Call it northern English soul, brought bang up-to-date. Two strands of reminiscences went into Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi’s latest collection: the indie finery of The Smiths’s girl fans in the 1980s and the quirky grandeur of the late, fabulous Debo, Duchess of Devonshire. The evidence was all over their pin board at Preen HQ in Notting
Hill—Morrissey devotees hanging outside gigs in thrift-shop net skirts and diamanté on the one hand, and the Duchess, in diamonds and haute couture, feeding her chickens at Chatsworth on the other.
What possible fashion connection could leap across that social divide? There’s a geographical link: Morrissey is from Greater Manchester, the urban sprawl of a county that abuts the rolling hills and dales of the county of Derbyshire, where Debo, famously the last of the Mitford sisters, presided over the Cavendish family seat at Chatsworth until 2004. Other than that, it’s the eternally classless, carefree British relish for dressing up that set the designers off on their Pre-Fall riff: crystal-embellished coats and dresses, frothy frill-fronted blouses, checked rockabilly shirts, tulle tutus, and gingham and tweed suits. Passed through the blender of their contemporary sensibility, it comes out as a Preen collection at its best—hip, wearable, and full of easy evening options they foresee being worn by all the women who come to them for summer parties, weddings, and the premiere circuit.
