Long before L’Wren Scott was Mick Jagger’s girlfriend she was a much-loved and respected member of the fashion industry. She was one of ours. It is perhaps only our frustration that on radio and television reports of her death she is first named as his, and then subsequently as a fashion designer and businesswoman in her own right.
We do not diminish Mick Jagger’s grief, but she was much more than a mere ‘girlfriend.’
Her story reads like an American dream, yet with the bitterest of endings. Born in Utah in 1967, she was raised by her Mormon adoptive parents, discovering fashion through her need to sew her own clothes from an early age (by the time she was 12 she had reached 6ft of her eventual 6’3). From these homely, quaint beginnings she quickly reached the inner sanctum of the fashion industry: after she left high school she was spotted by uber photographer Bruce Weber, who told her to move to Paris. She did and modeled for Chanel and Thierry Mugler, and those incredible 42 inch legs ticked around David Bailey’s Pretty Polly clock.
In the 90s, she moved to LA and worked as a stylist and helped to pioneer the art of red carpet fashion as well as film costume itself, dressing her friends - Nicole Kidman, Sarah Jessica Parker, Angelina Jolie and Penelope Cruz, amongst other Hollywood luminaries. Her skillful aesthetic was pure, out and out old-school glamour. Her women were statuesque, Amazonian, assured, exuding power and strong femininity. You wouldn’t mess with a L’Wren woman.
In 2006 she put everything she had learnt in the fashion industry into her own dress collection, which epitomized the timeless style she was synonymous with. Her fashion shows reflected the elegant class of her clothes: guests were seated in the round and always served lunch. Her collections were keenly structured, fitted neatly to the female form, and served their wearers extremely well. They were clothes for grown up glamour fuelled lives, beautifully constructed from the finest fabrics. Yet, alongside this, recently L’Wren had taken more democratic steps: a collection for Banana Republic, collaborations with Bobbi Brown and her own eponymous perfume gave mere mortals, without limousines to lounge in and premieres to attend, an opening into her world.
It is our great loss that the drawbridge to this fantastical land has been raised up now forever. L’Wren Scott, fashion designer of dreams, will be sorely missed by her industry, but perhaps now, a little more of the world will learn about her success and talents beyond the moniker of ‘girlfriend.’ Celebrities pay tribute to L'Wren Scott...
