Kate Halfpenny

Am I right in saying that London Fashion Week is coming up? Yes, it starts on the 19th. Do you show there? No, not as a rule but this year the British Fashion Council are celebrating the 40th anniversary of London Fashion Week, so we’re doing an installation in the shop window, where I’ll be making a dress. We’re using all the scraps and I’ll make a couture gown in one day. So, that’s telling a sustainability story? Exactly, I am constantly designing with a conscience. Everything I do is made to order and any fabric offcuts, we try to turn them into magic. If you cut out a dress in the shape of a circle, for example, there’s obviously bits around the edge. The flowers on my dresses are made from those bits of excess. I’m sure this is a silly question, but do all wedding dresses start off from a circular piece of material? Well, specifically circular skirts! There’s a particular skirt that we made for a celebrity once and it kind of went viral online, so everyone was then ordering it for their wedding. This particular skirt is formed of several circles cut from silk. It was just so wasteful, so my mum’s idea was to re-purpose the off cuts and that’s what we always try to do now. So, is your mum involved in the business? I lost her sadly two years ago, but she worked very closely with me, for the last 15 years, I’d say. She said, give me all this waste because I can’t bear it, and she came up with the idea of hand cutting these incredible flowers and then hand French knotting them. They’re just so beautiful.

What was her background? She should have gone to art college. She was really creative. She’d paint and make things but instead she was sent off to secretarial college. When she married my dad, she was able to set up a knitwear business, so she did have a really creative career in the end. So, creative parents then? My dad was super creative too but he travelled a lot with his business. It was my grandmother who was really crucial to my love of sewing. She had an old Singer that was manual but she had it electrified. She was a denim machinist at Rolls Royce, so would repair all the overalls – they didn’t throw them away then, they patched them and it was beautiful. It was like the workwear that everyone’s been buying into over the last 5 or 10 years, because they want that repair and re-wear look. I guess she was kind of one of the originators of that because if you’d split your overalls, you would go to Nellie and she’d fix them. She taught me to sew. My sister and I would go to their house a lot, we were really close to my paternal grandparents, they were just incredible. Sadly, I didn’t meet my maternal grandparents as they had passed before I was born.

Do you think sewing is a skill that everyone should have? I 100% do, yeah. I think it’s just handy to be able to put a button on, for example, and it’s actually really simple. I’m not suggesting everyone should be able to do complicated things – I’m not a skilled artisan, I can’t sew how I expect my garments to be constructed by my team. They sew every single day and they have hands of angels. They can open up a seam, make an alteration and put it back together and no one will ever know that it happened. On average how old are your seamstresses? My head seamstress is in her fifties, she’s Ukrainian and she’s phenomenal. She is the equivalent of a Ferrari because she’s so fast and amazing. And do you find that most of your seamstresses are from overseas? Is that where those skills now come from? I am really fanatical about British manufacturing because I grew up in Derbyshire where I saw first-hand, the devastation to everyone in the area when a local factory had to close. It was actually owned by my friend’s dad, they used to make all the lingerie for Marks and Spencer. My mum also worked there part time on the reception for a while. It was just full of such skills, it was amazing and that’s where I did my internship all those years ago – in Celestion Textiles design department. They took me down to London once, to an M&S fitting at the head office on Baker Street. That was mind blowing for me then. I saw this poor girl with this bra on and they were all pulling at it and I was like, oh my god, poor thing. It was just a fitting, but something I hadn’t seen before.

Were you the little girl who went to all the children’s parties dressed up as a princess? No, I was the one in the Dash tracksuit and I think that is instrumental to the whole thing – I suppose it sort of damaged me in some respects, because I’m now so obsessed by clothes. I have this really traumatic memory of going to the Isle of Wight on a school trip and my suitcase had just one tracksuit in it. We had gone from school in our uniform to the Isle of Wight and when I opened my case, there was just nothing in there – I think mum might have got me to pack my own bag!! Yeah, that has traumatised me.

