Matthew Williamson's technicolour dream

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Annabel Rivkin|Es Magazine. Photographs|Pamela Hanson. Styled|Nicky Yates

10 April 2012

Matthew Williamson has gone global: his last H&M collection sold out in half an hour, he's set up shop in Manhattan and New York's hottest girl, DJ Leigh Lezark, is giving his clothes an edgy new spin...

It is an unseasonably sweltering spring day in New York's Meatpacking District and Matthew Williamson is standing in the midday glare outside his shop, smoking a cigarette and, I suspect, sneakily topping up the tan that he cultivated on a recent trip to Turks and Caicos with his friend Sienna Miller. Matthew has long been famous for the love and loyalty he inspires in his female devotees, who have ranged from Jade Jagger, Kate Moss and Helena Christensen - they walked in his debut catwalk show back in 1997 - to Sienna, Keira Knightley, Sophie Dahl, Cheryl Cole and Kylie Minogue.

Today he is smoking in the sunshine with his latest pal, the model and ice-cool DJ Leigh Lezark, who was identified as one of the 25 sexiest New Yorkers by the New York Post, is one third of the DJ trio the Misshapes, the face of Hogan and goes out with the British actor Max Minghella, son of the late Anthony. Matthew and Leigh have long admired each other from afar and have now come together for this shoot which features Matthew's new collection for high street behemoth H&M.

From the start Matthew's designs have been ruthlessly commercial, colourful, bohemian and feminine and have now and then been derided by the fashion press for exactly those nondirectional qualities. Back at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in the mid-Nineties he was, in his way, a controversial figure.

Into the grey world of grunge he threw his jewel-like creations, taking his inspiration from India rather than from anything minimalist or political. 'Saint Martins is a distant memory now,' he says in his soft Mancunian voice, 'but it was a really tough time because, of course, the majority of students were pretty avant-garde and were trying to push boundaries and that wasn't necessarily on my agenda. I was the black sheep. I did my thing. I wanted to make women feel beautiful and sexy, so there was definitely a rub, and I went through those four years aware that I wasn't in the top tier of students to watch.' As it happens, with three stand-alone stores worldwide (London's Bruton Street, New York and Dubai, and Kuwait on the way) and 180 outlets, he is far and away the most successful student of his year, with Antonio Berardi a distant second.

Over the past year he has put in place a triumvirate of designers who have given his most recent collection maturity and control. The architecture of the garments is more precise, perhaps thanks to Sally Mison who previously worked at McQ, Alexander McQueen's diffusion line. The refinement of his palette and prints coincides with the appointment of Ann Ceprynski, who came from Hussein Chalayan, and it may be that fellow Saint Martins graduate Alessandro Cabu has perfected and polished Matthew's predilection for embroidery and embellishment. 'There is a concept now,' says Matthew. 'My job is to pull their strengths out and mesh them together.'

His three-year contract as creative director of Pucci (another commercial success) ended last year, leaving him free to focus on his eponymous label. As its aesthetic evolved he found himself ripe for a mass-market collaboration. 'H&M is a line in the sand for me in that it is an opportunity to collate and gather everything that everyone thinks of when they think of Matthew Williamson,' he says. 'So it is about the essence of the brand.' Expect peacock feather prints and butterflies and exotic blooms and brights then.

But H&M, known for partnering up with high fashion designers, has changed course with Matthew, making his collections its most accessible to date. Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Viktor & Rolf and Madonna's visiting collections were always launched in winter in 200 stores globally. Matthew has done two summer collections for H&M, one of which - full of iconic pieces like the cocktail dress, the jumpsuit, the leather jacket - hit 200 stores last month and sold out within the first half hour. But his second collection went on sale yesterday in 1,200 shops. 'It's a global outreach,' he pronounces. 'Whether you live in Kuala Lumpur or Croydon, you'll be able to access it and it's very celebratory. It's intended to be the perfect summer wardrobe so you have kaftans, swimwear, T-shirts and lots of denim.'

Crucially, though, he is introducing an H&M menswear collection; his first ever. 'When you think of women's brands where the designer is female, the woman tends to embody her brand,' he says. 'If you think of Diane von Furstenberg or Stella, they are their label. So I assume it's a really natural process for them to address themselves. As a male designer in womenswear you don't have that reference point - you are much freer to design with gay abandon as it were. So, with this menswear, I was able for the first time to say, "Would I wear this?" There are neat little suits, sombre but for a vibrant piping. There is seersucker, T-shirts in vivid prints and shorts.

