On my first day at Central Saint Martins , after arriving aged 19 from the Highlands of Scotland, I was shocked to see that people dressed...
just like me. While I couldn’t tell you what I was wearing, I can tell you that in the room full of people who I was going to spend the next four years with, not one of them looked like the fashion students I had seen on The Clothes Show. I felt robbed and relieved at the same time.
For of course, very few of these people were from London either, and the only one who stood out was a glamorous Italian in a Prada skirt. Naturally. But over those four years and long beyond, all of us eventually figured out what we wanted to wear.
For one that meant getting more casual as she fought against her fashion degree choices, for another she quickly became the ‘cool’ girl in emerging labels no one had yet heard of. I took a little longer. To support myself through college I worked in retail, and I may have learnt more about clothes from those Saturday shifts than from my fellow students.
I learnt that if I wore tight trousers and bent down a lot in the gentleman’s outfitters on Piccadilly where I worked, I sold more plus fours to rich, elderly Englishmen. I’m not proud of it but I needed to sell stuff. I then moved into the world of elevated high-street women’s fashion in Covent Garden and discovered the irresistible glory of designer denim, which has ruined me to this day.
Finally, I secured a place in a luxury store in Notting Hill , .
