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In the days before he was dressing Harry Styles for the Grammys, and before he was putting Emma Corrin in Miu Miu’s knitted knickers at Venice Film Festival, Harry Lambert was a fashion-obsessed British Vogue intern trawling Mayfair charity shops for designer vintage. “When I first moved to London and got into fashion, I didn’t have the budget for any of it. It wasn’t my time to be buying a Prada shirt, but I still wanted to come to the office feeling amazing, and like I was making an effort,” he says.
Lambert slaked his thirst for luxury fashion via those charity shop hauls and the high street/designer collabs that proliferated in the late Noughties, when Topman was bringing clothes by the likes of Caroline Massey, Meadham Kirchhoff, Christopher Kane and JW Anderson to young customers at an accessible price point. It’s why unveiling a capsule collection of his own for another high-street behemoth, Zara, feels like something of a full-circle moment for Lambert. “Very selfishly I was like, this is my opportunity to design for myself 15 years ago,” he says. “The high street was really important to me discovering my own style.”
His Cutie Chaos collection (“I was trying to think of something that would look great on a T-shirt,” Lambert says of christening the line) is brimming with retro cuts, ’70s-inspired shades and quirky cartoon prints. “I had a really big moodboard of old references, including illustrations from vintage toy cards. I found these characters that felt very nostalgic but very cute – I’ve been carrying the bag [printed with an illustrated fox] around loads. I wanted to make there was a sense of fun in this collection.”
Lambert is also keenly aware of the problems inherent in high-street fashion, and the toll that overproduction in the industry generally takes on the planet. “I wanted to make sure that we were being as responsible as possible,” he says, which is why the 60 odd pieces in the Cutie Chaos collection use mostly lower impact fibers and recycled raw materials, such as recycled wool, polyester, nylon and cotton. Lambert also paid special attention to the finishes. “The buttons are all covered, which is not normally the case with high-street collections. The quality of each piece needed to be really great, so people are either going to keep it forever, or sell it on.”
Cutie Chaos draws inspiration from the Norwich-born stylist’s work with his A-list clients, and Harry Styles fans will clock certain pieces – the sweater vests, the exaggerated collars – that look tailor-made for one of pop’s most celebrated dressers. “He has selected a few pieces, Emma Corrin has too,” Lambert confirms, laughing. But despite all the influential celebrity friends placing their orders, Harry is most looking forward to the fashion-obsessed teens that remind him of his younger self getting their hands on the collection. “The first time I see Cutie Chaos out in the wild… that’s what I’m most excited about.”
Cutie Chaos is available to shop exclusively at Dover Street Market from 9 November, and from 13 November online and in selected Zara stores
