This morning, Margaret Howell gazed at the Polaroids denoting her show s running order and frowned. Yet again she was being asked to provide a sound bite to describe a collection that, for her, was not about fashion, but rather a continuing evolution of classic menswear staples: the cuffed chino, the cotton cable knit, and the boxy two-button gray blazer. "The clothes evolve gradually, and the styling brings them to life," Howell said. Today, that roughly translated as large turn-ups (also popular among the assembled audience), Boy Scout scarves knotted loosely at the throat or tucked inside fine-gauge cotton crewneck sweaters, and the occasional slouchy holdall.
Otherwise it was business as usual, and had the models decided to saunter out of Howell s Wigmore Street flagship where the show was held, they would have seamlessly blended in with the comings and goings of London s West End—no one would have batted an eye.
In the forty-odd years since Howell first started re-creating vintage men s shirts, her reluctance to jump on the fashion bandwagon has held her in pretty good stead. She s the figurehead of a sizable British business with five stores in London alone and around ninety outlets in Japan in partnership with majority shareholder Anglobal. And from a fashion standpoint, her recent hiring of an archivist (perhaps in preparation for a book?) has led her to further reexamine her design roots and feed them into her current collections. "See this shirt?" she said, pointing to a collarless Howell staple from the latest show. "It s almost exactly the same as the ones I was making in the seventies." Fast-forward four decades and although the fabrication is the same, the overall Howell silhouette has become more generous. "Those shirts were tiny. If anything, we re cutting our shapes a lot bigger today, and it seems more modern to me," she added.
Howell s take on modernity may well be rooted in tradition (the Wigmore Street store is also a great resource for books on classic mid-century design, and it has reissued British Ercol furniture from the late fifties), but unlike other London menswear brands that claim an aristocratic pedigree, her line s influences are more closely tied to the under-gardener than the baronet. The vital difference is that she makes humble pieces adapted to a modern environment. "I see what I do as urban," she said. "It s inspired by English dress, and yes, it examines our culture, but fashion shouldn t be about a historical reenactment." That said, you ll never come across a digital print or a skinny jean in a Howell collection. Her personal favorite look from today s show was an oversize gray Macintosh teamed with a white pinstriped shirt, simply because she loves the combination of sharp white and gray. And that s the Howell continuum—neither so fashion-forward that it will burn out a season later, nor so stolid that you might as well seek out the vintage original.
