INTERVIEW

Why Margaret Howell is the designer in every fashion editor’s wardrobe

The perfect navy jumper, denim that will last a lifetime and, yes, lots of pockets: the 77-year-old’s clothes make the functional fashionable

Sunday May 26 2024, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

If there is a polar opposite to the Gen Z phenomenon of creating a bizarre pair of trainers with the purpose of blowing up Instagram, or a red carpet gown so tight its wearer needs an army of minders just to be able to get out of her car, it is Margaret Howell.

The 77-year-old designer would never dream of something so preposterous. With her no-nonsense approach and the ability to make even the most straight-faced fashion editor swoon, she is known for beautifully made, unfussy pieces created with the intention of not standing out from the crowd.

“For me, clothes have to perform a function. You choose the right fabric for the right thing,” says Howell, who rarely gives interviews, of her purposeful approach to design. “It’s very simple. I suppose I’ve always considered all of this to be quite straightforward.” The “all of this” she is modestly referring to is a world-renowned menswear and womenswear brand that has the kind of diehard fanbase your average contemporary designer could only dream of.

A look from the spring/summer 2024 collection

With no fashion show to talk of — after decades of staging small catwalk productions, predominantly at her Wigmore Street flagship in central London, Howell called time on them in 2020 and is adamant that there is very little she misses about them — she remains among the country’s most successful designers. Certainly hers is one of the most referenced labels in a retail landscape that is saturated with brands desperate to harness the Howell magic — with the figures to show for it. The Margaret Howell Group is recovering well after the Covid slump, logging sales of £18.4 million for 2022, an increase of 6.8 per cent year on year.

For those who have never had the joy of a soothing stroll round one of her stores, Margaret Howell, in a nutshell, is uncomplicated clothes made really well. A place where navy knits sit next to slouchy slacks and tweed overcoats crafted from Scottish wool. Think creaky wooden floorboards, carefully chosen interiors pieces by the likes of Ercol and Robert Welch and Margaret Howell tote bags to lovingly carry your purchases home.

Established in 1970, Margaret Howell now has more than 100 stores and concessions worldwide, including in Paris, Florence and, crucially, Tokyo, where the designer enjoys Paul McCartney levels of fame. Not that you’d know it. With an introverted personality to match her understated brand, Howell is something of an enigma.

We are meeting at her brand’s headquarters, a busy Tardis of a place tucked behind her London flagship. Howell is just as I imagined her, wearing dark jeans, a cashmere sweater and a navy blue neckerchief.

Margaret Howell, the label, backstage and on the catwalk over the years

GETTY IMAGES

There are no flowery anecdotes, nor is there any of the “therapy speak” that I’m used to hearing from other designers. Howell instead gives short, considered responses to my questions and is modest to the point that it seems she can’t quite believe anyone would be interested in hearing her story.

Happiest pruning a hedgerow in her garden in Suffolk (“I love to tame a garden but I wouldn’t say I’m a gardener,” she says) and spending time with her grandchildren, Howell avoids the champagne receptions and panel talks that are commonplace for some of her contemporaries. In fact, I get the impression she is repelled by the idea of them.

“I’ve never really been one for those things,” she says. “I might agonise over an invite for a while, but it’s not what I’m drawn to.”

Instead, it’s the opportunity to escape city life and be among nature that has been Howell’s life force — both in her work, which has since the very beginning taken its lead from the natural and heritage fabrics that remain crucial to the brand today, and in her life away from fashion.

When London was swinging in the Sixties and Howell was following her sister Jean to enrol at Goldsmiths, University of London, she remembers being more concerned with leaving the city centre at the weekend than heading into it. “There was always a longing to get back to a greenbelt,” she says.

Howell traces her love of the great outdoors back to her childhood. Having grown up in postwar Britain with her mother — who had a job in a dress shop — and her father, an army captain, she remembers long days spent outdoors with her two sisters. For holidays they headed to Cornwall. “It was never hotels, always countryside cottages. We were always outside and always among nature. Since a very early age I have always appreciated that.”

