Jasper Conran may accept won the British Artist of the Year accolade aftermost fall, but it was his aide Bruce Old-field who absolved abroad with the absolute prize. The bedfellow of account at the abundant awards dinner, abounding by 180 style-setters from England and the U.S., was best clotheshorse Princess Diana. While about all the added women guests wore black, Di stood out in a sexy, abysmal amethyst clothes that appear the absolute aristocratic clavicles. Di’s ashamed clover conception was the evening’s sensation, and Oldfield, who advised it, could be apparent authoritative his way through the army whispering absurdly to friends, “It’s mine, it’s mine.”
Rarely does he gloat. In fact, admitting Oldfield’s account of audience (Joan Collins, Charlotte Rampling, Princess Michael of Kent, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross), admitting his affected boutique on London’s contemporary Beauchamp Place and awe-inspiring new address in Elm Park Gardens, admitting his BMW and his claimed Armani apparel and his ’30s Rolex, Oldfield can’t acquiesce himself to accept he’s fabricated it. “I don’t anticipate I’m on top of the apple yet,” he says, boring on one of his abiding cigarettes. “I am still on the slopes, but area I am now is a acceptable beginning.”
Oldfield’s 14-year acceleration is a attestation to the amount of work, allure and the acumen of his declared architecture goal: “to flatter—nothing else.” Now at age 36, he is advised Britain’s prime purveyor of amaze and glamour, via his brand silk, satin, applique and lamé gowns, which ambit from $800 to $6,000 each. Aftermost year Bruce Oldfield, Ltd. brought in about $4.5 actor from the common sales of his ready-to-wear and custom-built clothes and from licensing deals for hosiery, furs, shoes, eyeglasses, lingerie, tennis abrasion and Simplicity patterns. This bounce Oldfield’s aboriginal book, Season, an central attending at the conception of his winter 1986 collection, will be appear in the U.K.
Given his background, that is absolutely an accomplishment. Abandoned at birth, he is the adulterine son of a atramentous Jamaican boxer and a white English mother. From London’s Hammersmith Hospital, he was beatific to branches of the admirable Dr. Barnardo’s Homes and remained there until aloof afore his aboriginal birthday. Again he went to alive with Violet Masters, a distinct woman who aloft 18 advance accouchement in her home in Durham County in arctic England. “We were poor,” recalls Oldfield, “and lived in a actual small, what they alarm two up and two bottomward [a four-room house], with the loo in the backyard. There were bristles of us, and we were a family.”
Masters additionally provided Oldfield with inspiration. A clothier by profession, she accomplished all her accouchement to accomplish their clothes. “There were consistently $.25 of bolt around,” he says. “The apparatus was the altar, the supplier of wealth.” On Sundays, anybody would accumulate about the TV and watch Fred Astaire and Cary Grant movies. Their allure fabricated an actual impression. On a contempo British television appropriate about Oldfield, one advance sister remembered the tiny velvet, applique and cottony apparel he had fabricated for her dolls. “All for the cocktail hour, of course,” he quipped.
Although his accord with Masters remained “wonderful” (she died in 1974), Oldfield was bent annexation and voluntarily confused aback to Dr. Barnardo’s aback he was 13. “I was out of control, supposedly, and I was actual big for my age,” says the designer, who now stands 6’2″. Oldfield didn’t affliction for all the abode rules or for active with 24 added boys. Fortunately he was a ablaze apprentice and was beatific to a bigger academy than the others. That gave him “a little leverage,” he says. “I alike got a bit demanding.”
Barnardo’s again beatific him to a agents academy in Sheffield, area he outgrew his adolescence abashed and became amusing secretary of the apprentice union, “organizing absolutely acceptable parties and dances. But I aloof didn’t feel it was arduous enough,” he says. “I capital more.”
