Brit It-Gal Plum Sykes discusses the demure-to-daring prints of Liberty of London with Linda Lee.
There is always something sweetly sexy, rather than raunchy sexy, about a girl in a Libertyprint dress,” says Plum Sykes, the Vogue contributor and novelist whose writing has been called a “fizzy champagne cocktail” and “haute couture chick lit.”
Liberty of London fabrics, a staple of English life, have been around since 1875. But even sweetly sexy staples can become boring. That’s where fashion comes in, where innovation leapfrogs over conformity. Just when everyone thought floral prints meant “housedress” (all but Barneys’ Creative Director Simon Doonan, who quipped, “I love my Liberty print shirts, I don’t care how florid or floral”), fashion leaders like Chloë Sevigny and Kate Moss saw that Liberty prints were ready to take off.
Sevigny’s line of throwback fashions uses Liberty of London fabrics. The French line A.P.C. features a poppy and daisy Liberty print for a smocked sundress. Moss’s Summer ’09 line for Topshop includes a dreamy Liberty silk print camisole and a curvy sundress in a bold poppy Liberty cotton. Nike slapped Liberty’s ditsy print florals on sneakers. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood has just signed on to do a line of Liberty fabrics and fashions based on his paintings.
But sometimes fashion leaders stay ahead by remaining behind. Plum Sykes was born aristocratic country English, the kind of girl pretty much required to refer to horses as “ponies” and to upholster herself and her bedroom in romantic florals from Liberty of London.
The young Sykes girls scampered about in smocked frocks of Liberty’s signature fabrics like Meadow and Strawberry Thief. Plum and her “It-Girl” sisters Lucy and Alice, as well as her three brothers, lived with their parents at grandmother Madeleine Goad’s Tudor farmhouse near Sevenoaks (a Kentish town with a 1,000-acre deer park frequented by Henry VIII). The Sykes children’s reference points were sweetly antediluvian: ponies, “My Fair Lady” and “Brideshead Revisited.” It did, however, include Biba, the legendary London hot spot for all things ’60s, which closed in 1975. “We got asymmetrical Biba dresses when we were three,” Plum says.
What kind of English mum dresses her daughters in asymmetrical Biba? That would be their mother, Valerie Goad, who, despite designing starchily old-fashioned children’s clothes, was a fashion iconoclast who kept her vintage Ossie Davis clothes and Maud Frizon shoes in grammy’s attic.
In the ’80s, when young ladies had a choice of looking like Molly Ringwald (girly with pink floral prints, lace and pin tucks), or slutty, à la the Material Girl (torn clothes, bra straps rampant), Plum went for girly. And because the Sykeses were, in fine English tradition, land rich and cash poor, there was a lot of do-ityourself. “I was always sewing things,” she says.
John Laflin, design director of prints for Liberty of London from 1974 to 1998, sent the 17-year-old Plum “an enormous bolt of fabric called Sweet Pea,” she says. Thus her echt-English country bedroom was born. “I made curtains, and upholstered the old bed I got from my grandmother Camilla Sykes, and I did all the trimmings around the edges,” Plum says. Her work included sponge painting the walls pale blue and pink over a white background. “It was rather like waking up in a cloud!” she says. “When you’re living in England, and it’s grey and winter, and you’ve got to go to school in a brown uniform with a gold tie, it’s really good to wake up in a chic little place…a teenage fantasy boudoir…of clouds and flowers.”
Adorned with lace pillows, her grandmother’s string of pearls and straw hat, old family photos, and a horseshoe, the bedroom appeared in a Liberty decorating book.
But not all print fabrics are alike. Liberty is a thoroughbred, with as many as 20 colours in one swatch, and designs that go beyond florals (the Sykes’ fave) to paisleys, peacock feathers, abstracts and geometrics.
What’s out always comes back in. Laura Ashley has been declared “back.” Biba is back. (Barbara Hulanicki, the founder of Biba, is also back, with a line of clothes at Topshop.) Molly Ringwald, whose book on turning 40 comes out this year, is back. The ’80s are back, within reason, and ditsy floral prints are so back.
“Look at how these prints have lasted,” Plum says. The Sykes women are making sure they remain in fashion. Lucy Sykes’s line of adorable children’s clothes come in Liberty of London Cotton Lawn. Plum Sykes’s daughter, Ursula, is dressed in Liberty fabrics – even in winter, when her summery prints are lined with soft Viyella.
Plum says that, even today, “My mom is making me a Liberty print blouse with a little lace collar, and I’m going to wear it with jeans and boots. But the strapless head-to-toe floral prom dress, you can’t do when you get older. You’re mutton dressed as lamb.”
She warns as well that, if you’re going to wear florals, they have to fit perfectly. “Most people wear clothes that don’t fit them at all,” she says. When a woman matures, she insists, she can still use florals liberally at home. “Let’s try to take the attention off our faces,” Plum says. “A really beautiful print will do it.” In fact, she is considering using a Liberty poppy print as wallpaper.
Laugh now. Hang your own Liberty of London floral wallpaper some time in the future.
The very latest in a series of famous M·A·C Collaborations, it was only a matter of time before the demure-to-daring kaleidoscopic prints of Liberty of London coloured our world with Brit wit and bohemian chic. From the unstudied, Sienna Miller style of Spitalfields Market to the grit-and-glamour of Portobello Road, the swinging London girl has always been an unstoppable M·A·C makeup force! Spring 2010 insists on the ultimate flower fusion, with M·A·C joining forces with Liberty, creating cool Britannia compacts and Lipsticks, Eye Shadows, Powder, Blush, Nail Lacquers and, of course – blushing, bountiful, quite British accessories.
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