fabric that cost £500 a meter so that he
could finish his collection, andcommissioned him to work from London on
pieces for her company (he didn’t want to move to Milan).
He had barely graduated from St Martins College of Art & Design when he
showed at London Fashion Week. Next came the introduction to Anna Wintour,
then the big American buyers who scrutinised, pulled (and in one case yanked
the lace off) and ordered his dresses. Now he is sitting in his very own
little empire. This being a British fashion story, it’s an empire with more
influence than turnover, housed in a slightly grimy industrial building in
Dalston, East London, which doesn’t sound glamorous. But Dalston is on the
up, probably because it’s cheap and any moment now an estate agent will
utter the immortal words, Dalston Village.
In the flesh, Kane is quite small but looks like someone who could take care
of himself. He’s wearing dark jeans and a dark sweater — the usual designer
uniform, which I always think is a bit rich, given what they dream up for us
to wear. Kane’s dreams are bolder than most: micro-mini neon dresses,
snakeskin printed chiffon, bonded with denim, shift dresses embellished with
saucer-sized sequins — if being copied globally is a marker of significance,
he is one of the most significant designers to have emerged in the past
three years. Yes, he says, he does realise that this is not how most
designer careers progress. No, he is not taking it for granted. He’s working
on three labels — his own, the Versus line that he is resurrecting for
Donatella Versace and the biggest designer collection that Topshop has
commissioned. Just in case he starts to feel complacent, he has a habit of
leaving everything to the last minute. He did forward-plan one collection
but five weeks before the next show, decided he hated it and began all over
again.
And now, with all this pressure on him to pull something really major out of
the bag for London Fashion Week’s 25th anniversary next week, there’s a
small part of him that thinks he should do something ugly, because that’s
how you move things on.
He’s not so much a contrarian as a logician. “When I go home, people say
‘Oooh, you look nice. You’re doing well’,” with a hint of disapproval. I
think, ‘Yes, I am doing well and I do like what I’m wearing’. Why look
terrible when you could look great?” So no, he does not sit around torturing
himself about being a workaholic.
But if he did, wouldn’t he have to conclude that the sudden death of his
engineer father at the age of 60 (“one minute he was there, the next he was
gone, as a family we never got round to talking about it really”) when he
was 18 served as a starter pistol?
A long moment of reflection ensues, at the end of which Kane tells me that the
catalyst for his meteoric ascent was probably The Clothes Show,
possibly in equal place with Antiques Roadshow, which lit within him
a lifelong passion for Fabergé eggs — and the John Galliano documentary he
watched when he was 15. Living in Motherwell, on the outskirts of
Glasgow,that was quite an eye-opener. So were the Vogues and Elles
his enlightened mother used to buy for her non-football playing, pink rubber
Versace jeans wearing son.
You’d think pink Versace in Glasgow would be a bit provocative but Kane
says, on the contrary, he kept a low profile, never gave anyone a chance to
say he was gay. “Oh my God, in Scotland that would have been a big deal at
the time.” But really, pink? It was his big sister Tammy who introduced him
to Versace. She took him to the Glasgow store when he was about 15, mainly,
from the sounds of things, because she knew he’d be a soft touch for pair of
trousers. He was, “cos I was this wee kid who just stayed in the house,
watching The Clothes Show with my mum and scrooging all the money
from my first communion”.
Versace, The Clothes Show and Tammy turned out to be a heady
combination. I don’t think that it’s stretching it too much to say that a
mini Versace scenario was brewing in Motherwell even then. Gianni Versace
adored his little sister Donatella and lived vicariously through her
extrovert clubbing. Christopher Kane clearly worships Tammy Kane, who turned
out to be a fashion pedagogue, a projection of his ideal woman and a
bodyguard who protected her little brother from the more aggressive set at
school, explaining to his art teacher how good her brother was. And she did
it all in 5in heels, “way before high heels really took off”. He thinks that
the word muse is “wanky” and indeed it does seem a bit tame. “It’s not as if
she ever wore what I told her to,” he says philosophically. “She’d go and do
the exact opposite.”
To say the two are close is like saying Ant and Dec share certain similarities
of broadcasting style. The siblings occupied the same bed more or less until
they left Motherwell to come to London. “My dad didn’t really like that, but
it was a scary house,” says Kane of the bungalow where there were never
fewer than three aunts popping in for a wee peek at the Vogues.
They still behave more like twins than a brother and sister with a five year
age gap. When Kane was accepted at St Martins, Tammy, who had studied at The
Scottish College of Textile Design, followed him to London, which is just as
well because when he saw his first bedsit in Belsize Park ( “grotty”) and
his fellow students (“rank”, by which I think he means they weren’t in
Versace) he wanted to get back on the train to Scotland. Although his sister
never wanted her name on the label, “it is,” he says, “like a joint product.
I’ll come up with the drawings and we work on the toiles. We sort of design
together until we get a little shudder”. It’s all a bit Cathy and
Heathcliff, but this is not news to him. “It can be excluding and in the
past some of our partners couldn’t cope. I’d have to explain, of course that
‘I love her more than I love you, she’s my sister’. It is a bit addictive,
but we just really enjoy each other’s company.”
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