Oldfield absitively his adolescence predilection for appearance was the way to go. Aback he was 21, the abode paid his charge to Ravensbourne Academy of Art and afterwards to London’s celebrated St. Martin’s Academy of Art. “All the time I was coursing out area I should be,” he recalls. “I knew what I capital to do. I was a absolute workaholic.” His efforts paid off. In 1973 his assignment at St. Martin’s bent the eye of Vogue aptitude advance Judy Brittain, who declared him to colleagues as “just like Eve Harrington,” the devastatingly absorbing and aggressive charlatan of the blur All About Eve. That aforementioned year, afterwards engineering a acknowledged attack to barrage Charlie aroma in England, Oldfield met Geraldine Stutz, at the time admiral of Henri Bendel. She wooed him to New York to do a collection.
“It was ablution by fire,” says Old-field. “Everybody seemed to like the clothes, but they didn’t sell.” Aback in London, however, he was approached by Charlotte Rampling, who had apparent the designs. She assassin him to actualize a apparel for The Amethyst Taxi, the aboriginal of several he’s done for her. As a designer, she says, “Bruce understands what a woman wants.”
That affinity anon began to pay dividends. A assignment in Paris designing shoes for Yves Saint Laurent placed Old-field in the association of Jerry Hall, Tina Chow, Bianca Jagger and their ilk, all of whom became audience and friends. In that way, says Los Angeles Times columnist Marylou Luther, “he’s like Halston was. He spends a lot of time adorning with his barter and knows their needs. He’s not aloof designing in a vacuum.” In 1975 Old-field formed his own aggregation with accomplice Anita Richardson and by 1978 had added Hollywood types like Collins to his roster. “These ladies absolutely get your attending beyond to the public,” says Oldfield.
It was Di who put him over the top. They aboriginal met in 1981 aback Vogue alleged on Oldfield for advice in putting calm Diana’s post-engagement wardrobe. Afterwards her wedding, the Princess began calling on him personally, either allurement him to appear to Kensington Palace or occasionally accepting a Jaguar accompany her to Oldfield’s Beauchamp Place studio. The accord has benefited them both. “His accouterment has become abundant added developed in the accomplished brace of years, I anticipate added from the Princess’s access than annihilation else,” says TV appearance analyst and above archetypal Marie Helvin. “He’s accomplishing adorable allure now, admitting afore [his work] had abundant added of a faculty of humor.” He, in turn, has been accustomed with allowance Diana accomplish the bound from her school-marmish Laura Ashleys into added flashy, body-revealing getups. “She is not that altered from any added client,” Oldfield says. “A lot of bodies are 100 percent added demanding.”
When asked if there is a “significant other” in his life, Oldfield feigns abhorrence and says he doesn’t brainstorm anytime “settling down.” By the time he’s 40 he plans, he says, to accept added a aroma and a menswear accumulating to his achievements. “I’ve never pined for huge houses, big cars, helicopters and things like that. But they’re advancing anyway…. Ultimately, one would like to accept an empire.”
He’s not lying aback cat-and-mouse for it to happen. Oldfield’s 12-hour canicule activate at 7:15. He tries to agenda mornings at his shop, accomplishing fittings, while the afternoons are usually spent in his new lime-green flat in Fulham. Oldfield calls his access to designing a “fairly methodical process.” He begins by allotment fabrics—usually French and Italian: “The English don’t aftermath any nice fabrics.” Afterwards chief on “the contour that the accumulating is activity to follow,” he’ll activate to draw, draping fabrics over a mannequin and “evolving shapes” from the way the fabrics fall. He says he is cerebration of trading in his gold BMW for a added bourgeois (by English standards) Jaguar and hiring a disciplinarian so that he can “sketch all the time.”
After work, says acquaintance Helvin, Old-field “likes to absorb in a actual admirable way. His parties are absorbing in agreement of food, drink, adornment and guests. Still, he’s a actual clandestine being and doesn’t go out all that much, alike admitting he’s in the affidavit a lot.” On evenings at home, the artist loves affable for himself. “I’m not actual good,” he admits, “but I consistently use the best ingredients. Aloof like my dresses.”
