A crime of fashion
It's like a storyline from Ugly Betty. The current darling of the British fashion industry has his design studio burgled and ransacked just one week before he is due to show his hotly anticipated third collection at London Fashion Week, where the eyes of the world will be upon him. Twenty three garments are stolen in what looks very much like a targeted attack, setting the fashion world abuzz with whisperings of sabotage most foul.
Only this crime of fashion is very real. The 25-year-old Scottish boy wonder Christopher Kane has been lauded by everyone in the fashion world, from Donatella Versace (for whom Kane has been commissioned to produce a range of clothing) to the powerful US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, for his unique, highly detailed pieces, which have been worn by stellar celebrities including Kylie Minogue and Kate Bosworth.
However, Kane's rapid ascent to the summit of the fashion world suffered a major setback on Sunday when, on his way to the Scottish Fashion Awards with his sister and business partner Tammy, he called in to his east-London studio to find that 23 garments - the backbone of his spring/summer 2008 collection - had been stolen, with just one week until it was due to be unveiled at London Fashion Week on Monday.
Noticing that the lights in the studio were on, the pair went in to find the place ransacked, the thieves having entered using the combination and security codes to the two doors. They called the police immediately, but no fingerprints have been found as yet.
This brilliant young Scot's new collection is one that many fashion-watchers will be very keen to see at next week's shows. His first post-graduation collection was a real show-stopper, comprising a series of neon-bright body-con dresses inset with delicate nude lace; his second featured sumptuous dark velvet, leather and jumbo Swarovski crystals: both proved to be immediate hits with fashion editors and catwalk-watching celebrities alike. However, Kane insists that he is not allowing this setback to get him down and that Monday's show will go on.
When The Scotsman calls to see how he's coping with this 11th-hour disaster, he sounds weary. He's been in his studio all night, he explains, and I can hear the steady rattle of the sewing machine in the background as we talk. He doesn't have a minute to spare if he's going to get things back on track.
"I'm absolutely devastated, but after the initial shock and blind panic, I realised that I just had to start again," he says in a resigned tone. "As daunting as it is, it has to be done and, after the first hour - where my head was all over the place - it was simply a case of all hands on deck. I knew that there was no way I was going to let this setback affect me, and I just got back behind the sewing machine."
Kane is understandably shaken by the incident, and is spending all of his time in his studio, to ensure that the re-made collection is kept secure.
"I'm staying here overnight, every night," he says. "As well as the fact that I've got so much work to do, I'm not taking any chances with security at all, and I don't want the people who did this to come back. The thought of this happening again is a nightmare, but if it did, I'd want to be here, to confront whoever is behind this.
"I do feel pretty shaken up, though. Anyone who has been burgled knows that horrible feeling of knowing that strangers have been in your private space, touching your things. It makes me very uneasy, and it feels very personal."
Despite their value, the pieces that have been stolen are so distinctive that they would surely prove difficult to sell on. There have been suggestions that the robbery has been an act of sabotage, an attempt by a jealous rival to trip up the man whose first two collections have been flawlessly brilliant. Kane seems uneasy about entertaining this possibility, and is reluctant to offer a theory as to who is behind the break-in.
However, Kane's other sister, Sandra, who accepted the Designer of the Year Award at last weekend's Scottish Fashion Awards on his behalf, has said that both Christopher and Tammy believe this was an attempt to sabotage next week's show.
"They believe the robbery was deliberate," she says. "He is now having to work flat-out to recreate his work. The collection is worth more than £30,000 and they weren't insured. They definitely don't believe it was an accident."
Kane certainly acknowledges that the circumstances surrounding the burglary are particularly suspicious.
"The pieces that were taken were handpicked. The showpieces were targeted, and other pieces were left behind. It's all so strange," he says. "In order to get to my studio, whoever did this had to walk past two other studios filled with very expensive photographic equipment with a much higher street value than my collection.
"I mean, it's easier to sell on an expensive camera than a piece of cashmere, isn't it? I don't know what to think, but I don't really want to [consider] the possibility that I might have been targeted maliciously. It's just such a horrible thought."
As horrible as it sounds, it's a very strong possibility. That the garments were taken in preference to expensive photographic equipment, and that the key showpieces from the collection seem to have been picked out, raises the possibility that these pieces were not stolen for their street value.
Few designers have enjoyed such a fast climb to fame and success in the fashion world, and Kane's show is arguably one of the hottest tickets at London Fashion Week. So could a jealous rival be behind the break-in? Could the designs have been stolen to be sold to discreet, wealthy clients, as is often the case with high-profile pieces of art that go missing? Or could the theft have been carried out by a professional gang who stole the collection for copying overseas? Such incidents would not be without precedent.
In 1998, the leading British womenswear designer Amanda Wakeley, whose elegant designs are stocked at Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh, reported two "ram raids" at her central London store. "What's disturbing is how focused they were," said Wakeley at the time. "They left all the navy blue [pieces] and took all the pale fashion colours."
In response to a series of fashion-industry thefts that year, the British Fashion Council warned young designers to be certain they were fully insured, and to take steps to protect their copyright by signing and dating all their sketches and keeping them somewhere safe.
Regardless of whether collections are insured, not having garments available to lend to newspapers and magazines could affect business immensely in circumstances such as these. Lending pieces to magazines for fashion shoots amounts to free advertising for designers, and is the main way that the public get to see their clothes. The alternative is paying for advertising, which can be very expensive, particularly for relatively small designers such as Kane.
The targeted raid has left fashionindustry insiders shocked. "During my time working in the fashion industry, there have been incidents where cases of clothes go missing on their way over from Milan just before a show, or, even worse, a lorry full of a collection goes missing on its way to a show, but this burglary is really terrible," says Dolly Jones, the editor of vogue.com.
"There really does need to be heightened security around collections before they're shown, particularly for someone like Christopher, whose show is so highly anticipated, but in this case, even the careful security hasn't been enough. I don't know if it's been a case of sabotage. It does all sound a bit like an Agatha Christie novel, but all I know is that there's a lot of excitement and interest surrounding Christopher's collection, so who knows?
"The most important thing is for people to look out for pieces being sold where they shouldn't be, on eBay for example, and to alert the authorities if they spot anything."
Despite this setback, the industry is rallying around Kane, and is confident that he can recover from this incident.
"Everyone in the fashion industry is completely devastated for Christopher," says Stacey Duguid, the executive fashion editor at Elle magazine. "We're all really shocked and no-one knows why this has happened.
"However, the fact that he has started again and is going to turn this around positively just shows an incredible determination. It's wonderful that his spirit hasn't been broken by such a huge setback."
Kane's show at London Fashion Week has been partly financed by a grant from the Glasgow: Scotland with style Design Collective, which is helping eight young Scottish designers to show their collections in London. The organisation is supporting Kane through the ordeal.
"We've worked with Christopher and Tammy Kane for three seasons now and everyone involved in the Glasgow: Scotland with style Design Collective was shocked to hear the news about the break-in," says Scott Taylor, the chief executive of the Glasgow City Marketing Bureau. "Colleagues have spoken to them today and we know they are working furiously, around the clock, to complete the new collection, which we have no doubt will be another triumph for Christopher."
If indeed he manages to pull it off, those who may be trying to sabotage him, to destroy his immense popularity, could find that their interference has had the opposite effect.
Assuming that Kane's third collection is yet another triumph for this quiet and talented young Scot, the setback could only underline how truly unstoppable and indomitable he is.
...there's nothing I hate more than thieves.
