For the timeless and the effortless
In the Cab With
Kate Phelan
A Q&A on Being a Versatile Stylist, the Changing Fashion Industry, Kate Moss, the Appeal of the '90s, and Kate Phelan's Seven Easy Pieces
by Bart Kooi
Throughout her career, during which she has become one of Britain’s most esteemed stylists, Phelan has styled some of the industry’s most influential fashion shoots and campaigns, and produced some of Vogue’s most memorable cover shots.
In this week's article: "In the Cab With Kate Phelan," a Q&A with a very Cabmate fashion stylist and creative consultant who believes “there’s a lot more interesting things going on in fashion than just fashion”.
Over the past forty years you’ve become one of Britain’s most influential stylists. Did you always know that styling was going to be your career?
Growing up in the ‘80s, there was no talk of styling. The only way that I understood the role of a stylist was that you had to be a fashion designer. So I pursued fashion design at [Central] Saint Martins — but it was very clear, very quickly, that I wasn't going to be a very good fashion designer.
In our third year, I started to feel that there was much more of a role to be held in a magazine, but the actual physicality of being a stylist still wasn't very clear to me. It was when I went to Vogue as a student that it felt like the penny dropped. To see this office full of people creating ideas based on runway shows, having the ideas then presented to photographers, sourcing the clothes and the fashion. I realized that the way of using the clothes for pure inspiration was really where I was most excited.
But even at Vogue, there was no such thing as a stylist; they were called fashion editors. Even the word stylist wasn't really being used in the industry at that point — certainly there wasn't a freelance industry either. You worked on a magazine as a fashion editor, and that was it. It wasn't until the 2000s that the freelance world really took off.
How did your job, or the job of being a stylist, change during this time?
When I first started at Vogue as a fashion assistant, the only machine they had was a telex machine. You used to have to telex Jean Paul Gaultier and say, “Can I have a look?” You’d take these photocopies of transparencies, and telex lists and descriptions of clothes to the designers and wait a week before you got an answer. The next morning, you'd go and queue up: the whole of Condé Nast was using this one telex machine, you just had to wait in the little queue to be on telex to go through.
It was a very analogue world for so long. In some ways, the magazine print industry — and the fashion industry itself — was very late on picking up on the whole digital revolution.
What initially drew you to fashion?
My mother was an avid reader of Vogue, she always had Vogue every month. I think that always encouraged my interest in magazines, fashion, and the way that people looked, the way that people dressed.
There was one shoot that I remember seeing in Vogue. It was a Bruce Weber shoot that he did with Grace Coddington, which was called “Under Weston's Eyes” [1982], it was about Edward Weston. It was men and women photographed together, which was very unusual at that time. They were wearing an incredible unisex world. When you look at those pictures even today, those clothes are still absolutely relevant. There’s nothing that's dated about the clothes, the people, the pictures. I think that's an incredible quality to achieve in the fashion industry: that pure longevity. Those pictures look as fresh to me today as they did back then.
It really was the trigger to excite me and make me want to be involved in fashion. I could relate to it. I related to them in the picture, these pictures just made me want to be that woman. I've always carried that with me.
What excites me about clothes isn't necessarily just always reflecting what I like. I like to see clothes tell a story and have a purpose. When a fashion picture gives you that tingle at the back of your neck, you know that something special's happening. That story still gives me those tingles when I see it.
How do you balance being contemporary and relevant while also creating the kind of longevity seen in the work of Bruce Weber and Grace Coddington?
I learned my job at a magazine where you couldn't just be one thing. As a stylist, you had to have range. You had to be able to shoot a cover with a celebrity; you had to shoot a collection story; you had to shoot an idea story. In that sense, you worked with a very wide range of photographers and other creators of hair and makeup, models, etcetera. I think I learned about how to use the clothes to make a picture rather than being self-obsessed with a certain look and a style.
I embrace all of the creativity of the industry. I'm just as excited about John Galliano's Margiela as I am about Dries Van Nooten's black tuxedo trousers. I love the theater of fashion and what that inspires and what that drives, but I also really appreciate great design, great quality, the simplicity and the aesthetic of that you can make nothing look good. That, I think, is sometimes the hardest thing to do.
Is there a signature mark or style that you leave on the variety of work you do?
