Fearne Cotton has discovered how a chance encounter between a fashion designer and Kate Moss led to one of the biggest trends of the late 90s.
Matthew Williamson allowed Cotton to have a peek inside his super-organised archive, for her video series ‘Fearne On Fashion’, and it prompted her to ask what had inspired him to make such a bold style statement with his first London Fashion Week show in 1997.
“Everything is full on colour,” she said. “And back then that was really going against the grain, because the nineties was grunge and it was minimalist.
“So did you feel quite ballsy or did you just not have any regard to what everyone else was doing?”
“More the latter I think,” Williamson replied.
Williamson’s archive contains every single item the British designer has ever sent down the runway - starting with the hot pink and blue slip dress Kate Moss wore at his ‘Electric Angels’ show, and Williamson divulged the story behind that moment of fashion history.
“I’d made a few pieces that found their way into the hands of Jade Jagger,” he explained. “She and I became really good friends.
“Months later I’d made this collection. She said we need to talk models, ‘who do you want?’
“She said: ‘Shall I ask Kate?’
“I said: ‘Kate who?’
“A couple of hours later she came up the stairs and we sat on the floor in this bedsit eating a McDonalds and looking at this rail of seven dresses - I’d only made seven dresses - and she said: ‘I’ll do it, but as long as I can wear that dress’.
“I was like; ‘Darling you can wear whatever.’
“It snowballed and with that first show it became this big overnight thing.”
Williamson explained to Cotton how his business has evolved over the past twenty years and also let slip that he is responsible for what is, in his words : “possibly the dodgiest fashion faux pas of all time”.
Fearne Cotton has delved behind the scenes of the fashion industry for a revealing new video series premiering on The Huffington Post UK Style. In the 10-part ‘Fearne On Fashion’ series Cotton shares an eye-opening insight into the chaos of Fashion Week, the virtues of vintage and what drives us to buy the latest high street trends in droves.