(Above) Matthew with Lindsay Lohan

The designer himself is the face of the brand in the stills campaign and the television commercials. If the collection is well received he may think about weaving menswear into his plans for his own label next year. He is as clear about the story of the Matthew Williamson man as he has always been about the aesthetic of his woman. 'He is a British boy who packs his English suitcase and travels to Cuba and comes back to London via Mykonos.' Oh really. 'Yes. He's in touch with his feminine side but he's not necessarily gay.'

Matthew himself is delicate-looking, elfin and gay but not girly. Now 37, he was brought up in Manchester and there is still an air of late nights at the Hacienda about him, a reassuring atmosphere of fags and beer that contrasts with the tropicality of his vision. His mother managed a chain of opticians, his father was a self-employed television salesman (both are retired) and he has an older sister who is a nurse. 'Mum was my first muse,' he says. 'She used to get her work outfit ready the night before and we had this little ritual where I sat on the end of her bed and she would be sat at her dressing table and she'd pull out her necklace and her rings and polish her nails to match her lipstick. She was very meticulous about the process and then she'd hang her jacket on the wardrobe door with her little scarf and, as she pieced it all together, I'd challenge her and say, "Why are you putting that skirt with that nail varnish?" She saw I had flair and she and my father nurtured that.'

I wonder if it bothered his parents that their only son seemed unlikely to turn out butch. 'Well, my dad did buy me a pair of football boots for one of my birthdays and I remember saying, "Oh, you should have got me a sewing machine." But they were fabulously supportive parents because it was probably quite unfamiliar and not very commonplace. Looking back, I was quite extravagant and eccentric, but they were giddy with excitement that they had this kid who painted in his spare time. I had a girlfriend for about three years till I was 16,' he says, noting the surprise on my face. 'That's thrown you, 'a'n't it?' He knew he was gay from the age of about 11, and his parents found out when he was 16. 'It's a shock to any parents initially I'm sure, but very quickly thereafter it wasn't an issue.'

An intensely single-minded child, he was determined to go to Saint Martins. 'I was bizarre and freakishly focused to the point that it could have been quite dangerous. I was like, "Whatever hoops I have to jump through, I will get there." ' He found his secret weapon in one of Manchester's gay bars 17 years ago. Matthew was already at Saint Martins but had come up for the weekend to see his parents on their anniversary. He headed out on the town with a girlfriend and soon spotted Joseph Velosa. 'I was intrigued by him because it was a time when the Happy Mondays were big and everyone was in cagoules and he came in all handsome and white shirt and pristine. We fell in love and he moved to London and we got a little bedsit together and we stayed together for 12 years.'

(Above) Models including Kate Moss (second from right) and Jade Jagger (right) at Matthew Williamson's show of his S/S 98 collection at London Fashion Week

Joseph, who today is padding round the New York shop in pressed shorts, is indeed a slick proposition with a quiet voice, perfect manners and a sharp brain for business. While Matthew was completing his degree at Saint Martins, Joseph was studying for his own degree in philosophy and training to be a pilot. But when the time came for Matthew to start making and selling clothes, the two of them began a business that is still going on, with Joseph remaining CEO of the company. They split up five years ago and neither has had a serious boyfriend since. 'We don't have time,' says Matthew, although I suspect that even if there was a boyfriend he would not talk about it out of respect for Joseph. They live three streets away from each other in Hampstead, they work together, they socialise together, and it all dovetails beautifully.

If Matthew had the design talent and the knack for finding famous female followers, Joseph got the fledgling company into profit after one year, which is virtually unheard of. 'London is probably the best city to start from because of the education and the hype that inevitably surrounds a designer's first show,' says Matthew. 'The buyers come and buy like confetti and everything is rosy. Then, usually, time moves on and interest wanes and manufacturing facilities are not set up and so on and so forth and you are in trouble. But Joseph was there and I have to credit him because he looks at fashion like any other business. Despite the fact that there is this mysterious, thin veil of glamour, it's about selling clothes and there's a system and a logic. Joseph and I understand that concept and we also understand that it's not my strength, it's his.'

Joseph makes it sound simple. 'The key thing is being very disciplined about growth,' he says. 'The danger in fashion is that you can grow too fast. We managed that growth so that we knew we had the money to make the clothes for the next season. And even though we had the orders for three times that amount, we closed the books. You have to learn to close the books when you know that's all you can afford to produce.'

