Interview: Jonathan Saunders, fashion designer

Published on Sunday 27 February 2011 12:17

A CROWD is gathering backstage at Jonathan Saunders' London Fashion Week show. Lynsey Alexander, senior make-up artist for the Mac Pro team and a down-to-earth Scot with seemingly endless supplies of both energy and patience, is putting the finishing touches to a beautiful black girl's face. It is this model, it seems, who is the source of all the excitement.

If you were in the fashion know (which sadly I'm not – someone has to tell me who she is, then I'm still none the wiser, so google her when I get home), you'd recognise her as Jourdan Dunn, whose triumphant return to modelling this year after having a baby was marked by a major campaign for Burberry. In the flesh, she is indeed stunning; an exotic, glossy antidote to the androgynous, android-esque, almost transparent models whose long, pointy limbs and alien features have ruled the catwalk for too long.

But when she eventually takes to the runway, housed in an empty office block in Paddington, all eyes are on the clothes; jewel shades of emerald and ruby vying for attention with Saunders' signature print making. Featuring elegant 1940s-style pencil skirts, belted mohair coats, fitted dresses and sequin panelling, plus a tempting glimpse at his menswear collection (something Saunders wants to do much more of in the future), Elle magazine said it was his best collection yet.

Born in Rutherglen, the son of two ministers, Saunders graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1999 with a BA in printed textiles before moving to London to study at Central Saint Martins. His graduate show, a series of chiffon kaftans, was a sensation and within two days he had been commissioned by Alexander McQueen to produce a bird-of-paradise print. The result, for McQueen's spring/summer 2003 collection, became one of the year's most photographed looks. A few months later, Saunders had one of his own designs on the cover of Vogue.

Soon Chlo and Pucci came calling. Christian Lacroix, the creative director of Pucci at the time, even commissioned the Scotsman to produce new prints that were not based on Emilio Pucci's archives, marking a first for the label.

In 2006, he was the Scottish Style Awards' Designer of the Year, scooping the same title courtesy of Elle the following year. He debuted his collection in New York in 2008, after five years showing in London, but moved back to the British fashion capital last year.

When we speak in the run-up to his latest turn at LFW, he seems a little under the weather. He's coughing and sniffing and showing the obvious signs of a cold. It's little wonder, really, when you consider he's feverishly working on autumn/winter 2011 – the collection just unveiled in London – while overseeing spring/summer going into the shops, not to mention designing new collections for both Escada and Debenhams. This is a man with a lot on his plate. Fortunately, he seems to like it that way.

"It is the oddest process," he admits of the seasonal clash. "I'm also beginning to think about concept for resort 2012 (the clothes designed to be worn on holidays to sunnier climes during winter holidays). So, yeah, it's a weird way of working. The nature of it is that you want to do something that is different from the season before. So after working on spring/ summer, which is a fresh/zingy palette, you're trying to work on the opposite of that."

For this season, his signature prints are pared down and simplistic, featuring fabulously eye-popping colours. Think tangerine, turquoise and pistachio, duck egg blue and splashes of sunshine yellow. A slice of pure summer.

"I think it's time to be bold," says the designer. "There has been a time when we were all crossing over – we're doing four collections a year now and everything becomes so trans-seasonal you forget to differentiate between what is what. But what's refreshing about this season is that it's truly summer.

"The overall direction for the collection was about simplicity but also to have a feeling of optimism and boldness," he says. "I love working with colour and print but I think this collection in particular is simple in its message. The prints themselves were simple stripes and quite naive florals."

Could this be a backlash against all the minimalism out there? The rails of greige and black that have taken over the high street? "I don't think people want to disappear," he says, "they want to stand out, and this collection encourages that kind of fighting spirit: bold colours and a fresh palette."

The kind of woman (or man) who wears Jonathan Saunders is, however, hard to pin down. Thandi Newton and Cheryl Cole have both been photographed in his dresses, but he hopes it's not necessary to be stick thin and captivatingly beautiful to be able to carry his clothes off. "I would hope they're quite varied," he says. "Sometimes if you have too narrow a customer base you're in trouble because it's too niche.

"I think what's interesting is that she obviously has a sense of confidence in terms of wearing colour and she dresses for herself instead of for other people. She maybe has an understanding of quality of fabric, not too trendy or overtly sexy. Hopefully it's a sophisticated woman."

And what will this sophisticated woman be wearing come autumn? "Because this season I looked at Erwen Blumenfeld, the photographer, and a lot of those 1950s picture postcard, very optimistic, very daytime, very beach-oriented references, this season is the opposite of that. It's a much richer, more jewel-coloured palette. The silhouette is slightly more sophisticated and the prints and colours draw influences from art nouveau and that kind of period."

Spotted at the show last week were New York actress Olivia Palermo, Yasmin Le Bon and singers VV Brown and Marina Diamandis. But Saunders insists he doesn't court the celebrity front-row filler – "not unless they're going to wear the clothes," he adds. "I think basically if they like the clothes, then they should come."

And while some design houses have started to stream their shows online – this year Burberry became the first to broadcast its show live on a giant screen in Piccadilly Circus – Saunders insists the traditional runway extravaganza is still relevant. For the likes of him, at least. "It's different for Burberry because they still have an advertising budget whereas for a young or independent designer, the shots that get used in trend reports are our advertising.

