FASHION:Jane Shepherdson, the woman who transformed Topshop into a fashion phenomenon, has a new project. She is revamping the Whistles label with a new collection that, she says, is a completely new departure. Watch this space, says Deirdre McQuillan
ALL EYES OF the fashion world will be on Jane Shepherdson in coming weeks as her revamped Whistles brand makes its debut, a challenge that will test her legendary skills as the UK's most imaginative and authoritative retailer.
Since her departure two years ago as brand director of Topshop, the high-street chain she transformed into Britain's most successful retail phenomenon, it was only a question of time before her star made a comeback. But her new role is a tough one.
Most style-conscious females would be hard pressed to know where Whistles is stocked (House of Fraser, Brown Thomas), let alone what its image is. The fashion freshness of this once flourishing label has wilted to the point of atrophy in recent years.
"I do feel suddenly exposed," she confides when we met in London last month for a sneak preview. "Whistles has changed completely and everything that sold before won't be there any more. Now it needs new customers, people who are a bit magpie-like in their shopping habits, who like Chloe, Marc Jacobs, Reiss or Jigsaw, who dot around buying things from different places.
"They want pieces they can make their own. The new customer is both a high-street and a designer-shopper, with a sense of style that is modern and confident, and who knows what she wants. She wants quality, but not over the odds. Are there enough of those women out there?" she asks rhetorically.
Her slim frame and angelic face belie her 45 years and steely determination. Topshop's success was attributed as much to her acute business sense and charisma as her passionate love of clothes.
"You have to be completely passionate," she says. "I don't think I could run a retail business with clothes I didn't personally like. It's hugely good fun if you love clothes. It's not like work. I am probably quite representative of a lot of women. I am not particularly well-groomed. I want easy pieces that flatter and make me feel cool. You don't want to look like you tried too hard," she says.
That particular style of hers, a kind of irreverent elegance, is what the new Whistles collection sets out to be. It's adroit mix of well-bred but offbeat tailoring, with a vaguely 1950s air. Modernised vintage and cheeky updated classics is a far cry from the twee little cardis and frumpy frocks previously associated with Whistles.
The new look line-up includes fitted dresses in duchesse satin, pretty blouses in ice-blue chiffon with mother of pearl buttons, tough tobacco-coloured crombie-style coats and tweed duffels. She picks out a creamy silk blouse with cascade folds as representative of the whole collection.
"The fabric is beautiful and the shape will suit any woman. We've paid attention to details such as the eyelash edges. I think it looks stylish and modern and shows the direction in which we are going."
"We" refers to her hand-picked ex-Topshop team of design director Nick Passmore and brand director Karyn Fenn. "The three of us have worked together for a very long time, for 15 years in fact. We never disagree, but we each have a different slant on what we are looking for. Nick is more pared down, Karyn is great with colour and print and never wears trousers, and I am inbetween the two and mostly wear trousers."
Trousers, in fact, come high on the agenda in various shapes. The most fashion-forward are high-waisted with wide or tapered legs worn with little blouses.
What she wears herself is telling. Today, in her navy silk dress, anchored with a brown leather belt, Marni jewellery and chunky Balenciaga stilettos, she is, as always, up to the minute. "I have just started wearing dresses this year," she says, when I remind her that she once said she never wore them, "mainly because there are so many more around that I want to buy, and such variety."
The Whistles collection features dresses from angular-cut shifts to caped floral prints, that reference the 1940s but are contemporary in spirit. One comes in a glorious black-and-silver ikat silk, of which only seven have been made. "I just loved the fabric. We will have limited editions and we have cut margins to use more expensive fabrics," she says, pointing to a black grosgrain coat and another in cashmere and wool.
Shepherdson worries that there is not enough attitude in the collection. "I think it needs something more raw and a tough contrast, something a little bit rebellious, slightly aggressive without frightening anybody. I don't want things to be too nice."
Women should experiment more with their clothes, she says. "Looking modern is about not wearing what you were wearing 10 years ago, because so much has changed. The important thing is to look at silhouettes, that is the key. With trousers sitting on the waist, you can wear big shoes - that silhouette is 2008, it has that stamp. Like wearing a vintage piece, it's how you wear it that says it's now."
As a teenager growing up in Bristol, she once made a dress for her biochemist mother Margaret, now in her 70s, who lives in jeans and black Moto cords. "She was going to Glyndebourne at the time and so we bought fabric from Liberty, and I made a long, straight dress with a shoulder detail in a white/green/blue silk print with a slit on both sides, which she wore with a belt.
"Recently I discovered that she still had it and I asked her how she did she feel wearing it. 'I felt really glamorous,' she told me."
If Jane Shepherdson had enduring fashion skills at 14, she certainly has them to an even greater degree now. When one sample of a beautiful, black shift with silk leaves embellishing the hem was offered to her for inspection, her immediate response was, "it's too perfect, let's see what happens to it if we put it in the washing machine. So we did and we got this nice ruffle effect on the silk."
Trust her to put an exciting spin on things - in every sense.
• The new Whistles collection is available at Brown Thomas and House of Fraser. See www.whistles.co.uk