Cinderella life to dress others for the ball

Nov 3 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

Businesses leaders are getting younger and their vision is more focused than ever before. Alastair Gilmour talks to fashion designer Kate Fearnley.

INTERVIEWS conducted “on the factory floor” invariably offer background colour and insight but they can also be frustrating. Phone calls disrupt the flow, forklifts threaten to clip toenails and tape recordings drown in drill din. But there’s always a first – such as being interrupted by someone ironing.

To be accurate, it’s the notebook-and-tape carrier who disturbs gifted fashion designer Kate Fearnley. She and her team of five are up against a deadline, but her careful, deliberate, to-and-fro pressing action is hypnotic poetry in motion. The iron is upended with a hiss of steam and she hangs up a work of art which, if it were in a gallery, would be put behind glass and labelled Study In Taffeta. (Mention “taffeta” to most people and visions of ballgowns and wedding dresses rustle down the mind’s aisle, but the North East’s most imaginative fashion creator is happy to dismiss that particular image.)

Kate Fearnley, 32, works in the high-value material for top-class outlets, including her own Middlesbrough boutique, and for celebrities who know that their acute dress sense will be relayed instantly to the nation via the newspapers and the glossies. And, it’s paying dividends for the former Northumbria University student who is renowned for her entrepreneurial drive, her vision and her fabric-awareness.

“I specialise in taffeta,” says Kate. “It’s not the bridesmaid type of fabric, but with quirky twists and a young edge on traditional dresses and an emphasis on bright colours. I love colour, texture – and fabrics.”

Her creations are regular features at celeb-dripping events, having caught the attention of singers Sophie Ellis Bextor, Sinitta, Girls Aloud and The Saturdays; model Katie Price (aka Jordan) and Brookside actor Jennifer Ellison, as well as Coronation Street’s Michelle Keegan and Nikki Sanderson, plus television presenter Coleen McLoughlin and the cast of Hollyoaks. She has styled and stocked the ITV2 show Wags Boutique and gathered a nomination for the Grazia Magazine Entrepreneur Awards in 2007; she was Young Woman Entrepreneur in 2004 and North East Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2003. That she still has her feet placed firmly on the cutting-room floor is down to an early acknowledgement that fashion design isn’t drawing frocks and colouring them in, it’s constant, relentless, finger-aching hard work involving sewing machines, bobbins, thread, scissors, overlocks, underpins, offcuts – and pressing – normally done to the tune of a ticking-down clock.

“There are seamstresses in the family, so I saw the reality side of the fashion business from early on,” she says. “It didn’t put me off. Fashion was all I wanted to do and I chose the subjects at school that I needed and had it all planned. I have a very creative family.

“My grandfather ran a photographic business from where I have my boutique now in Linthorpe Road – he was also an amazing artist – and my dad ran a record shop here for 42 years. My mum’s side of the family were into tailoring and an auntie was also a fashion designer.

“As a designer, you’re going to run your own business at some time, but my university year out was in London, which was a another reality check. A lot of people don’t understand how difficult it is, they think it’s about drawing dresses or just setting up a label or opening a shop.

“But having your own business is so hard; there are so many highs and so many lows, but for me, it’s worth it.” If Kate experienced the downside of the fashion business in London, even tougher times lay in wait back in the North East. After graduating in 2000 she had a choice of jobs but rejected an offer in the capital for one at Atomic, a Billingham company which designed and manufactured clothing for national outlets and had its own agency. She was part of the design team until a vicious trading spell sapped the will of the owners, who threw in the towel.

“They didn’t want to continue,” she says. “In 2001 I set up my own business and got the opportunity to buy a lot of machinery from the company. I literally took over the equipment and the rent and had to have a collection ready within a couple of weeks. I even went on the road myself before I found an agency.

“I got a lot of help from Business Link and The Prince’s Trust. I had no qualifications in that direction, but they made me do a business plan then gave me a grant to help me set up and mentored me – they still do. Business Link has been brilliant, I’m always hassling them, especially with employment issues.”

