Mulberry is at a curious impasse.
www.mulberry.comLondonFashion WeekFashion Brand
Mulberry is at a curious impasse.
Mulberry is at a curious impasse. Since the departure of former creative director Emma Hill a year and a half ago, the brand has dispensed with any real sense of ambition in its womenswear, except to the extent that its design team has become increasingly obsessed with the make of their clothes.
Today, for instance, you had to be impressed by the craft behind, say, a shearling coat with checks created via intarsia, or the collection's alpaca sweaters, which had been thistle-brushed 20 times to draw out the material's underlying fluff. Cashmere Donegal knit, hand-painted filigree, a double-faced wool-and-calf-hair coat rigorously needle-punched to half-reveal a band of liner check. Etcetera.
If you focused on process and materials, the Mulberry collection was remarkable, indeed. But the ends to which those processes and materials had been put were largely shrug-worthy by contrast. The prints and patterns, inspired by the stucco of Georgian architecture, were nice enough but didn't make any kind of lasting impression.
The silhouettes, meanwhile, pretty much seemed like an afterthought. Conservative shoppers with deep pockets may gravitate to Mulberry's trim trousers and gently flared frocks and skirts, but if the label continues in this vein, even the most risk-averse consumers will get bored.