Katie Hillier & Luella Bartley Launch Own Label

[Marc10]

Katie Hillier and Luella Bartley have announced the launch of their own collaborative luxury brand called Hillier Bartley, following the closure of Marc by Marc Jacobs last week where they held the positions of creative director and womenswear design director respectively.

The new label comprises ready-to-wear, bags and accessories and, despite the news of Marc by Marc Jacobs only prevailing last week, the debut collection for autumn/winter 2015 has already been created.

"Luella and I have always worked together in different ways, now we are finally putting all our experience into making something that's a reflection of us, of what we want to wear," Hillier said this morning. "I'm really proud of what we've made - the craftsmanship, attention to detail and design. It's been a real labour of love and I am really looking forward to seeing women we admire carrying our bags and wearing our clothes."

Said to be inspired by classic English references, the Hillier Bartley collection uses "velvet, silk, merino wool and shearling across tailoring, dresses and separates," with the clothing made in the UK and the leather bags crafted in Italy.

"Hillier Bartley is a very personal project which Katie and I have been working on for years," revealed Bartley. "It is a culmination of everything I have learnt as a designer and a woman and is purely and defiantly about the clothes and fabrics. We have also looked at the women we admire, what we would want to wear and the inspirations that have been close to us for ages. It's ultimate heroine lies somewhere between Ian McCulloch and Katherine Hepburn. It's about a woman our age, indie by heart, rakish and irreverent by nature, who is maturing into refinement and naturalness."

vogue.co.uk

 

[gossiping]

let's hope it is not as tragic as everything they've done for mbmj....i couldn't stand that whole look they tried to create but i used to love luella's own label

 

[arlekindearrabal]

I am eager to see what they can muster. Their first M by MJ collection together was really good.

 

[MulletProof]

Love the description of the clothes, looking forward to this, I love Luella and have missed seeing what she does, I don't consider Marc by Marc representative of her work, maybe it was but it was still someone else's line.

 

[Deleted member 7575]

Sounds like they new MBMJ was a sinking ship and started making arrangements...

Who knows. Maybe it's being backed by Duffy who figured its better to start fresh than drag MBMJ on...

 

[dizzytacks]

this gives me fuel, i remember seeing those 'african' prints luella did when i first discovered fashion. they still resonate with me, i dont think i can recall a print from a fashion line so clearly! especially one thats 10 years old!!!

so psyched for this new development and for them!!!!

 

[Emmanuelle]

Wow they reacted very quickly. I'd like to see what they have in store.

 

[Steddycam91]

This also makes me super curious about what their original intents at MBMJ were. Were they always going to multitask between the two brands, or is this some super quick new development now that MBMJ is sort of a bust?

 

[softgrey]

well...what choice did they have really?
i expect this to be really personal...
and by that i mean completely unrelateable...

 

[elle_gb]

Good news for both of them. Personally I really admire both of them.

 

[Marc10]

Their first collection is up on Matches (http://www.matchesfashion.com/intl/womens/designers/hillier-bartley) for sale on September 2nd:


matchesfashion

 

[Marc10]

matchesfashion

 

[Marc10]

London’s Coolest Design Duo Luella Bartley and Katie Hillier Unveil Their New Line


Photographed by David Sims, Vogue September 2015

“For the first time, I feel I’ve done something that is wholly me.” Luella Bartley’s blonde-haired head is cocked as she considers a tuxedo suit with a cropped jacket, a pair of trousers that end in an ankle tie, and a crisp white shirt with a cravat. “It’s dapper and rakish, but with a kind of rock-’n’-roll femininity about it,” she says. “The fabric is the sort Savile Row tailors use—you don’t feel it until you wear it, but then you understand the quality. It feels like it’s time for something authentic, with longevity.”

Then she grins, wrinkling the corners of her blue eyes. “But if you’d told me ten years ago I’d be basing something on this, I’d probably have said, ‘Ugh—how middle-aged!’ ”

Katie Hillier, Bartley’s longtime friend and codesigner in arms, nods and laughs. She’s come over to Luella’s to talk about their brand-new joint venture, Hillier Bartley. Light is streaming through the kitchen windows of the Georgian town house in London that Bartley shares with the photographer David Sims and their three children. Hillier, meanwhile, perches at the kitchen counter. “This is an intimate, quiet sort of label,” she carefully stresses. “Calm and modest—no excess and no fuss.”

To those who haven’t been following the latest ins and outs at the top of fashion, this might come as rather surprising news. Bartley and Hillier were last seen in the noisy glare of New York Fashion Week in February as they took their bows as creative directors of Marc by Marc Jaobs—which was then promptly absorbed into the main Marc Jacobs collection (to which Hillier still contributes).

So here they are, doing just about the opposite of what you might expect from the girls known as ace channelers of quirky, youth-culty trends. Bartley couldn’t look more blissfully relieved as she spells out the differences. “I still have moments of being an indie kid, but I’m 42! I want to be feminine—or womanly. I wanted to work out what that meant,” she says, pointing out a long satin 1930s-ish dress trimmed with pearl buttons. “I can’t remember when I last wore an evening dress! But this feels real to me.”

To be clear, Hillier and Bartley aren’t abandoning their very British instincts for the eccentric generational subtext—they’re simply imbuing them with a classic sense and working with beautiful fabrics, along with shapes they want to keep repeating and refining. There’s a melton greatcoat, a camel-hair dressing-gown coat complete with silk-tasseled tie-belt, an army-surplus khaki sweater with green velvet shoulder patches, a gray tailored tweed suit with wide, cropped pants.

These are clothes they imagine being lived-in with a bit of “loucheness and insouciance,” Bartley declares. “I love that thing of people who wear very good clothes carelessly. I was reading a biography of Lucian Freud and came across a page that describes him as walking a line between vanity and vagrancy—and I just jumped about, shouting, ‘That’s it!’ ”
Though there’s always room for sparky humor in the Hillier Bartley world, there’s no mistaking the fact that this is an enterprise they’re taking very seriously: It’s their own investment, their own chance to speak directly to like-minded women without the machinery of a corporation around them. Hillier, for her part, says it means she can go to town with the construction and quality of the bags. “I didn’t want to be restricted,” she says. “I’m really just enjoying that freedom to do exactly what I want.”

vogue.com

 

[t-rex]

Will they be doing runway?

 

[dior_couture1245]

For the high price point, this looks a little cheap. The only thing that looks interesting and luxurious are the sweaters with the velvet patches.

 

[Phuel]

The bags are the only standouts for me: The cuteness, the girly-ness matched with a sharpness that lends it to be more than just a one0time novelty will be their strongest asset.

Their brand of fuddy-duddy, school-headmistress fashion is a little harder for me to accept; particularly the impossible to wear long coats that wouldn't work unless you're 6-foot and wearing 6-inch heels; the high-waisted, peg-legged pants will never look good on anyone-- men or women; and the jackets just look so frumpy. I mean, Gucci is already doing that librarian-look so well, this all feels and looks like the water-down department-store version-- on Elaine from Seinfeld...

Thanks Marc for the update.

 

[orchidee]

I like the jacket with the tassel detail, but the rest of it is pretty basic and looks a bit cheap. Especially the satin and velvet pieces...

 

[jescajade]

very eighties, some of the pieces look decent but not sure about their price points, and the bags look like mbmj.

 

[zoom]

The overcoats are tres chic.

 

[liberty33r1b]

Tophshop has probably better pieces than this....