It was my grandmother who was really crucial to my love of sewing. She was a denim machinist at Rolls Royce, so would repair all the overalls…

Was there a defining moment during your childhood, or teens, when you knew you were going to be in fashion? I think it was when I left school and went to art college. Finally, I didn’t have to wear this uniform and I could really create my own identity. I’d paint my jeans with portraits on and because I was a curvy girl and didn’t conform to the stereotypical pretty girl, I sort of had to make a noise with my clothes. I think it was a confidence thing – we talk about it a lot through my business, through the storytelling and social media. We want to empower people with the dresses that we create, because I know how powerful clothes were for me. Once I got to art college, I just became obsessed with fashion, with designers like Vivienne Westwood. I got an internship with her and did my year out there in London, but quickly realised that I loved fashion and clothes so much that I didn’t want to work for somebody else. I didn’t want to create something for somebody else, I wanted to really go on the whole journey of making and creating and that’s when I fell into styling and working with celebrities. I think what made me such a successful stylist is that I didn’t buy clothes that I wanted to wear for myself, or that would suit me, but instead looked at my clients as individuals and suggested clothes that would really work for their bodies and look amazing on them. That kind of gave me the upper hand because I had to really look at them as a personality with their own unique character.

That’s interesting because being naïve, and having never really thought about it, I was envisaging styling as being more formulaic – about body shape, fabric choice and colour, but you’re going way beyond that, talking about how you would convey a personality or a personal brand. It was part of their brand, but for me, when somebody’s got an outfit on that they’re comfortable in, and they feel empowered in, they radiate. We’re trying to do the same for our brides on their wedding days, to make them feel like the very best version of themselves. Who was the best person to work for? My favourite, and the most fun outfit we did, was for Rihanna at the MTV Awards. She was just so gracious and I can remember her asking if she could put me in her suitcase and take me around the world with her, just so I could dress her? I was like, well maybe! She was amazing, I made her a bespoke outfit with this big skirt – it was all flowers and looked like a hanging basket. It was just fun – that one was brilliant.

How do you develop the ideas for your collections? Okay, so the collection that we’re launching in Barcelona in April is called Speak. For me, that collection was about how important communication is right now, not just between me and my team, but for everyone. We started designing it at the beginning of last year, as we were coming out of a major crisis, so we reflected on how important communication had been throughout that period and how we’d missed the intimacy of being together and having that human connection. And how does it then progress from that conceptual starting point? I mood board things that are relevant to me or have inspired me over the years, be it a photograph of a beautiful piece of ceramics that James might have bought, or it could be a piece from an exhibition that I’ve been to at the Tate.

So, you’re combining stored memories and physical objects. The things that you have collected and can be seen all around your house – you and James are definitely collectors. Fanatical collectors really, it’s out of control! I certainly wouldn’t recommend downsizing! I know, we’ve lived here for 6 years now and our old house, in London, would fit into a fifth of this house. I visited it again recently and was thinking how remarkable it was, the amount of stuff that we packed into it. They’ve re-styled it now so it’s very minimal and beautiful and I was like gosh, what must people have thought when they used to walk in here and all this was in one room. When you walk into your home it is quite all-consuming, but in a very good way. We love it, we’re both so affected by our environment and we’re both in synergy on that of side of things. That may be the case now but having spoken to James, I got the impression it wasn’t always that way? Totally, he was very much into the artist KAWS, which are the figurines on the shelf there, this big picture here and behind the door in that room – there’s just so much KAWS and gradually I became obsessed with it too. And what were you into at that point? I was very vintage. Things like taxidermy and glass domes, which we still have but ironically, they now have more KAWS figures under them, or maybe a Dylan Bowen pot. So yeah, he was very graphic and contemporary and I was more vintage but it didn’t take long for our styles to come together. James moved in with me within a couple of weeks of us meeting and gradually the dusty vintage stuff sort of moved out. I’ve just re-done the interior in one of my shops, and that has always been an extension of my home, so that’s also now full of things that we both love, there is a beautiful Jeff Lowe print on the wall and a Rose Wylie cashmere blanket – two of our favourite artists.

