94
respect for each other, and who also
recognized each other’s different ap-
titudes. I was so lucky, because most
Italian fashion wasn’t that way.”
Sarah Burton describes her way
of crafting clothes with her team at
Alexander McQueen as “more of a
hive than a hierarchy.” Her belief in
the strength and sensitivity of women
gets subtly transmitted in everything
she does, right through to the speech
about female emancipation by the suf-
fragette Christabel Pankhurst on Bur-
ton’s fall show soundtrack. Recently,
she’s been hybridizing tailoring with
side-drapes, whorling 3-D roses into
jackets, and implanting Victoriana
bustles into tuxedos—contemporary
advances that do away with old bina-
ries of masculine-feminine dressing.
“The point,” says Burton, “is that to
be powerful, you don’t have to look
like a man.”
T
he breakthrough to the sun-
ny uplands where all sorts
of women’s styles and tal-
ents are now being sought
out has, of course, only been reached
after years of ingrained institution-
al gender bias. I remember being
shocked as I overheard—at the turn
of the millennium, when McCartney,
Waight Keller, Burton, and Phoebe
Philo were in their early 20s—male
fashion executives debating the hire-
ability of young women as creative di-
rectors due to their awkward tendency
to give birth. That, and the insidious
whispering of male pundits that wom-
en were capable only of designing
wearable clothes—a genetically lower
category than the high-flown genius
created by a man.
It was the current generation of pro-
fessionals who turned the tables on
everybody—but not without a fight.
“I started out at 25 in a very male-
driven Parisian house,” McCartney
remembers of her time at Chloé, “but
I noticed that it was younger women
who were really driving the sales.” She
soon jumped ship to set up her own
label—a now CONTINUED ON PAGE 142
Martine Rose Rei Kawakubo
Victoria Beckham
Clare Waight
Keller
Mary Katrantzou
Angela
Missoni
Veronica
Swanson Beard
and Veronica
Miele Beard Anna^ Sui
Silvia Fendi
Vera Wang
Maria Grazia
Chiuri
Christelle Kocher
DETAILS, SEE IN THIS ISSUE
