The Times - UK (2021-11-10)

6 Wednesday November 10 2021 | the times

fashion

Marfa Stance won’t be going anywhere

for a decade or three.

A celestial collaboration

Talking of special, the boutique

British jewellery brand Kirstie Le

Marque has been a favourite ever

since it launched four years ago. It

creates pieces that exude the best

kind of otherness, the lockets in

particular looking like something

you might have dug up among your

grandmother’s trinkets — if your

grandmother was, I don’t know,

Isadora Duncan.

So I was excited to hear about

its new collaboration with Wylde

Moon, Holly Willoughby’s recently

launched brand. And I am not

disappointed. It riffs on matters

celestial, and among my picks

are the diamond moonflower

stud earrings and the moon-adorned

diamond and black onyx heart

bracelet (£100 and £250 respectively,

kirstielemarque.com). Beauty.

ubiquitising

tendencies of

fast fashion have

removed for

many of us.

Dant has had a

fair few mother

and daughter

double acts

shopping at her

pop-ups, the next

of which is to

be announced

shortly. “We had

a pair come

in recently in

their fifties

and eighties

respectively, and

the daughter was considerably

more conservative than the

mother,” she says. “The mother

bought a parachute parka in

anthracite, orange and black with

a fuchsia collar!”

Marfa Stance demands rather more

outlay than a Butterick pattern,

needless to say. This is expensive

schmutter. Yet Dant is unapologetic

as to why. More than that, she is

evangelical. “I use the best quality

fabrics and factories I have come

across in my 20 years in the

industry. My factories produce for

brands like Celine and Saint Laurent.

I don’t want to cut corners as so many

brands do. I have been working with

the same people for years. I believe in

paying the right people the right price

to produce the right quality. It’s about

social responsibility. It’s also about

sustainability.”

These are coats that are built to last,

and indeed that can also be rebuilt

over and again by way of a new look-

changing add-on. In contrast to that

earlier soul-crushingly long-lived coat

of mine, I am very happy that my

O

ne of the things I

like about where

the fashion industry

is at right now —

and there are plenty

of things I don’t —

is that small labels

that are doing

something different, something

special, can find their people, and that

their people can find them.

The homegrown outerwear label

Marfa Stance, founded two years ago

by a Burberry alumna called Georgia

Dant, is a case in point. It is the answer

to a question I have been posing for as

long as I can remember, namely where

do you find a winter coat appropriate

for country walks and market days

that makes you feel like you?

For years I was stuck with one —

the best I could find at the time —

that made me feel boring, frumpy and

older than I actually am. Which, to

state the obvious, is not how I like to

feel. But still I wore that coat, because

there weren’t any better options and

because the point about a coat like this

is that it lasts.

In recent decades so much of

fashion has been about churn —

churn is indeed implicit in the very

concept of fashion, rather than clothes

— and yet the garments that were

designed with practicality in mind,

well, they all too often seemed barely

to be designed at all. Fashion was one

world, functionality was another.

Dant was with me on all of the

above, but rather than just moaning

she set out to provide an alternative.

“I could never find outerwear that was

practical but also had style and edge.

And I was dissatisfied with this

industry mindset of always making

new things. Buying less is not only

about buying better, but also buying

pieces that service more,” she says.

Anna Murphy’s search for an outerwear brand

combining fashion with functionality is over

I’ve found my perfect coat

for a walk in the country

So she came up with a range of

buildable, reversible, bespokeable coats

designed to be layered up or down

depending on the weather and/or your

mood. You might go for its reversible

colourblock quilt in gold on one side,

white and black on the other, as

pictured here (£750, marfastance.com),

and then add a contrast collar, quilted

or shearling (from £100), or a knitted,

quilted or shearling hood (from £195).

If you should be in the market for even

more warmth, you could also layer

under a quilted or shearling liner

(from £550). The range is water-

repellent (a quilt coat can’t be more

than that because the fabric is

punctured by a stitchline), but a fully

waterproof (aka bonded) top layer will

be launched in March.

Dant, 39, describes the mix-and-

matchability as “a playground for your

creativity”. It’s also a testing ground

for your decision-making prowess. I

have a couple of extremely stylish

friends who are normally laser-like in

their purchasing but took months to

decide on their Marfa Stance mix. Yet

when Dant asks people if they would

prefer less choice, “They all say, ‘No,

no, no!’ ”

She likens a perusal of the Marfa

Stance website, or a trip to one of

its regular pop-up shops, to her

childhood trips with her mother to

the haberdashery department of John

Lewis. “It was so exciting to pick a

pattern, a fabric and buttons. I wanted

to give a version of that experience

back to people.”

I was that child too, and though I

found what felt like endless hours

flicking through ring binders of

Butterick patterns rather less thrilling,

it’s true that what I ended up with was

clothes that were definitively mine.

That’s one more aspect of getting

dressed that the flattening,

These

coats can

be rebuilt

over and

again

onsiderably

Earrings, £100,

and bracelet, £250,

kirstielemarque.com.

Top: coat, £750,

marfastance.com