Alice Temperley is London’s answer to Zac Posen, in female form: an out-of-nowhere designer who has already gathered an adoring posse of young socialites, fashion eds, and models who whip around town, flipping their pastel-hued, scallop-edged hems and passing on her name with delighted sighs.
Starting from her Notting Hill studio, Alice has grown and grown, almost entirely by word of mouth, to the point where she’s recently been able to open a “private dressing showroom” in a Soho loft. She makes dresses for urban nymphets who like liberal sprinklings of ruffles and fairy-dust sparkles in their midsummer night’s party-hopping wardrobes. Come spring, they’ll be calling Alice for an appointment to riffle through a vaguely thirties-cum-fifties collection that she describes as having been inspired by a James Thurber story about a princess who asked for the moon. Decisions, decisions! Will it be a rose-pink chiffon dress with ivory, crystal-beaded French lace at the shoulders and a ribbon tied in a bow at the waist? An innocent white eyelet gown with an aqua lining peeping through? Or that mouth-watering, full-length lingerie dress in palest mango sorbet chiffon with a cutout lace bodice? Whichever they choose, this is a collection that has no pretensions about altering the path of fashion. Temperley’s clothes will never cut it with London’s serious avant-garde, but rather will waft along effortlessly on the young lady-like breeze that’s blowing through spring—and manage it with a lot of charm.
