KATIE EARY

Katie Eary is the London-based designer who will soon need no introduction – her aggressive but noble menswear is an unstoppable, inevitable hurricane ripping its own path through fashion.
If difficult social and economic times such as this bring watershed moments, rare changes of perspective that grab fashion by the lapel and drag it into the future, then Katie is the young talent that really is the burgeoning voice, and attitude, of our generation.
Eary studied her MA at the Royal College of Art and graduated just last year. Heat started generating almost immediately: the first call she received was from British Vogue. Mario Testino was to shoot her custom-made pieces on Kate Moss. “I didn’t train to be a millinery designer and I didn’t make womenswear, yet out of all the people that graduated that year, they chose my stuff. That’s pretty incredible.
I think if I’d been doing womenswear, that wouldn’t have happened. And I think that about a lot of the opportunities that’ve come my way... I’m coming in through the back door, I think it’s something I’ve spent quite a lot of my life doing. But, of course, fashion is a system that relies on beautiful product at the end, no matter what the starting point." It’s here that Eary excels – everything is bespoke and handmade by the designer herself in the finest wools, leather, brass and Swarovski crystals.
Then there are here full-on SAGA furs in the street wear shapes. If Saville Row is struggling to modernise itself and become welcoming to a younger clientele, British tailoring could take a few tips from Katie’s couture-led approach.
-Dean Mayo Davies