I don't think there is. I'm quite happy to throw myself into different worlds of fashion, I wouldn't say that you could ever really put me in a box. Even though I could happily work in a minimal way, I think I would still miss the theatre and the drama at some point.
Today, a lot of stylists are very single-minded, they don't step out of their lane. That's part of their current, that they're known for having a certain aesthetic, known for a certain style. It has become so important to have a vision and to really stay in your lane. I always remember Phoebe Philo at Céline saying “Whatever you do, just stay in your lane. Don't go out of your lane,” and it's really great advice today. It's really important today to be known for something. We’re in such a crowded space, you need to have that.
When I started working in fashion, I had Vogue as my shop window. I could really experiment and do lots of different versions; it was always through the protection of Vogue. I've never really had to navigate the freelance world, which everybody does now. Now that I am freelance, it's a bittersweet pill. You think there are so many advantages of being freelance, but then there's always that day that you wake up and think “Oh my God, am I ever going to work again?”.
You mentioned that the 1998 "Earth Girls" editorial you did with Tim Walker at Glastonbury best represents you as a stylist. What makes that story in particular so special?
[thinks] What I loved about that shoot was that we couldn’t control it. I've been someone who's always said that you've got to let the magic happen on the day. You can plan and plan and plan, but really the magic is where the spontaneous moments and the unexpected happen. I love the physicality of the shoot and I love the unexpectedness.
Shooting at Glastonbury was completely naïve. We had Trish [Goff] and Kirsty [Hume], their boyfriends, and Trish's baby, Nima. We naively walked up into Glastonbury thinking we could do a fashion shoot there. After day one, it was like a mud bath and there was like nowhere to put the clothes down. It was an absolute mayhem. I thought, “What are we doing? What are we doing here?”
I look at the shoot’s clothes now and some of those clothes could be worn today. That's one thing that I've always wanted to strive and achieve, that there is a footprint. That we're not just making these pictures for them to just end up as nothing.
I look back on it, and I love the experience, the people, the clothes, everything about it. It all ended up wonderful, and we should’ve come back with nothing. We made something so brilliant out of it. If it had been sunshine, it maybe wouldn’t have been as good. It was the mud and the disaster that made it the best shoot I’ve ever done.
I think the imperfection adds another layer to it.
Yes, that’s what I love about fashion too. I love to see what people look like. We’re sometimes changing people and transforming them, and then we’re losing the essence of beauty. I want to see her because I love her personality. You should always find a way to stop pushing it further. With hair and makeup, the first thing I say is “don't do anything”. So often it becomes such performance, that everybody's got something they want to bring to the shoot. Sometimes you just have to say less is more.
When you work with such amazing models all the time, sometimes you don’t actually see their true beauty because we over-glamorize them or over-style them. Actually the girl that walks in the door with the backpack, the jeans and the vest is perfect the way she is. You could do great pictures of a beautiful girl with nothing. You don't need fashion to make a great picture.
Speaking of models, you have a special connection with Kate Moss. What makes Kate so unique, and why is she particularly able to convey your story?
I think she's probably — no she is — the best model I've ever worked with. She is interested in the picture; she knows how to project herself into the role that you want her to play; she loves clothes; she loves all the aspects of the story that you're trying to tell — she loves it all.
She doesn't just expect you to cover her in all of your stuff and then suddenly everything amazing happens. She's a participant. She's a collaborator — I really love that. She’s very ambitious to make a great picture, which is amazing for a woman who's been photographed so much. She still has the appetite for it to be a good picture.
She's just always had that great swagger. The way she brought a coolness to modelling. She brought this real girl. The girl with the rounded shoulders, the skinny arms and the bow legs. There was an ugly beauty to her in a way.
The transformation that came with her — bringing a different statement — was so important. She brought a reality; girls did look like her. She brought a youthfulness and a personality. She was naughty and fun, she had a cackly laugh. That all changed the industry; it made everybody less in awe of it and more part of it. This gateway opened for these young creatives from hair, makeup, models, photographers. It was a real changing time. Everybody looked great in a T-shirt and a black Helmut Lang skirt.
