Viva Brighton Issue #28 June 2015

design
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Joanne Fleming
‘People have got used to ill-fitting clothes’
Opposite Brighton Pavilion, down steps tangled
with vines, is the studio of occasion-dress designer
Joanne Fleming. A well-groomed schnauzer greets
me at the door and Joanne, all in black, apologises
for her pooch. “He doesn’t usually come to work.”
Seated on a vintage sofa, I admire Joanne’s creations:
dresses that may suit a guest of Gatsby or a Grecian
deity. To my right is a rail of tea-length numbers
made of silk and fine French lace.
Joanne began making clothes in her teens. “My
mother didn’t used to be too impressed,” she says.
“I’d cut up curtains and sheets to make ball gowns… I
loved Hollywood Noir and fantasy.”
As an unlikely biochemistry student at Bristol, Joanne
made “huge great velvet ball gowns” for guests of the
Bastille club. On graduating, she apprenticed with
Savile Row-trained tailor Paul Hubbard, working on
collections for Luella and Giles Deacon.
When Joanne set up her own studio, Paul let her
keep her machine. She still uses the old ‘workhorse’
ten years on, but much else has changed. Although
her early clients included Madame Tussauds, Joanne
is “not interested in making reproductions” anymore.
She prefers Twentieth Century vintage style, combining
details from different eras with modern cuts: “It’s
not supposed to look like fancy dress.”
Part of Joanne’s appeal as a dressmaker is that she
isn’t ‘constrained to a single style’. She encourages
her clients to keep an open mind too. “If someone’s
really keen on a twenties style but they are fuller
figured, I’ll try to steer them towards a more flattering
cut that uses twenties-influenced decorative
techniques,” she says.
One client had a 20s-inspired wedding in a Scottish
castle. “We went for an antique silver-lace dress just
below the knee but the real centrepiece was a beautiful
silk velvet opera coat with amazing sleeves and
a circular pin-tucked pattern.” Joanne developed the
design from a 1930s coat she found in Totnes.
I ask whether the appeal of vintage is partly a reaction
against the modern world. “I think there has
been a reaction to mass-production,” she says. “It
used to be that everyone was very pleased if they
picked something up in Primark for a fiver. [Now]
I think people are prepared to invest in something
that is more ethically produced.
“Up until WW2, people would have made their
own clothes or have had them made, if they could
afford it, by local seamstresses… That disappeared
and it was all about shop-bought. People got used to
ill-fitting clothes.”
With 40-50 dresses on her books at any one time,
Joanne doesn’t have time to make many of her own
clothes now. She seems glad, however, that blogs
and programmes like the Great British Sewing Bee
are re-popularising the art.
“Even if people don’t follow through on actually
making things, I think it gives them more of an appreciation
of what it involves to actually hand-make
something. It’s not any cheaper to make your own
clothes often, but it is very rewarding.” Chloë King
joanneflemingdesign.com
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