First Impressions: Me and Mr Jones

Walking through the college doors for the first time represents a moment of opportunity, adventure and high excitement. CSM professor and alumnus Iain R Webb recalls the unforgettable instant he clapped eyes on fellow student Stephen Jones, today’s much-loved milliner to the stars.

I remember vividly the day I visited St Martin’s (now Central Saint Martins) in the autumn of 1976. Before I even entered the building I was convinced this was the place for me. Standing on the pavement outside, plucking up the courage to go in and wondering if I cut the sartorial mustard wearing a liquorice-thin school tie, plastic sandals and sloppy orange mohair sweater (knitted by my Mum). The doors swept open and out sashayed a boy (or at least I guessed it was a boy) who looked like… well, I wasn’t sure what he looked like, only that I had never seen anyone look like that before. Not in the real world, anyway. He was wearing a skinny matelot T-shirt with giant shoulder pads, exaggerated peg-top pants and stiletto-heeled boots. Around his neck was a scarf knotted at the side and the finishing touch (it should have been a clue) was a black beret worn at a very jaunty angle. He looked breathtaking and fearless and was ‘traffic-stopping’. Literally. He was Stephen Jones, later to become the celebrated and much-loved milliner to the stars.

Jones was in his second year of the BA in fashion design when I joined the course in 1977 but we quickly became friends and even shared a flat in less-than salubrious downtown Victoria along with another St Martin’s fashion freak, Fiona Dealey. Many a morning Fiona and I would come down to breakfast to find Stephen monopolising the kettle in order to steam one of his high-rise hats destined for the heads of Steve Strange,  Boy George or any one of the weird and wonderful Blitz club regulars. By day the New Romantic in-crowd would hang out at the soigné salon – all grey taffeta drapes and Greek statuettes – that he opened just a year after leaving art school in the basement of the P.X. boutique in Covent Garden not far from his present showroom in Great Queen Street. During his career he has collaborated with every major designer from Galliano and Gaultier to Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons.  His client list is fabulously diverse, from Carla Bruni to Marilyn Manson.

After a spell of work experience at London couture house Lachasse, where his head was turned forever under the tutelage of Shirley Hex, for his final collection at St Martin’s in 1979 Stephen created silvery draped cocktail suits accessorised with turbans featuring peacock feathers. The mood was 1950s couture with a punk attitude. ‘The last two looks were white court presentation dresses worn with broken tiaras with dead seagulls in them,’ he remembers, as adamant today as he was then that creativity is often born out of necessity.  ‘If you don’t have a lot of money it forces you to think alternatively. You have to be more creative. Like when I left college I bought hats from Oxfam and reworked them.’

Find out more about BA Fashion and our alumni profiles.