Roland Klein

Apologies for not posting for a couple of weeks. I've been swamped with work at the moment due to deadlines coming up before Christmas holidays.

Anyway as part of my course, I've chosen to take '20th Century Fashion' as one of my modules. Usually the one hour lectures are taken up with us watching a series of fashion DVDs but yesterday the tutor had got a guest to take our lecture for us and it was actually very interesting.

The man's name was Roland Klein and he'd worked as a fashion designer throughout the later part of the 20th Century. He was French, born in Rouen and was lucky enough to go straight from college to Christian Dior. Nevertheless he was quick to tell us that working for Dior was not as glamorous as we'd like to imagine - his job was simply to put a lining into the edge of sleeves. However he took the opportunity to study how the clothes were cut and created and it made him incredibly ambitious.

He was then offered a job at Jean Patou where he was assistant to Karl Lagerfeld. This job involved him reproducing sketches of the current collections and sending them to clients that were unable to attend the catwalk shows. It was interesting to note the precision that was taken in reproducing the garments that a client chose to order - A mannequin was made to the exact size/proportions of the customer and the clothing was then created around it in order to provide a perfect fit. Roland Klein said that the six years he worked at Jean Patou he learnt so much about fashion, culture, art etc.

Another job offer came up in London at Nettie Vogues and, because it was only for a period of six months, Klein took the job. Six months turned into a number of years due to his new love of the city during the "swinging sixties"! It was an exciting period of time, where teenagers had new clothes to wear, rather than those of their parents. It was a culture shock where new fashion, music, film, art and culture was evolving.

During this period, Klein began properly designing clothes for Marcel Fenez and both Twiggy and Naomi Campbell modelled them on the catwalk. He soon had an individual 'Roland Klein' label and his designs became increasingly popular. A dress was selected by Vogue for Princess Diana to wear and following on from this she became a regular customer at the store. Klein told us that she was a really genuine, down to earth woman - She'd even helped them on one occasion dry the dishes from the night before and would constantly insist that she wanted her dresses shorter when they were designed. She'd said of the press, "they criticise me in whatever I wear, so why not give them something to talk about?!" Ironically Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall has also been photographed wearing Roland Klein.

Later on in life, Klein was offered a job at MaxMara where he specialised in evening-wear. He said this was more his speciality and what he enjoyed the most. He was also asked to do a pitch at British Airways to design the new uniform. After stating at the pitch that he couldn't design the uniform unless he really knew what the job entailed, he was chosen. They used his uniform for eight years and his work for the airline meant he was chosen to design corporate clothing for other huge companies; British Telecom, Midland Bank and Halifax naming just a few.

After a well deserved retirement, Klein was asked to go into interior design, which he still specialises in now. He says he keeps the designs fairly traditional although he'll occasionally go against this. Additionally he is currently designing a small range of clothing however he was unable to reveal who it was for. He admits he is slightly rusty on fashion design but when he picks up a magazine (which he hasn't done for years) the clothes are all the same. Fashion is constantly repeating itself.

At the end of the lecture, we asked him about couture fashion (relevant to our 2000 word essay in the module) and whether he thought there was still interest in it today. His response was that there definitely was due to peoples' boredom of what globalisation has done to the world of fashion. He described couture as a craft/artform although admittedly the process of creating it has become more a thing of the past due to how time-consuming it is to create and the high demands of society today.

His lecture was really interesting and I was surprised, in spite of myself, of the amount I was able to absorb from it. His final words to us were that his success was due to a combination of hard work, talent and luck. Without them you won't go very far at all. So fingers crossed I'll manage to tick all three boxes one day!
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Princess Diana wearing Roland Klein.