A Howell design on the catwalk at London Fashion Week

IAN GAVAN/GETTY IMAGES

She still does now. With a design team in place at the Wigmore Street HQ, Howell splits her time between Blackheath, in southeast London, and a 1960s house in Suffolk, where she enjoys looking out to her garden through “a wall of window”.

It’s not often she has time to sit down. As well as being a keen swimmer (Charlton Lido is her pool of choice) and cyclist, Howell prefers to walk the 1.5 miles to the office from the train station and back each day. Does she live in trainers? “These are all I wear,” she says, pointing to the black Mizuno runners on her feet (I spot the same pair when I walk through the shop on my way out and immediately add them to my mental wish list).

Howell doesn’t laugh much but can’t help but let out a giggle when I ask if she ever wears a high heel. And I can see why: clothes that might constrict the wearer from doing what they want to do are not only not very Margaret Howell, they are at odds with the label’s entire business model.

“From an early age I recognised that the things I enjoyed the most meant I needed clothes that functioned and allowed me to move and not feel restricted. I needed pockets in my clothes, the things that men had appealed to me just as the idea of breaking down the male and female to create something more androgynous appealed to me. It seemed sensible. I wasn’t trying to be bold or revolutionary.”

I dare not say it for fear of making her squirm, but revolutionary is exactly what Howell is. When her first London store, on South Molton Street, opened in 1977, women inspired by Annie Hall, which was in cinemas around that time, flocked to her for masculine shirts and they kept coming back for more.

Great design comes intuitively to Howell, who developed her aesthetic while shopping in Marks & Spencer men’s department for her school uniforms, and then on a sewing machine she was given for her 21st birthday.

“It was always an oversized V-neck sweater or a tie, chosen in the school colours of course,” she says. “Then [my sisters and I] started to make our own clothes, which was great fun. Sometimes you’d end up in tears because it didn’t fit the way you wanted it to. I’d use French patterns as the cuts were better — they always came out looking more sophisticated.”

It was what Howell describes as a “funny set of beads”, created from rolled-up newspapers, that would culminate in her first big break into the fashion industry.

“My sister Jean was taking something she’d been working on to Vogue to show them, so I went along with her and took the beads with me. They liked them.”

It seems almost inexplicable, when you consider the rich knits and linens Howell is famous for now, that those same beads would go on to catch the eye of a costume director working on a film starring Elizabeth Taylor.

“She asked me to make a beaded top for her, which as I remember was quite hideous,” Howell says, “but I got to go on set to meet [Taylor]. Richard Burton was there as well, and he was a little bit … I think he was going through his alcoholic period, but it was quite a thrill.”

At less close quarters, Howell would enjoy another dalliance with Hollywood, in 1980, when Jack Nicholson wore her M025 jacket in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

“It was Jack’s own jacket. He initially got it from a chap we used to know who ran a store in LA and bought things from us,” Howell says. “During the course of shooting the film, they came back with another order for at least a dozen more. I think some got ruined, but I think a lot of the other people had them too.”

When she was starting out, support came from many places, beyond her ex-husband Paul Renshaw, who was her business partner until they divorced in 1987. “Ralph Lauren bought my shirts before he started making his own,” Howell says. She also sold through her friend Paul Smith, who carried some of her pieces in his Nottingham store.

These days she has three head designers to help her see out her vision. But I get the impression that handing over (some) control to them is the hardest part of her job. “I am learning to sit on my hands sometimes,” Howell says. “I have a wonderful team, but having someone else do it means you can’t have it just as you would have done it. You have to get as near as you can to your vision and not stifle their vision. I think we manage that well.”

Is she ready to stop anytime soon? “There’s still plenty to be done,” Howell says. “We are constantly evolving, constantly changing. People might not think so but there is a constant shift. Collars shift, shirts change shape. It’s a subtle slide, but it is there.”