[adds] And everybody smoked. Nobody wore much make-up. They might put a bit of lipstick, a bit of eyeliner or put 8-hour cream on their eyes. Everybody smoked, everybody drank, so every picture had a cigarette in it. Well, it was just so chic. It was just such a interesting time, there was nobody who had phones with cameras, no one was taking pictures of people. Everyone was very natural and very natural with each other. There was a freedom. You felt that sense that the industry had a real momentum, something new was happening.
You’ve mentioned that “In this industry, you’re expected to look and be fabulous all the time, but you’ve always tended to keep a lower profile.” What do you think is the reason for that?
[thinks] I think there's two things. Because I was part of the magazine for so many years: you worked for Vogue, it wasn't about me and my name. Vogue was bigger than me and it was bigger than all of us. You never really pushed yourself as a name; you weren't building a profile of yourself through the magazine because the magazine was the profile you worked for and worked through. That was one big part of it.
And then I think I've never really felt that comfortable in that arena of the fashion industry where it's very competitive. Being on the magazine, I wasn't part of that freelance crew, so I never got to know all other stylists particularly well. I just felt like I didn't need it, I guess. I was happy in my skin and I wasn't looking for anything else.
Now there's such a pressure for everybody to be visible. It was much easier for me — and was easier then — to keep out of it if you wanted to. There wasn't the pressure to be out there; be seen; be important. Now, to be a freelance stylist, they expect you to keep this up for everybody, for the appearance of the industry. It is much, much harder today to maintain that very steady, consistent, long-standing career. The industry now is about change, change, change. It's constantly looking for the next thing to hang its hat on. You’re replaced very fast today. The long-term relationships that I remember don't happen in the same way anymore.
What advice would you give to those who feel the same way like you do? That don’t feel comfortable in the competitive arena?
Just keep your interest in lots of things. Don't let it just become the fashion industry, because the thing that makes great fashion is knowing what exists in this world. Really understanding what the bigger picture is, and seeing why fashion moves and changes in these small ways, and what the effect of that is. It starts from the outside to get to the fashion industry.
It’s about finding your own point of view, to find something different to say as well. It's really important to have lots of different interests, and come from different points of view. The behavior of people makes you think about the reflection of fashion. That's what interests me about fashion: throughout time, it's always been a reflection of a social history. There’s a lot more interesting things going on in fashion than just fashion.
That would be my advice, just keep your eyes and ears open, because there's so much to inspire. And keep fashion exciting and moving.
Out of these different sources of inspiration, is there one particular source of inspiration that you always return to?
I don't really go to the shows as much as I used to, but I can go to Vogue Runway and look at a show, and still find those trigger points that I remember I had when I used to sit in the show with my notebook and my pen. I'd see a look, an outfit walk past and it would immediately make me think of something. Or the music, the color of the catwalk, the lighting. You really absorbed all these elements.
I thought that once I wasn't at the physical show, that I wouldn't have those same feelings; but it's really interesting that you can. When you look at the clothes, and you look at the messaging. I find it very easy still to extract ideas from the clothes from just watching and looking at the runway pictures.
That’s where I get my initial inspiration from: what are the clothes saying? What are the clothes talking? What language are they speaking? From there I start to piece together all my other influences that I've experienced around it. It might have been something I read, or it might have been something I cooked. There's always something that puts your visual language of fashion into a context of sorts.
You said that “the success to being a good stylist is to really understand clothes.” Are you referring to understanding clothes in a technical sense, or is it about understanding their significance within a specific context?
I think all of those things. The thing that I do think has helped me, is that I did know how to make clothes, and I was taught a lot of historical references about fashion. I think I had a really great education in terms of knowing the relevance of fashion, and understanding certain characteristics in clothing that were then taken from historical clothing.
All of those things really do help form your understanding of clothes. But I don't think you need to have that. I think it just helped me. I really like the detective work of trying to work out where the clothes have come from and what the inspiration is. But I also like the physicality of clothes. I like the feeling and the touch, and I like to feel what they can do. I'm always trying the clothes on myself because I want to feel it. I want to feel how it moves? Is it light? Is it heavy? Is it big? What shape does it make? There's something characteristic of a person; you need to understand what those clothes can tell, can say, as a language.
