Designing the world’s best-known wedding dress for one of our great female icons has been both a blessing and a bugbear for Elizabeth Emanuel.
Princess Diana’s ivory silk, taffeta and antique lace gown, complete with 25-foot train, transformed the careers of Emanuel and her husband David.
However, it also has tended to overshadow all the other manifold achievements of the pair.
It is a contradiction that Elizabeth Emanuel recognises – one she appears sanguine about.
“It is a story that I have never stopped telling,” she says.
“It is a double-edged sword. On the one hand I don’t want to be known only for designing grand wedding gowns – even though that one was the most iconic dress ever.
“But at the same time it is very, very useful as people know who I am 35 years on.”
While the Royal Wedding catapulted Emanuel in front of an estimated audience of 700mln viewers, her first exposure to the world of celebrity was provided by the wife of a Rolling Stone.
For her designs were championed by Bianca Jagger, who wore an Emanuel outfit to make a rather grand entrance to a legendary New York nightspot.
“She was the one who started it all off,” says Emanuel of the former model.
“She wore one of my dresses to Studio 54 and arrived on a horse with a white dove on her hand.
“She was on the cover of People Magazine and from that minute on we were inundated. We were just out of college.”
Flicking through an album of her work you realise she has dressed a stunning A-list of women, including Elizabeth Taylor, Charlize Theron and Helena Bonham-Carter, as well as creating the stylish Virgin Atlantic uniforms.
At a time when most (sane) people would be contemplating a more relaxed lifestyle, Emanuel, a five-foot whirlwind of hair and infectious energy, is about to embark on her latest venture.
Emanuel Mayfair is in the process of raising £1mln, the seed money for what she hopes will be the next great British fashion brand.
It will start with a catwalk show and signature collection of 26 outfits next July.
“I’m setting it out as a temptation, if you like,” Emanuel says.
“If the world likes it I’m hoping they will like everything else we have to offer.”
The show will be followed in September by the ready-to-wear collection, and then the assignment of bridal licences to partners in the US, China, Japan and South Korea thereafter.
Next January Emanuel hopes to have up and running a Mayfair showroom.
However, she probably won’t follow the lead set by Victoria Beckham by creating a huge and expensive fashion emporium on one of the area’s expensive shopping thoroughfares.
“I rather like the idea of being off the beaten track. It worked very well when David and I started up,” says Emanuel.
“We need to be hard to find, so it shouldn’t be a Bond Street store. Besides, we don’t have the money for Bond Street.”
Her bulging scrapbook of beautifully inked illustrations reveals an edgy yet very feminine array of eveningwear and grand couture with a romantic, retro feel.
It is an antidote to the reveal-all dresses seen at red carpet events and plastered across the tabloids.
“The look is all about having a story. I have a back story and so does this,” Emanuel says, pointing at the outlines of her latest range.
“It is new and inventive, but the culmination of all my experience over 35 years from designing for Virgin Airlines to Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus at the Royal Ballet.”
The heritage is important, because Emanuel is trying to create a luxury brand.
In doing this the little details also count, so the packaging must be special; branding just so.
“A beautiful dress on a cheap plastic hanger is going to look awful. Everything has to reflect Emanuel, so it has to be perfect,” says the designer.
As well as drawing on three decades’ of experience, Emanuel Mayfair will also tap into the new talent in art and fashion that the capital seems very good at attracting and cultivating.
“I always want to look at things through fresh eyes,” says Emanuel.
This latest venture is about marrying Emanuel’s creative talent with management expertise.
We are being promised some big hitting appointments in the New Year that will make the fashion world sit up and take notice.
“In the past I have always had to do things on my own,” Emanuel says.
“The creative brain is very different to the business brain, as I have discovered.
“The designs have never been a problem. I now have the team that can talk to investors. It is a whole different ball game.
“This is the very beginning of a brand that hasn’t really been commercialised.”
---Would-be investors should contact Darren Winter at Access Capital Markets Ltd darren.winter@accesscapitalmarkets.co.uk---