Luellaless

As much as i would like this blog to be all about positivity, a dark, dark cloud has settled over British fashion this week as the main investors behind super special label Luella have bloody well pulled out and ruined it for all of us who like pastels, fab hair accessories and unabashed girliness.

The swines!

Luella is the eponymous London Fashion Week-storming label from Luella Bartley, who used to write for Vogue and seems to be an all round good egg with affection for her native Cornwall, witches, bows, and horses. It was a decade ago that Luella's debut collection, brilliantly named “Daddy, I want a pony” caught the attention of the, at times, rather miserable fashion press, and ever since then we have been treated to clothes and accessories that are gloriously feminine but deconstructed, with a sly nod to the sense of humour that makes Brit fashion fun.

Despite the fact that the label rakes in £9m, the closure of one of Luella's manufacturing partners has sounded a very unwelcome death knell with a domino effect of investors getting cold feet and buggering off. For shame!

Now, this is a designer business that has prices that normal people such as you and I could justify if we wore or used an item at least 4 times a week, all year, eating only kidney beans, so why the devil should we care that Luella seems to have bitten the fashion dust? Well, the short answer is because all the shops that we can afford to spend precious funds in copy her like their lives depend on it!

This was particularly the case in spring/summer of this year, when the high street had more girly pastel/acid brights, randomly placed ruffles, florals, spots and hairbands with more bloody great bows on than you could shake a stick at. Plus, most of the looks that Luella creates have a very nice homely feel to them that is really easy to re-create after a successful rummage in a charity shop (especially with the expert eye of the nimble Miss Page) or vintage store. Incidentally, this look was key to we three bloggers when celebrating Miss St Cyr's birthday earlier this year.

To think that Luella is about to disappear faster than Lindsay Lohan's film career is just wrong, wrong, wrong! I shall keep my eyes peeled for a saviour and/or raid my piggy bank.

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Apollonia Gish x