And it was Joseph who masterminded the company's international expansion that began with the opening of the New York store during February's fashion week. It is a luxurious, decadent, comfortable space that goes from being Zen to disco to tropical. For this shop to become a reality, to bring in the new design team and vastly expand the accessories line, money had to be spent and the company shows a 2008 loss - for the first time - of £1.1 million. 'It was a very strategic loss,' says Joseph, who predicts that they will be back in profit by 2011. As Matthew swans around being marvellous and chatting up Leigh, it is Joseph who politely worries that the ES shoot might be obstructing sales.

Leigh, 24, is pouring her lithe little body into a mixture of Matthew Williamson and Matthew Williamson for H&M. Fresh from the Coachella Music Festival in Los Angeles, she is darker than her customary alabaster and she has left her dachshund at home in the downtown Manhattan loft she shares with Max Minghella. 'I dress in black almost all the time,' she says, gesturing to her Thomas Wylde black dress and black fringed bag. 'If you open my closet, it's just darkness. So Matthew's colour is a change for me and he does it in such a beautifully tasteful way.'

Leigh comes from New Jersey, a background she describes as 'very blue collar'. An only child, she was close to her father, who managed a fibreglass plant and died a few years ago. She no longer speaks to her mother. 'I always had a giant love for music,' she says. 'I used to steal away to the city on the bus and the first bus back the next morning would drop me home in time for school.'

She moved to New York at 17, sharing a bed with her best friend on the Lower East Side opposite the notorious projects (council estates to us). 'Leaving New Jersey was a drive for me and I would have done anything to get out,' she says. 'I wanted more.' While studying for a degree in photography and sociology at Hunter College, she found that DJing was her way into the clubs. 'You had to be 21 to drink so my music was my thing. I would go to college straight from the party but I would always make it.'

She and her two best friends, Geordon Nicol and Greg Krelenstein, grew weary of the New York vogue for bottle service, whereby you got a table if you spent hundreds of dollars on champagne or vodka. 'It was usually some douchebag guy in a buttondown shirt and a bunch of sad girls,' she says.

(Right) Matthew with business partner and former boyfriend Joseph Velosa

They wanted parties for cool clubbers their age. In 2002 they formed the Misshapes and threw a New Year's Eve party at a friend's apartment that was such a hit that it mutated into a weekly club night at downtown venue Don Hill's, where Boy George, Yoko Ono, Jarvis Cocker and Madonna were among the guest DJs. 'We have Facebook and MySpace to thank,' she says of the online whispering campaign that put her on New York's merciless map of what's hot.

And her looks caught people's imagination. She has desperately fine bone structure and her naturally blonde hair has been raven since she was 17. Music and beauty added up to modelling work and she has worked consistently with Hogan, modelled for Gap, Roberto Cavalli for H&M and appeared in American Vogue, not to mention the Misshapes' burgeoning profile as catwalk DJs, with designers such as Sophia Kokosalaki and Jeremy Scott firm fans. They are travelling so much that they have folded their club night for now.

Max, her boyfriend of two years, spotted her on the cover of The Sounds' second album and tracked her down to Don Hill's where he returned weekly for a year - bear in mind that he loathes nightclubs --before she gave in. She is reluctant to talk about him, but admits that she noticed him lurking. 'With that adorable face, how could I not?'

Matthew, a very discreet person, has been quietly watching Leigh. 'She brings a certain effortlessness to the work that I do,' he says. 'She makes things look unconventional. She is very petite and bird-like and fragile, but at the same time she is quite edgy and strong and that contrast is interesting.'

He has been travelling a lot recently, shooting the H&M campaigns in Mexico and Rio and promoting the collections in New York. This summer will be spent in London, taking his spaniel Coco for long walks on Hampstead Heath, hanging out at his favourite North London pubs and working on his spring/summer 2009 show. Except I think that Matthew always has his eye on the next step. Expect a menswear collection; a homeware collection (he already does rugs for The Rug Company) and, at some point, a hotel. 'I wasn't going to say but that is my ultimate goal,' he admits, going a bit misty. After all, Leigh says she fell for him when she saw a feature on his house in a magazine. 'His spirit is so in it,' she says.

Whatever comes next, it will be true to the character of the brand that Matthew has been bullishly imagining - and latterly building - since he was about five. 'It's like my baby,' he says. 'I'm very precious about it and very protective. I put my heart and soul into it and I'm very careful about how it should grow. Now do you mind if I have a quick fag?' And he's off, basking in the sunlight and the glory of ambition realised.

Make-up by Mike Potter KnockOut cosmetics at See Management. Fashion assistant: Orsolya Szabo. Model: Leigh Lezark at IMG Models London. Shot at Matthew's NY store, 415 W 14th Street, New York

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