ONE — Roland Mouret — designs dresses that sell to a few hundred of the world’s most privileged women. The other, Simon Fuller, has been midwife to pop brands (the Spice Girls) and television shows (Pop Idol, apparently the most successful format in history) that have reached millions.
Yesterday they announced a liaison that managed to be surprising, yet still made you wonder why no one had thought of it before.
“The thing about fashion,“ said Simon Fuller, “is that for all its elitism and glamour it now touches just about everyone, down to the kid in the street wearing dirty jeans.” Or the Colonel Blimp fulminating (and salivating) over Kate Moss. “The problem is that the fashion industry doesn’t seem to know how to reach beyond its ghetto,” Fuller said. “It is still incred ibly insular.”
He is right, of course. Fashion thrives on snobbery. But occasionally, someone breaks out of the enchanted kingdom — Mouret, for instance. For eight years he was an insider’s darling. Then, thanks to a dress that was a happy synthesis of sex and scaffolding, he finally registered with the public.
That dress, the Galaxy, was worn by every fashion-savvy A-lister, from Rachel Weisz and Scarlett Johanssen to Keira Knightley and Cameron Diaz, propelling Mouret’s tiny company on to the front pages of the newspapers for most of the first three months of last year.
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Then, this being fashion, he fell out with his backers and left his tiny company, losing the right to use his name commercially.
Enter Fuller, who had heard of him via his girlfriend — and that dress. “I thought any designer who could get that amount of publicity with no advertising budget had to have something, but Roland has real talent. The clothes are incredible.”
Correct again. But what will the man whose 19 Entertainment company (which looks after the commercial interests of the England football team, Honda F1 racing team and the Beckhams, and which last year also launched the television show So You Think You Can Dance, another monster hit format in the US) do for fashion? “Take it global, get it out into people’s living rooms,” he says, “without watering it down until it becomes meaningless.”
Television currently does terrible things to fashion. With Mouret’s direction, Fuller is thinking of launching a fashion station as well as various fashion lines, “from designer to street wear”, all of which sounds incredibly exciting, if a tad vague. The first project for 19 RM, which is owned 50/50 by the pair, involves Mouret opening a new design studio in London.
One of its first commissions is to design costumes for the Rambert Dance Company’s 80th anniversary celebrations — all doubtless lovely, but something which frankly could be brokered without Fuller.
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Still, Mouret received lots of conventional offers from big fashion houses after he left his namesake company, and this venture with Fuller is courageous on both their parts.
For Mouret, 45, it is a second chance to capitalise on a fleeting fame. Fuller, 46, is taking a gamble with his own money. Then again, having sold 19 Entertainment to CKX Inc (a Nasdaq-quoted company) last year and seen his personal fortune rise to more than £300 million (according to The Sunday Times Rich List), he could just enjoy the ride.
That dress and its designers