William Banks-Blaney picks up a Dior dress and coat from the 1960s and sighs. “Look at how this has been stitched.” For the average woman, it might be too smart — that “Jackie Kennedy meets the Queen” formality is not often required nowadays. But for a William Vintage client, it’s spot-on: this is vintage, and then some. Banks-Blaney has been instrumental in creating a new tribe of conservative vintage customers, women for whom the concept was previously a turn-off and not the style byword others took for granted. Like Didier Ludot in Paris, Rare Vintage in New York or Cameron Silver’s Decades in LA, here, “it’s all about a dress, not fancy dress”.
Valentino, Oscar de la Renta, Ungaro, Gaultier, Balenciaga, Balmain, Lanvin, Alaïa, Ossie Clark: Banks-Blaney sells mint-condition couture and finely crafted prêt-à-porter that require no innate style nous to wear well. The shop is small and elegant, set over two floors, and Diptych redcurrant-scented. The clothes hang a precise inch or so apart on the rail. He sources pieces “everywhere”, often being invited to take a discreet look through old wardrobes. One such invitation came from an old friend of Liz Taylor’s, to rummage through a barn in Devon. It netted his most exciting haul to date: 15 pieces of Courrèges haute couture in perfect nick.
Vintage runs through Banks-Blaney like the proverbial stick of rock. He was reading old magazines and Miller’s Antiques from the age of eight. A stint in rehab (he hasn’t had a drink in nearly 15 years) and a false start in law meant he didn’t leave university with a degree in history of art and heritage management until his late twenties. His first job was in interior design, working for David Linley, but, “I’d be looking for characterful objets for a client’s home and end up spotting vintage pieces, which I would give as a gift, or sell them at cost price”.
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He takes an inordinate delight in making women look their best through a combination of killer dress, hairdo, mani/pedi, cupcakes and “a bit of a chat”. This, say his regulars, takes precedence over any desire to make a sale. Favourite clients bring their down-in-the-dumps friends along, saying, “Darling, she needs TLC.” He’s keen to play this down, though, not least because he can no longer give the full Gok Wan to his increasing number of customers. Still, he can’t hold back with the transformation tales, such as the woman whose husband didn’t recognise her after years of “mummy coming last” neglect. Here, three of his biggest customers talk about their conversion from new to old.
William Vintage, £200-£22,000; williamvintage.com
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Kate Hatch, former model, mother and writer
The pencil-thin fortysomething won’t reveal her actual age. “I’d rather not.” She talks like a Nancy Mitford heroine. “Vintage used to mean going to a shop in Notting Hill that’s always closed — so boring. I tried a few times, and thought, ‘Vintage? Not for me.’” But since she went to Banks-Blaney’s first trunk sale, she has stopped buying what she calls, simply, “new”. “It’s not daywear; it’s big dresses for evenings out. I wear long anywhere, I don’t wait to be invited to a ball. Couture Ungaro at £1,200!” she says with delight. “New, it’s £30,000 or more. It’s just great fun to have beautiful dresses I could not possibly afford to have new. This is Sheik of Araby stuff.”
Hatch, a successful magazine and catwalk model in the 1980s, had no great fascination with clothes. “A friend, Lisa Rutledge, used to borrow couture to wear out and I’d be in jeans. She’d always say, ‘Once you’ve worn it...’”
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Hatch would never have gone to the first Banks-Blaney sale were it not for the fact that she’d fallen “madly in love” with a man who “simply loves me in beautiful dresses. And I wanted to please him. Before, I never really cared”.
Hatch, “primarily a mummy, but a writer, too”, has just finished a novel called Diary of a Divorce, while her daughter, Honor, apparently has a passion for fashion. She remembers Mummy wearing a toffee-coloured floor-length Oscar de la Renta cape and a burnt-caramel Amanda Wakeley dress (“both from William”) when she took her to her first opera.
Hatch describes a trying-on session in the William Vintage dressing room: “I was in an Alaïa playsuit, and dancing around, wondering ‘Do I, don’t I?’ He noticed I was a little chilly and he threw that over my shoulder.” Honor pulls “that” from the wardrobe: an enormous, fluffy, white fur stole. “Well, it was a must. It’s just fox. It’s my fox. Some day all this will be yours, I say to Honor.”
Honor wraps herself in the fur, nearly disappearing, and giggles. “I know.”
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Anita Land, agent
“I’m 55, so I can’t do that sequins-and-tits Euro look. So many contemporary designers are unwearable. I just want to put something on and look chic,” says Land, in her immaculate Hyde Park home. She’s wearing a silvery blue shift. “Balenciaga, from about 1965. It’s very easy to wear.”
She is probably Banks-Blaney’s most socially connected advocate. Her evangelism has taken William Vintage to The X Factor and The Sunday Times Rich List wives. “I was on holiday when my friend Gail Ronson said, ‘Oh, that’s lovely. Kors?’ ’No, vintage Courrèges.’ William is sending ripples, without a doubt.
“Of course, the worst thing is that I had all this stuff first time around, and it went to the charity shop. I used to go to school in Yves Saint Laurent Rive Gauche. I once owned a white Courrèges with a vinyl jacket. Do I still have it? No.
“My husband was gobsmacked at first — he thought I was buying second-hand. He gets it now. He bought me what I call my Narnia dress from William. I let Rebecca Ferguson borrow it on The X Factor.” Banks-Blaney has also helped Land’s daughter get a look together. “He can say things a mother can’t. And it’s not just about him having a good eye, he has an emotional intelligence. Of course, he’s always trying to get me to change my bra.” A bit like Gok Wan? “Oh no, he’s much better than that.”
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Jo Mickel, property stylist, mother, fundraiser, student
“This is a copy of the dress Marilyn Monroe wears in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Mickel starts to undo the pink silk floor-length gown she keeps displayed on a tailor’s dummy. She unhitches the long, heavy train, revealing tapes, straps and layers of technical tailoring. “When I got this dress, I thought, ‘Ah, I get it. This is how you make a woman look fantastic.’”
Until two years ago, Mickel had never bought vintage clothes — and what experience she did have of second-hand clothing was not good. A vintage-wearing peer of hers on the Glasgow society scene apparently had BO. “I said, ‘It’s not her hygiene, it’s her clothes. If clothes are not washed at a certain temperature, the biological matter does not go,’” says Mickel, who married into one of Scotland’s wealthiest families. “Her body heat was bringing those smells out. I got her to bring her vintage stuff to me, and I got my brilliant Lithuanian dry cleaners to sort it out.”
So when Banks-Blaney had a sale in a hotel, before he opened his shop, she went down to support her friend, but not to buy. “I didn’t think I would like it. Well, the moment I walked in there, I told him to shut the door and not let anyone else in. I cleared a rail and created my own space. I’d never seen such beautifully preserved items. I thought vintage sales were just jumble sales.”
Now a large proportion of her wardrobe is from Banks-Blaney. She pulls out the wine-coloured Ossie Clark dress she wore to meet the Queen. “And I have this couture Dior outfit that some princess in Belgium had made for her in the 1960s, which felt amazing the moment I put it on. Will has taken away the worry of what to wear. Everything is beautifully constructed and hangs properly. Shopping with William has given me so much confidence.”