WE MISS YOU LUELLA!

After closing her label in 2009 Luella made her come back just once, with a book "Luella's guide to English style", but still no design projects in sight. In 2011 she told the Guardian about a book (a graphic novel) she had been working on but again we haven't heard from her since then. We have to say it: Luella please come back and make our hearts beat faster once again!

We have admired Luella for years and we stumbled upon this text from our Final Project at LCF. It comes from 2008, the time when Luella was growing her brand bigger and no one would have even suspected the future events.

THE FASHION QUEEN OF GEEKS

Luella Bartley is back in London and holding her shield. She is the fashion queen of geeks and she proved it again during London Fashion Week, sho­wing off her Batman inspired collection, where the geeky comics’ maniac and the hero meet each other on the catwalk. She may be the one who was known for making clothes ’to get drunk and fall over in’ but her dazzling collections seem to be far from that point.

It was a good year for Luella. Her come back to native London, the opening of a new store on Brook Street and great reviews on her spring/summer 2008 collection. At last, she worked hard for her crown. For over eight years Luella has been presenting her unique point of view on fashion. Every collection she creates has got its own different motive and every motive is based on what we all experience everyday – passion, joy of doing something we like, simple hobby. Her first collections reflected love for rock and roll or later graffiti art, until the present one, where the main character is played by geek girl falling for comics, in that case Batman. Capes cover tiny short dresses and, most important, a superhero’s mask, create a new vision of the cartoon character. A girl, on the other hand, wears flowery, clumsy dresses, flaunting her passion with Batman t-shirts and finishes the look with big, beloved by geeks glasses. Luella plays a fabulous game between the unreal and absolutely out of your mind world of comics, and the real world of a young girl and her hobby. It is the game between characters and readers, superheroes and geeks, who adore them. Remembering that geek is not only a tech-head but someone who has a passion to the niche, Luella, collection by collection shows us that what interests us and what we do is what we are. She is unquestionably the fashion queen of geeks. It is a reflection of designer’s style, who proves to us that fashion is also a hobby and fun. The whole collection reflects Luella’s girly but still street taste inspired by ‘Ghost World’ with Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch. She also based the interior of her London store on that idea: “It was about Thora Birch in Ghost World. A bit geeky and cartoonish”, she said at the opening. Indeed there is a big heart on the window encouraging to enter a piece of her geeky, quirky world of cartoons, comics and fun above all.

Spring/Summer 2008 "Batgirl" collection inspired by geek girl Thora Birch at "Ghost world" - Luella's favourite movie

As a Central St Martins student, Luella’s path was to become a fashion journalist. She left college for a job in fashion department of Evening Standard. Four years after she started working for British Vogue. Surprisingly after eighteen months she found herself not a journalist but a designer.

„I sort of remember being out one night getting a bit drunk and Luella suddenly deciding she was going to start a fashion label” said Katie Grand, a close friend. As quick as she made her mind, Luella launched her label with Spring/Summer ‘Daddy I Want a Pony’ collection in 2000, which was shown in her friend’s (Steve Mackey from the Pulp) flat. The show was definitely effective as it created certain interest of buyers and press. From that point it could only get better. Luella’s rock and roll soul led her to create collection for following season, entitled ‘Daddy Who Are The Clash’ where she presented unisex rocky look by mixing up classic shirt and tie with edgy stripy jackets and colourful trousers. It was her debut on London Fashion Week and first step into large market. There was Sadie Frost to present first look and the Clash with Kate Moss to watch from the first row. Her rock and roll show could only be described by the quote which came from her later chat with Paul Simon: Pink is the only true rock and roll colour. Finally in Autumn/ Winter 2000 she won Elle style award as a “Young Designer of a Year”.

Luella’s third ‘Dial F For Fluro’ collection for spring/summer 2001 catwalk show was graced with supermodels like Missy and Kate Moss who wore graffiti dresses, still being sprayed backstage, just before entering the runway. By mixing up geeky ties and skirts with classic business suits from the 90’s in bright, pastel colours covered by paint from can she laughed at face of previous decade filled with skirt suits and lousy jackets. “The whole point of (fashion) is to mix it up” she stated, as her mixing up became her signature. Luckily for spontaneous Luella, her label became recognizable abroad. As a London’s hot new designer, Luella decided to move one step further and started The Luella Roadshow, travelling to Milan to show her Autumn/Winter 2001 “Looking Hard In The Yard’ collection in Bottega Veneta’s space. Her second stop was New York with Spring/Summer 2002. Her risky choices definitely paid off, especially that her show was opened by former Victoria’s Secret supermodel Giselle Bündchen. The effect came at once. The same year she signed a contract with British label Mulberry for accessories range. As bags she designed were extremely successful, Club 21, who owns majority stake of Mulberry, agreed to start experimental line of Luella’s accessories, which was launched in Autumn/Winter season in 2003.

Fall/Winter 2003

Meanwhile another changes came to designer’s life. In June 2003 she gave birth to her first child, son Kip, whose father is photographer David Sims.

The lucky three escaped from noisy London to a quiet farm in Cornwall, where her celebrity friends like Kate Moss step by occasionally and where, as she claims, she is happy when eating fish and chips in her Land Rover and watching the coast near her house. 

What Luella likes the most? Source: British Vogue

While showing in New York, Luella signed many contracts with companies like Sony, Vans, Churches, M.A.C. or Target in 2006. The last one was launched for Spring/Summer season with her geeky, punky chic for less. “High design and high fashion don’t have to cost so much...That’s brilliant!” she commented on the idea of mixing high-end with high-street. The same year she won another Elle award, promoted from young designer to British Designer of The Year. A year later she decided to come back. And it was a great triumph for her. London never forgets its sweethearts and Luella is definitely one of them. After years abroad with her Luella Roadshow it was a good moment to turn around. “I think it’s a great time to show here in London. I feel very different from the new designers coming through like Gareth Pugh and Christopher Kane, but they’re amazing. I don’t have the young arrogance I had in such abundance when I started Luella in 1999; now I’m one of the „grown up labels” on the schedule. London still terrifies me; it’s the cliquey-est, bitchiest place to be. You have to be tough to show here. But I think I’m big enough to handle it now.” - she said. For the British Fashion Council it is the beginning of another golden era for London fashion. Chairman, Stuart Rose, is more than happy to observe it happening, especially in terms of British women, who, as he emphasises, are more aware of trends than French ones. As he said on his way to London Fashion Week in September: ‘The average British woman has benefited far more than the average French woman from the fashion industry becoming more sophisticated at every level. The average British girl is much more fashionable than the average French girl, much more on-trend.” Luella definitely is a trend-setter. Hopefully, she will stay for longer, and not as a guest but as a host of London fashion scene. We are keeping our fingers crossed! ■

Fall/Winter 2008 - Witches, princesses and dwarfs

In 2009 after one of Luella's suppliers (Carla Carini, an Italian production company closed she was forced out of business. The orders for Spring/Summer 2010 collection couldn't be fulfilled so Singapore-based company VSQ in charge of distribution withdrawed its backing.

Luella's Brook Street boutique in London

Luella for Lula

Spring/Summer 2009 - Garden Party, one of the most stunning collections 

of Luella

Spring/Summer 2010 - the collection that has never been able to be bought after the supplier had closed its business

"Luella's guide to English Style" had its premiere in 2010. If you have ever wondered what's the key to Brits' up-beat chic you can find the answer here. How to be an English Rose or a punk? Just ask Luella!

DEAR LUELLA PLEASE COME BACK!