"Different people do it in different ways. Dries van Noten doesn't do advertising but spends an awful lot of money on the shows. For myself, being an independent company, it's a great tool to be able to present the character you're trying to portray, to capture the mood you think is relevant for the next season."

In fact, he believes the economic crisis is a positive development, because it forces the industry to look at things in a different way. "Fashion is reactionary to culture. For example, you would never have a 1980s theme right now because it has connotations of ostentatiousness and flamboyance and that just doesn't feel appropriate. So it does affect the greater angle of what you design.

"In terms of the clothes," he adds, "I think what people want is something special. In the past we've done parts of the collection that are less expensive and more simple and, in fact, the high street is such a fantastic thing now that, really, what's the point? What people want from me are considered, beautiful textiles and well-cut garments."

Indeed, he will be bringing that same skill to his new job designing a capsule collection for Escada's Sport label early next year. Brought on board by the brand's new owner, Megha Mittal, whom Saunders describes as a "fantastic enthusiast of fashion", the move was a surprise for many style commentators.

"They approached me about six months ago," he says. "Megha wanted to have someone as part of the team to consider what could be the image of Escada moving forward. So this capsule collection is a great way for both of us to consider something that could be the future of that aesthetic."

He insists, though, that his appointment shouldn't have been that surprising. "Escada's main ethos and ideology was that it was about a full wardrobe, a total look, which is how I love working. It's different from the Escada we know now but when you think about its original ethos, it was brave colour, simple cuts, femininity. It's not overly embellished, it's not gaudy, it's gorgeous and colourful."

He can't reveal any details of the collection at this stage – "they're hard core – are you kidding, I'd get my P45" – but how does he manage to make his work for Escada different from his own mainline collection? "That's my skill as a designer, isn't it?" he laughs. "But when you're working on four different projects simultaneously, it's certainly a challenge."

Which brings us to his range for Debenhams, which has just hit stores. Last month Miuccia Prada poured scorn on the concept of collaborations between designers and high street giants, insisting it led to bad copies. "Prada's very different from Jonathan Saunders," insists the stoic Scot. "It has international distribution and about 100 stores worldwide.

"I really enjoy working on high street projects. I've done Target, I've done Topshop, I've done loads of things like that, and designing is designing whether you're working on a lower price point or not. I think it's really interesting to work in that way."

Debenhams is, of course, already known for its coterie of big-name, established designers – from Jasper Conran to John Rocha – but this is a departure for the store. Saunders, Preen, Jonathan Kelsey and Roksanda Ilincic were all recruited for a more fashion-forward concept called Edition, which will not only appear in stores, but in pop-up shops that will take it further out of its traditional high-street context. "It opens up a whole new client for them," says Saunders. "It is a challenge because it has such an entrenched customer base, but I really enjoy it."

And, as if all that wasn't enough, he feels the menswear muse calling. "It's difficult because currently I look like a tramp and I'm quite happy to look like a tramp, as are most of my male friends," he laughs.

"So it's kind of an indication as to why menswear isn't quite as big as womenswear. But I think there's room for it. Because I work in such a graphic, geometric way I've often been told my womenswear is too masculine, so maybe we have a product out there that's going to work. I did it right at the beginning and we've just started to work on a very small capsule collection of menswear within my own line, then we're probably going to launch that properly alongside resort in June.

"It can't have any pretence that it's going to be a tailored suit," he adds. "It's about using print and colour to make simple, easy pieces. It's going to be me and the kind of thing I want to wear." n

• www.jonathan-saunders.com

All eyes on spring

JUST as women were beginning to get used to the idea of deep berry-stained lips and trying to establish whether the Morticia Addams look really could work on a Saturday morning in Tesco, make-up has suddenly got a whole lot more wearable. Backstage at Jonathan Saunders, the key look was innocent doe eyes and nude lips, a clear reflection of the retro feel of Saunders' collection.

"We went along to his office yesterday and saw the clothes," says Mac's senior make-up artist Lynsey Alexander, hot off the plane from New York Fashion Week, where she worked on Vera Wang, Tory Burch and Philosophy by Alberta Ferretti. "He gave us the inspiration that it's a 1930s feeling. From that we designed a slightly Man Ray-style, glossy, doe-shaped eye."

It's a new take on the smokey eye, explains the girl from Dumfries who now flies around the world making up the likes of Sienna Miller and Teri Hatcher as well as working backstage in Milan, Paris and London. "It's a bit grungy, and a lot more wearable. The only problem is," she adds, "it's maintenance. It's for the catwalk really because anything glossy moves."

To translate the look into everyday wear, she advises using cream eyeshadows. And for an instant slice of screen siren glamour, take her tip of applying a touch of clear lip gloss to brow bones and cheekbones. Lashings of mascara complete the look.

In general, she says, the trend for the coming season is for lips to take a back seat as all eyes are on – well, the eyes. "There are lots of greys, but in general it's very natural; make-up that doesn't look like make-up but a better version of yourself."

Get the look: Studio Sculpt foundation; powder in Bone Beige and Tenderling in the contours; Groundwork paintpot on the eyes and Coffee eye pencil smudged into the lashes; clear Lipglass all over the eye; Myth lipstick, all by Mac (www.maccosmetics.co.uk)

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 27 February, 2011