Liverpool-born designer Patrick McDowell has been slowly building their made-to-order luxury brand since 2018, but winning the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design in May marked a turning point in their trajectory. Hoping to leverage this newfound momentum, McDowell will debut their ready-to-wear line at London Fashion Week on Saturday.
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“We’ve had a huge increase in visibility since we won the award,” says McDowell. “When you work in the way we do, when everything is bespoke, it takes a long time and it’s very expensive. There is only a small group of people that understand that process and can buy into it. So it felt like the right time to explore ready-to-wear and offer our clients something they can buy more easily, in the places they already shop. Our client likes to get dressed up wherever they go, but we wanted to build out more of an everyday wardrobe of items they can wear to her workplace or to dinner with family.”
Keen to retain their values as the business grows, McDowell will make each piece a limited edition, with runs of between five and 60 units, depending on the availability of materials. Upcycled items with scarcer material supplies will run on the more exclusive side, while next-gen materials such as Circ, which is available at scale, will be open to larger runs. The brand will continue to offer its redesign and repair services, allowing customers to extend the lifecycle of their garments, whether they bought bespoke or ready-to-wear. Each piece will also come with a digital product passport (DPP), which McDowell has used as an opportunity for brand-building, working with Ebay-acquired tech provider Certilogo to develop a version that is both compliant and more elevated than just a list of suppliers, incorporating video and design elements like behind-the-scenes photographs.
“We haven’t done ready-to-wear in the past because I don’t agree with the endless product volumes. So the idea is to make it feel extremely special and keep the exclusivity, and each piece will be numbered,” McDowell explains. “The plan is to have no more than 10 stockists around the world, with regional store exclusives.” McDowell is already in talks with leading luxury retailers — from London to Hong Kong to Dubai — although names will remain under wraps until orders are confirmed post-show.
While the ready-to-wear will be more accessibly priced than the made-to-order line, it will still carry a luxury price tag, sitting alongside the likes of Erdem and Emilia Wickstead, says McDowell. Pieces will range from £540 to £8,490. “The pricing is very pragmatic. We haven’t been greedy. We’ve intentionally set the prices at a place that feels comfortable for our customer and that makes sense in the global landscape,” they explain.
It’s an interesting time to be introducing ready-to-wear. The wholesale retail sector is on its knees following the collapse of Matches last year. Many emerging and independent designers are exercising caution with the model, investing more in direct-to-consumer (DTC) and made-to-order to offset the risk. Currently, Ssense is also in dire straits.
McDowell is confident their business can flourish despite moving against the tide. “Most brands build wholesale and then develop their own channels, but we’ve done the opposite,” they explain. “I think what really hurts young brands is the huge quantities that tend to come with wholesale orders, because it’s hard to get the cashflow right and people end up paying out of pocket for a lot of the production.” Because McDowell is limiting production volumes, they don’t foresee this being an issue. Plus, their cashflow is bolstered by a booming bespoke business.
“Retailers keep telling us that customers are increasingly looking for something special; something more limited and more interesting,” says McDowell. “There is also price fatigue at play, and people are moving away from buying the same very expensive pieces their friends have.”
Alongside the launch into ready-to-wear, Patrick McDowell will debut a collaboration with heritage leather and lifestyle brand Aspinal of London. It’s a hark back to McDowell’s roots, when they used to upcycle old clothes into bags as a teenager and sell them at school. Each bag in the 18-piece collection showcases a different British craft (there are 16 bags, plus a scarf and one pair of shoes). There is a silk damask trunk bag and a pair of goldwork slippers, riffing on the pair McDowell saved up to buy and wore during his stint on the business reality show Young Apprentice (a spin-off of The Apprentice aimed at teenagers). “Its a really special collaboration for me,” says McDowell.
How the introduction of ready-to-wear and brand collaborations will impact the frequency of collections remains to be seen. Last season, McDowell hosted an intimate dinner instead of presenting a new collection, and was hoping to show once a year, in September, moving forward. Adding wholesale buyers to the mix might complicate that. “I still think you could do multiple collections or drops in a year without doing more than one show,” says McDowell. “A show is an expensive pursuit and it takes a huge amount of effort from hundreds of people to pull it together. You have to be really careful about when you do that. Now feels like the right time to take the leap, but it’s a constant assessment.”
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