When I look at the clothes that you design, I see an underlying structure which is quite classical in form, but the dresses are then elevated with bold, contemporary embellishments – is that a reflection of those 2 styles you have been talking about coming together? As you know, I specialise in bridalwear but my original degree was in fashion, marketing and manufacturing. For my final show, back in the 90s, I had to do a research based piece of work. That project led me to question why people had to adhere to having a wedding dress as we knew it then – it felt ridiculous and I began to look at tops and skirts, detachable over skirts, little cocktail dresses with big skirts that would drop off and then you’d have your evening dress underneath. That became the foundation of my brand now, being able to build a dress up so you become your own stylist. I launched the brand nearly 20 years ago but it wasn’t until 2012 or 2013, when I opened my shop, that it really took off because there weren’t many people doing what I was doing then, there was barely anyone. Some brands may have had a skirt and a top but not a whole collection based on being able to build up layers with things like a beautiful lace over dress, for example. Back in 2013, the collection did still feel very vintage but James and I had only been together for a few years then. It was with his encouragement that it developed. I feel like my collections are timeless but, as you say, you can embellish them by adding something like a big puff sleeve but essentially, you have the base foundation which is timeless and simple and effortless. Do you find people always want that contemporary twist or are they still quite traditional when it comes to weddings? I think there’s always a bit of Halfpenny about every bride that comes to me, otherwise they would just buy something from another designer. The loyalty to my brand is incredible and I think they come because they want that magical sleeve, the beautifully embroidered over skirt or that mega veil with 3D flowers on.

We want to empower people with the dresses that we create because I know how powerful clothes were for me.

You mentioned that James encouraged, or inspired, some of your designs. Do you show your work to James? James is integral to everything that I do. He is so culturally aware of everything that’s happening across all disciplines, he blows my mind. He’ll send links to a fashion show literally as it’s being streamed, sometimes I don’t even know that the show was happening that day. He’ll point out an exhibition and says, you’re going to love this, or he’ll buy me a book, or introduce me to an artist. The collection I’m working on next is inspired by a beautiful old book on masters and paintings that he bought from a charity shop in Faversham. He came back and said, I bought you this, I think it will inspire your new collection. I was like, wow, I love it. And as well as providing you with that inspiration and feeding your creativity, do you actually show him your dresses? Oh yeah, I mean, I’ll be in a fitting and I’ll send him a picture. I always want his opinion. So, do you think he’s replaced your mum a bit? Was your mum also a supporting factor in the design process? No, they have very different roles. Mum was more hands on. She would come and sew and make things. We did this particular skirt for Net-a-Porter and I had this idea of this really simple skirt, but with these torn strips of silk or organza which were twisted into little knots and then stitched onto the dress. It turned into a nightmare because they all needed to be hand-made and there were about 80 per skirt, so mum ended up coming along with my auntie Margaret and they sat there for days, ripping and stitching the scraps of silk or organza to make these beautiful little pom-poms.

In mum’s legacy, the flower that she created has been in every single collection since she started doing them. A friend down here, called Abbey, who’s an incredible embroiderer, now does the French knots on them because they still have to be all handmade. The team in my studio now hand cut them in their hundreds, we use thousands and thousands a year. It’s been interesting because we didn’t ever quantify them, mum would just turn up and say, here’s a box of 2 hundred or here’s another box of the larger ones. On that point, do you now quantify the number of work hours that go into a dress? We do. I’ve got an incredible MD that started with me 9 years ago. When I first started, I’d just kind of make it up, but now every single hour and centimetre of cloth is justified. It astounds me, but also drives me mad because I want everyone to be able to have one of my dresses. And I’m guessing you are using the best available materials as well. I’m fanatical about that and we also make everything in the UK. We make all the first samples in the Atelier above my shop in Woburn Walk, and then the actual dresses are all made pretty much within 10 miles of that.