[adds] It's interesting, the last season of shows, there was a real focus on this very ordinary world. I was fascinated with the fact that everything felt like the clothes we already own. I think it means that the designers have come to a conclusion; there's a stop. This is a holding pattern while everybody decides where they're going to go next. I was like “Oh, it's all about the ordinary”. This ordinary world and this ordinary life, and these clothes need to be in ordinary places, on ordinary people. It’s like a perfect Nigel Shaffron concept.
If we move on to your personal style, how would you describe it?
[thinks] I do like simple clothes. The investment for me would always be like a great tailored jacket; that I will spend money on. I love to buy T-shirts, but they're just plain T-shirts from COS or somewhere like that. And then my jeans and tailoring trousers I like from The Row. I love Bottega and buy odd pieces from them, but I'm not a top-to-toe person, I don’t wear the look. I wear the same clothes I've worn for 30 years.
You just need to look around and be confident about what you like. I know the way I like a shirt to fit, I know the way I like a T-shirt to fit, I know the jeans that I like. Once you've got those basics in your mind, then everything else you wrap into it can be the more fashion trend or whatever that you layer into that.
Talking about the basics: Donna Karan had her “Seven Easy Pieces.” What would be your Seven Easy Pieces? What essential items does your wardrobe include?
- My The Row jeans, I always wear the same style;
- A COS T-shirt in white;
- Sunspel T-shirts in white, grey, navy and black;
- I usually update my jacket once a year. I've just bought a Bottega jacket, which is a lightweight, grey wool one. So a jacket that will take you through the coldest days in summer;
- A silk shirt, the most recent one I bought was from The Row;
- A white cotton shirt, usually from Margaret Howell. I buy a new one probably every year so it stays nice and fresh;
- I love my Margiela Replica trainers. They're in navy blue, and I've had them for about a year. I'm really upset that I can't get another pair in blue — I would just buy another pair rather than a different pair.
And I was going to say a raincoat. I recently bought one in H&M, a men's one from one of their Studio collections — I loved it. But then I put it away because the weather had changed, and I went off and bought another one from Arket. When I opened my wardrobe I suddenly realized I had two almost identical raincoats, after which I realized I've got another old Burberry one, and an old Céline one. I was like, “Why have I got four raincoats in my closet?”
Well, I mean, you live in London, so maybe it makes sense.
[laughs] Yeah, maybe it makes sense. I did think to myself, I probably don't need to buy another piece of clothing ever, ever again – apart from my underwear and my T-shirts. I could probably now survive for the rest of my life with no more shopping. But then, how boring would life be if there was no more shopping? I'm happy shopping, for anything from antiques, junk shops, art. It’s not just fashion that excites me in that way, I love finding those things, those objects, those weird things that you would never find another one of. My house is full of objects. For my minimalism in terms of my dressing, my house is like a curiosity shop that's just full of objects.
Do you have a style icon?
Funnily enough — and I do think that every time I look at Cabmate - I always think that era [the 1990s] was the style icon time. I don't think people are great style icons anymore; I think they're just celebrities in fashion.
I would say the icons are those girls coming out of those [‘90s] airport pictures, with the blue jeans and the blazer, or the blue jeans and the Tank and the Prada bag. It was just this swagger, this effortlessness, there was this uncaring of the industry. It wasn't trying to impress, it was just them being these beautiful young women, and that was their style. There was no stylist to tell them what to wear, there was no stylist. There was no transaction in getting their picture taken. That's what I love about that time, it was pure, untransactional.
My follow-up question would be, what aspect do you admire the most in someone’s style or outfit?
The way you wear your clothes is really what defines your style. It doesn't matter what you wear, if you've got a great personality, and you're confident in the way that you look, you will always look good.
To be less conscious of what you wear is probably the answer to great style. Don't think about it, just do it.
Then my final question is: what makes something very Cabmate to you?
It's the beauty. It's the skin; it's the makeup; it's the hair. It's that red wine stained mouth, that raw skin, that funny old bleached out eyebrow. I think when you match that real effortless beauty with the wine and the cigarette, and then the T-shirt and the pencil skirt, it's that.
It’s just that you think: “It's just such a simple way to dress”. It's so based on the beauty of the person, and the confidence of that person. In a way the clothes aren't transforming that person, your personality has to be the predominant thing because the clothes don't take away your personality – they don't give you a personality. It becomes about the people rather than about what they're wearing •
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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