Kate now has a London agency which regularly takes her collections for the season, and another in Manchester.

“I’ve had the Kate Fearnley Boutique for three years and things are starting to turn around with a lot of regular customers,” she says. “Sitting in an attic for 20 hours a day isn’t glamorous at all. I sleep here (in the workshop) quite a lot, there are lots of deadlines and I don’t like to let shop customers down, which doubles the work. We do the whole service; you can’t let people go out the door with something you’re not pleased with.”

Long shifts see machinists arrive at 7am and not leave until 6pm; Kate herself prefers to work late, often not finishing until 11pm. Wholesale customers – an increasing part of the business – and bespoke items for the shop create a constant juggling act and a made-to-measure headache.

She says: “We’ve been busy for weeks with two seasons’ worth of collections, Christmas and spring 2009. When a shop we deal with sees something of ours they get it within four weeks, it’s a very fast turn-round. We concentrate on doing something with our own stamp on it but you can only do so much in advance. It would be nice to get Christmas out the way so I can go home.”

Suddenly Kate remembers she has a massive order for five outlets in the Blue Water Shopping Centre in Kent. The slightest degree of panic crosses her face but she quickly returns to her normal composed self. Everything is under control; there are 24 hours in a day.

“So that’s five times the normal amount and they all want them at the same time,” she says. “We’re moving more into wholesale now. The future’s looking good considering the credit crunch, which is a worry. We used to supply about 80 shops but many of those have gone – about a third of them have dropped off the face of the Earth.

“My items are luxury items and we’re still seeing people coming in for special occasions – girls will always find money for things like that. We’re seeing a lot of people coming into the shop for prom dresses. A lot of it is off the red carpet – couture gowns, what they’ve seen – and I have to do my version. Proms are a huge thing, they involve all ages now, not just those leaving school but younger ones are having them too. It’s a lot of work.” (She smiles.)

When the current rush is out of the way, Kate will continue her cutting-edge direction with a new collection. The fabrics agents have presented their wares, trade fair contacts have been followed up and the ideas that have been forming will take to the floor.

“I’m designing a new Diffusion range,” she says. “It’s going to be something that I’ve had kicking around my head for a few years. It’s a little bit of a change and we’ll launch that in February. You’ve got to fight hard sometimes, we really don’t want to be Topshop, they’re so good now at carbon copies, but we’ve got to be conscious of trends such as colours. Acid colours have never really gone out – the bright oranges that so many people can’t wear.

“I see all the fabrics first – I have an idea in my mind what I want to do, but I have to see the textiles, feel them, and see the colours before I design anything. Then the pattern is made, we sample it, make it up, photograph it and it goes to the agents who take it to the shops.

“Garments are pressed, checked and packed. Packing and distribution have to be spot-on – a wrong size in a package puts everything out and we’ve got to unpack the lot and start again, so we have a rule that each order is checked by two people. We always take our bespoke customers upstairs to the workshop; I think it’s important to let them see what goes on. Some people say you shouldn’t do that but they can see what they’re getting is completely their own.”

The Kate Fearnley Boutique has reached the stage where some of the manufacturing will have to be done elsewhere, but there’s a determination to keep the work in Britain rather than to follow competitors abroad. A shortage of good machinists locally makes a hard task that much more difficult.

“It’s a big leap,” she says. “They will have to be up to our standard, but I like to keep the shop stocked in-house so I can feel confident of the quality.

“It’s taken seven years to get to this point and I now have people doing my PR, plus I’ve even got my own PA. It feels good, although it’s not about me any more – but it’s got my business to another level.

“We’ve got a student, Kate Johnson, on placement from Northumbria University and I’m doing talks at a school. It’s important to pass things on and talk to 14- and 15-year-olds.”

It’s the difference between fashion designer and a passion designer.