Brit-Ish

In our lead essay from our first issue, Will Hosie wonders whether there's a space for a new patriotism in British fashion

On a cloudy Sunday in September 2022, British designer Jonathan Anderson closed his show at London Fashion Week with a commemorative, oversized T-shirt. It read:

HER MAJESTY

The Queen

1926-2022

Thank you

It was a replica of the posters that went up all over the city, the designer marking the moment with the image of an image. He distilled historical enormity into a sartorial capsule: paying tribute to the late monarch while appropriating national mourning. His top is both reverent and subversive – in short, a metonym for British fashion. When fellow designer John Galliano told Vogue his work hinges on the disruption of royal tropes – “the Land Rover, the headscarf, the corgi, the Barbour jacket” – he too distilled the breadth of our heritage into a soundbite. 

Some might call it reductive; but it is, in fact, truly British, restrained and remarkable all at once. British fashion is shaped by these petite and peculiar idiosyncrasies. From techniques like tailoring to heirlooms like the signet ring, the cornerstones of the British uniform are, literally, one-of-a-kind. It’s fitting, really, for a country that takes so much pride in its sense of individualism and is ruled by an hereditary monarch: an individual so unique they are the only person in the country to bear their title.

The irony is that the monarch is not supposed to showcase their individuality at all, but to embody something more abstract – leadership, ancestry, nationhood. The Crown is both a person and an emblem. Fashion is on similar footing, caught somewhere between concept and reality, eliciting desire for the status and cultural value which it symbolises. 

If Britain is Europe’s maverick, for better or for worse, British fashion is Luxury’s original free spirit. Leading a cultural invasion like the Stones and Beatles did before them, Britain’s original enfants terribles – Westwood, Galliano and McQueen – made global fashion their battleground. Showing in Paris with French couturiers and Italian luminaries, they exported Britishness via a unique brand of gauche, iconoclastic extravagance. Their rich designs drew on the myths and legends of Europe (Britain then still a willing participant) to offer a raucous and romantic antidote to the fashion establishment through vignettes of a shared past.

This clash of civilisations and civilities made for a riveting biannual showcase of cultural shoulder-pad rubbing, as the classic and the déclassé mingled over champagne. Nowadays, with the homogenising effect of globalisation and unrelenting expansion of Kering and LVMH, distinctions between one brand and another, cultural or otherwise, are becoming obsolete but for the logo that bears their name.

Some will argue it is a designer’s job to reflect sartorial change and capture the zeitgeist. If the zeitgeist is globalisation, so be it. But if we edge away from the mindset of capitalist productivity, we will recognise that the designer’s role is to set the mood of the moment, rather than ape trends which are unflattering at best and alienating at worst. Even for members of the jet set, nationality is a key facet of identity: when getting to know someone new, one of the first questions we always ask is “where are you from?”. The problem with clothes that are rootless is that they fail to engage with their wearers’ deep-seated sense of belonging.

More problematic still, designers and editors have unwittingly created alternative clichés that are, frankly, no fun at all. From resurrected supermodels preaching enlightenment ten years after Gwyneth and twenty after Madonna (were they really in the gutter for that long?) to their nepotistic children undeservedly snatching up Vogue covers, the lexicon of fashion in the West has become tired, anticlimactic, and anonymous.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Save for McQueen, British fashion has not been swallowed up by conglomerates like the Europeans, granting the artists at their helm more leeway to muck about with convention, create a personal style, and cast their own imprint. After the second wave of British designers like Giles Deacon, Christopher Kane and Phoebe Philo graduated beyond the zeitgeist, a worthy crop of names has edged forward to fill their shoes. The recent appointment of Daniel Lee at the helm of Burberry – the UK’s largest luxury brand by sales – is a welcome recognition of British talent after the label’s stolid years under Riccardo Tisci. Elsewhere, emerging British designers are embracing youth culture and camp to revisit the themes of gender and sexuality, from Charles Jeffrey to Harris Reed. Overseas, designer Kim Jones continues to update the kitsch aesthetic for Fendi and Dior, modernising heritage brands for a younger generation with endless permutations. 

Beyond high fashion too, Britain has made new looks out of old ideas, climbing out of chaotic consumer landfills in grubby, mix-and-match clothing. The Ketamine Chic look borrows from rave subculture and the Y2K vogue for eclecticism, throwing them together into a hot mess with androgynous flair and amusement. 

But nationality has been overrought by other priorities and more contemporary markers of identity: what we eat, who we sleep with, and how we’re doing mentally (for the most part, not great). But designers must recognise, as they once did, that the British lexicon, with its flourishing gardens, vibrant urban communities and hilariously depressing weather, lends itself to each of these. By recognising Britishness not as antagonistic to the progressive identities they explore, but rather as contiguous with them, our Lees and Reeds might tap into a wider audience as Westwood, McQueen and Galliano once did, and allow Britishness to flourish in the post-Brexit wardrobe. It’s clearly our art, not our politics, that’s going to save us.

Designers Francesca Capper and Natasha Somerville picked up on this in their Spring 2023 collection for Poster Girl, sending out a skimpy Union Jack dress nodding to Ginger Spice, Kate Moss, and northern designer Corbin Shaw. It was playfully patriotic, gauche and gaudy: exactly what fashion needs. As we reframe Brexit not as a sign of enduring imperialism, but as a cliché ripe for subversion, perhaps the time has come to wear our flag with pride once more.