Designer Jean Muir Endures
A Fashion Giant with a Quiet but Influential Legacy
Allthough this designer's designer passed away over a decade ago, her influence is still quietly, but strongly, felt.
For someone whose clothes lacked "hanger appeal," who wasn’t popular enough to be knocked off, and who never even had her own retail store, designer Jean Muir's influence & legacy continue to grow. Although the designer died in 1995, her husband, Harry Lueckert, her former personal assistant, and a design team are actively growing the brand.
Two years ago, they opened a stand-alone store near London's Bond Street, with a second one planned for New York, possibly in 2007. While small in terms of sales – 2.5 million GBP ($4.82 million) in 2005, the influence of Muir on fashion insiders isn’t to be underestimated. To commemorate the fourtieth year after her first collection, the company has now released a coffee-table book: "Jean Muir: Beyond Fashion" (Antique Collectors' Club). Authored by the company’s director of sales & marketing, and a frequent Muir collaborator, Sinty Stemp, the book looks at how Muir – alongside her contemporaries Mary Quant, Zandra Rhodes and Ossie Clark – went from influential 60s designer to a commercial success in the 70s through the 80s, and later, an admired & feted ambassador of British fashion. "I'd long wanted to write a book about Miss Muir," Stemp recently told WWD about the 175 page behemoth filled with Replete with pictures, illustrations, and essays. "I'd worked so closely with her and given so many lectures about her work. And then we were approached by the publisher."
And small wonder. She had myriad fans such as Bill Blass and Franco Moschino from the fashion industry; actors like Joana Lumley ("Absolutely Fabulous"), Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench and Samantha Bond; authors like Lady Antonia Fraser; modern style mavens like Sienna Miller, and eagle-eyed buyers from the influential Paris vintage shop Didier Ludot. Much of the reason was her approach to fashion as an exercise in "engineering in cloth," turning out clothes that are designed for real, 3-D bodies in motion – from the tiny to the less petite. "Proper attention to dress is a sign of self-respect and respect for the order of things," the book reports her saying. "I've always hated fashion hanging on a skirt length. It's a pity these things are put on fashion."
She took women’s dressing needs seriously, once telling WWD: "Clothes aren't fun and games. This isn't a silly, frivolous business." And customers rewarded her with cult-like loyalty, still bringing in various 10 or 20 year old items to the store for repairs, according to Stemp. Working with British artisans to conjur up buttons, belts, and other offbeat accessories for her designs, the famously rigorous, perfectionist Scot – with her severe bob, perma-navy ensembles, and neat-freak tendancies – left a charismatic, influential legacy in her wake. "Her handwriting was so distinctive and different, and there were so many young designers who were taught, trained and molded by her," explains Stemp. "Her clothing doesn't really have hanger appeal — it's all about the feel and cut. Women get hooked."
