Looking backwards for the next big thing

Who needs something new when so many classic styles still look as sparky as the day they were drawn? MICHAEL HARVEY looks at the retro repro revolution

WAKE up and smell the mothballs. The world's top designers, and some high-street retailers too, are going vintage mad and raiding archives for inspiration. Never has looking to the past been more popular. It's an odd and slightly discomfiting idea that as we near the dreaded M-word, it is backward-looking fashion that is getting all the credit.

Take Burberry, for instance. While Harper's Bazaar creative director Fabien Baron busied himself redesigning the company signature (dropping the S on the way), the new creative director and former Jil Sander designer, Roberto Menichetti, headed straight for the company archive. The resulting top-end Burberry Prorsum range includes plenty of resurrected old favourites, including a modern twist on the classic Burberry raincoat (sported by Stella Tennant in the ad campaign). Burberry is not alone with its taste for reissues. In August, Scottish knitwear house Pringle will launch its Vintage collection. Many pieces are exact copies of the classic Shruggies worn by Moira Shearer, Phyllis Calvert and Deborah Kerr in the Fifties, giving Nineties women carte blanche to swan around in little white gloves while discussing the latest Cary Grant flick. Meanwhile, on Regent Street, tucked away on the fifth floor at Liberty is the store's archive. There's no access to the public and white gloves are worn when handling delicate fabrics, some of which date from 1875. When an original opera cape by Paul Poiret (he's known as the father of couture and designed for Liberty in the Thirties) was sent to the store by an old customer, designer Clare Corrigan hit on the idea of reproducing it. If all goes to plan, an exact reproduction of a Poiret coat will set you back no more than around GBP 350 in a few months' time. In the meantime, and for around GBP 950, you can satisfy yourself with Thirties hand-woven tulle-and-hand-painted chiffon scarves featuring the hydrangea and pom-pom prints from the store's fabric archives. Liberty is on to a good thing. Vintage is big money and the wisest labels are realising they should be cashing in on their own heritage rather than leaving it to someone else. The jeans and trainers brigade are not immune to vintage flashbacks either. Watch out for the reissued Nike waffle racing trainer (GBP 44.99) - the original was designed by Nike cofounder Bill Bowman in 1971 (using rubber poured into his wife's waffle iron to make the sole). Not to be outdone, Levi's has reissued its Koverup (GBP 175) as part of its spring Collectables range - a boiler suit based on the 1923 engineer's work suit. Clearly, it pays to keep a well-stocked archive. Just ask Alber Elbaz, who took the helm at the house of Yves Saint Laurent last year. His first stop was the company archive, begun in 1962 (one of the dresses still has the reference tag 00001). The enormous space, with its hermetically sealed cupboards, needs a team of four to take care of it - and will be open to public scrutiny in January 2000. After a couple of days inside, wading through more than 4,000 pieces, poor Elbaz was in a tizz. According to a company spokeswoman, "His first words when he came out of the archive were 'He's done everything, what's left for me to do?'. So he went back and paid homage to Saint Laurent's strengths - his use of colour, particularly pink and red with black." His first season for the label includes Le Smoking jacket (the first appeared in 1966), the pant suit, peacoat and the chiffon shirt. While the lines are rather more modern, these clothes are little more than versions of historic successes. The spokeswoman says: "We sometimes buy at auctions to feed the collections and we try to trace things that are missing. Old couture customers often give us outfits. And there's a famous vintage clothing shop in Paris called Didier Ludot. Didier often rings Hector {the YSL curator} if he needs something authenticated." JOHN Galliano is no stranger to Didier Ludot, nor to the flea markets of Paris and the Dior archive. Next month, Christian Dior will relaunch its "Duchess of Windsor" bags to a public eager for a taste of the old. The original handbag was designed for the former Mrs Simpson for her birthday and the new versions include Dior's trademark handle beads in amber, onyx and crystal. When Galliano isn't truffling around in the Dior archive, he's knee-deep in vintage clothes at Steinberg and Tolkein in the King's Road - along with virtually every other designer on the planet. If you had to put a bet on the person most likely to predict the next big thing in fashion, Tracey Tolkein would be a sound investment. She just has to sit back and see what sells, and she knows exactly what she'll see on the catwalk in six months' time (Ossie Clark, Mary Quant and Thea Porter have been very big recently, so take note). Both D&G boys, Jean Paul Gaultier, Stella McCartney they're all visitors at Steinberg's (American designers - with the exception of Anna Sui - tend to employ people as "pickers" rather than roll up their sleeves themselves). "Galliano bought a shirt from us that my brother had bought in New York as a joke. It had the girls in the shop in stitches it was so awful," says Tracey Tolkien. By the time Gal-liano had finished with it (it featured a ghastly detachable Velcro horse) he'd turned it into a Franois Lesage beaded dress. "When Tom Ford came in," continues Tolkein, "he spent quite a while sorting through the Gucci bags. When he said we had to be careful of fakes I challenged him to sort them into two piles, the real ones and the fakes. It took him quite a while." The Jackie Bag that is currently selling like mad at Gucci is, surprise surprise, a reissue of an archive idea. So there is big money in the past, if you know what you're looking for. Next time you visit your granny, keep her busy with half a pound of midget gems and head straight for the loft. You never know what the old dear's got stashed up there.

Copyright 1999
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