Reverting back to the process of making a collection. You’ve developed your concept. You’ve gathered your inspiration. How does that then start to translate to physical designs? Is the next stage sketching? Yes. And do you still do that? Yes, but there are 3 in my design team with me and I’m very collaborative now, more than ever. At the very beginning it was just me with a junior, but that junior has grown up to be very senior and is brilliant, and she has two assistants that work with her. She runs the production side of things as well as overseeing the additional collateral that we produce, and of course supporting me on the design side. I presume you both now have the same creative approach. How does that work, do you work separately and then bring your ideas together? Oh no, I’ll do sketches and doodles and then they might draw them up. That’s my favourite part of the job. The most challenging thing is the responsibility of having so many staff – there are over 35 in the team now. It’s incredible but it is a strange one because I’m a creative and still getting used to the corporate side of things. Fortunately, I have an amazing team of people around me that are well equipped but the buck still stops with me, so it’s challenging sometimes. So, as you’re sketching, is that when you start to really understand what the collection is going to look like? When I put a collection together, it can be intuitive. It doesn’t necessarily hold together with a central identity, there’s a thread that runs through it, but the individual elements can be wildly different. I design from the heart, I’m inspired by a cloth, by a drawn line or the cut of a shape. I don’t want a collection to look uniform. I always say that the Halfpenny bride is every woman – we’re not designing for a particular demographic – that doesn’t exist in my world. For me, I want everyone to be able to wear my brand. The end user is more of an attitude, it’s not that you have to look a certain way to be able to buy one of my dresses. And I love that, it could be someone who’s saved up for the last 10 years because she knows that when she gets married, she wants to wear one of my dresses, that is just so humbling.

It sounds as though you get quite emotional about your brides? My favourite thing is on a Sunday when Instagram lights up, it’s just so wonderful to see their wedding pictures and how they’ve styled themselves. And how much input do you have into what dress they should wear? A bride will often have ideas of what she likes from Pinterest, our website or Instagram, so she’ll try that dress on. Sometimes they know that is the one and don’t want to try anything else, but sometimes it doesn’t look as she thought it would. It’s very polarizing, you never know, some people will just keep trying, trying, trying, before all of a sudden, you get the light bulb moment. No two brides are the same, the emotion, the connections, they’re all different, so that journey is very personal to each person and I’ve got amazing stylists within the boutique who help our brides.

Is it possible to put into words what a dress means for a bride? A wedding dress is so powerful because it’s almost like you’re wearing armour, it’s giving you that superhero cape because you need to feel incredible – as I said earlier, you need to feel like the very best version of yourself. You want to be empowered and feel beautiful. A bride messaged me at the weekend saying that she had wanted one of my dresses since finding me on Pinterest years ago, but never thought she’d be able to afford one. She booked in to come to one of our sample sales and ended up buying pieces from different collections and was hoping that I didn’t mind that she had put all of those different textures together. She sent me a picture and it looked incredible. She told me that she never thought she could look that beautiful – I think clothes have that power.

Looking back at your childhood – what was school like? I hated school. Absolutely hated it. I always say that I was the runt of the cool gang, I was the one that they would pick on. It just wasn’t the best environment, I was creative and dyslexic but didn’t realise, so they just thought I was dumb. I remember getting into trouble in English, because I would just stick commas and full stops in wherever, and my spelling was bad. So yeah, they just got frustrated with me. Sylvester, our son, is dyslexic and what’s so great, is that we are now able to identify that and to help and support him, so he can avoid that frustration of not being able to creatively express himself with words because of those stumbling blocks.

You have lived in Faversham for 6 years now, but you’ve still got a house in London. Could you ever see yourself not being in London? Well, we are actually looking to sell that house. We previously had a house in Whitstable and that’s what drew us to the area. We had a weekend house there and we’d switch between Camden and Whitstable. We did that for 6 years but gradually we were spending more time in Kent and less in London, until it got to the stage where we didn’t really want to go back. When Sylvester was born, in 2015, we spent even more time in Kent. From a creative point of view, do you think you need London? Well, I still go up every week for work – two or three days a week, so I still have a toe in London. Some half terms and holidays, we will go up as a family to a gallery or to see a show. It’s only an hour away, but we were saying just recently that there’s no way we could live there again.

Just quickly coming back to London Fashion Week before we have to end our chat – do you still go to see the shows? I don’t go to the shows like I used to when I was a stylist. I now have a brand, so I’m on the other side, but this is the first year the Fashion Council has invited bridal brands to be part of it. Well, that was exactly what I was interested in – has bridalwear always been on the periphery of the fashion world? Yes, we’ve always been a bit of a dirty secret really. The irony is that the likes of Galliano, Gaultier and Westwood would always end their shows with a wedding dress, but people would still think it wasn’t necessarily cool. Thankfully things are changing – it definitely is cool now.