It’s ‘Phoebe Philo’ day – here’s why fashion fans are so excited

Never has a black screen caused so much excitement. Visit phoebephilo.com and you are met with just a sliver of tiny white text with the simplest message: “Register here for news and further updates”. For fashion fans, who have been logging on since the website went live in late July, however, the adrenaline will be pumping. Finally, after much hype and untold delays, all will be revealed. Phoebe Philo’s new collection will have landed.

For the style crowd, getting their hands on any of it will be their equivalent of getting a ticket to Glastonbury. Since the news broke in February, Philophiles (like Swifties, her fans go by a collective name) have been beside themselves with excitement. While the giddy messages being exchanged on private WhatsApp groups can only be anecdotal (one friend is setting not one but three alarms on Monday morning; another has been working overtime for months in preparation for Philo’s inevitably steep prices), hard evidence of the designer’s popularity comes courtesy of eBay, which has seen a 70 per cent spike in searches since her return was announced.

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To a casual follower of fashion, the esteem in which Philo, 50, is held may feel puzzling. Why so much fuss about a woman with a scraggy ponytail, a funnel neck jumper and a pair of Stan Smiths, you may ask, having seen photos of her at one of her “legendary” Celine shows, where she was creative director between 2009-2018. The simplest answer is that Philo is far more than the sum of her parts. She may look like an insouciant West London version of the girl next door, but as a designer, she possesses that rare alchemy whereby everything she touches turns to gold. Between 2001 and 2018, she churned out hits with unremitting success, first as creative director of Chloe (2001-2006, where she succeeded her friend Stella McCartney), then at Celine whose sales quadrupled to an estimated 800 million euros per year.

While the cash cows of most designer labels are its handbags and shoes, Philo was that rare designer whose clothes were snapped up with equal fervour. Philo was doing quiet luxury long before it became a thing: if you wanted the perfect sweater, a pair of trousers that were cut just so or a coat that was beautifully tailored as well as classic enough to stand the test of time, Philo’s Celine was your go-to. British fashion editors couldn’t buy it fast enough: as soon as they Eurostarred into Paris for Fashion Week, they’d hot foot it to the Celine store, where prices, though still routinely in four figures, were slightly cheaper than in the UK.

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But the Philo effect extended far beyond fashion’s front row. Anyone who has ever wondered why Birkenstocks and pool slides became so ubiquitous can blame Philo for presenting bejewelled and fur-lined iterations at Celine. In fact, the entire trend for pimping up everyday footwear can be attributed to Philo: over the years, she’s given glow-ups to clogs, slippers and Dr Martens, while her own predilections for wearing adidas Stan Smith, New Balance and Nike trainers led to them being adopted in large number by her acolytes.

The high street wasn’t immune to her allure either. After an oversized pink coat appeared on the Celine catwalk in 2014, the high street was awash with them that autumn, with Marks & Spencer’s £79 version selling out several times over. Philo was also behind the trend for slip dresses, pyjama shirts, skinny-rib knitwear and abstract prints, the latter one of several concerted appeals to the art world.

While she is undoubtedly a business success, Philo’s real genius lay in the emotional connection she forged with her customers. How she affected this is unclear, even to someone who was there watching it unfold. She rarely gave interviews, was unforthcoming backstage after her shows, and had not a scintilla of presence on social media, once telling Vogue that “the chicest thing is when you don’t exist on Google”. Her “never complain, never explain” mantra was similar to that of Kate Moss (until she started shilling her wellness range), and borne out of a similar shyness.

Just as her aesthetic is minimalist, details of her personal life, tastes and preferences are commensurately so. We know she studied fashion at Central St Martins, has been married for 19 years to Max Wigram – who used to be a gallerist. She has three children (unusually for a designer, she took proper maternity leave), is close to her parents and her sister, lives between London and Somerset (her mother owns a homeware shop in Bruton; her husband co-owns a pub in Batcombe) and likes to tuck her hair into her jumpers. That’s about it.

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How a media-shy designer will connect with a digital-first consumer without serving up those globs of relatability that have such high currency online remains to be seen. Hell would probably freeze over before Philo posts a tutorial on Reels detailing how she tucks her hair into her turtleneck. While her new label is bankrolled by LVMH (for whom she performed so well at Celine), it holds a minority stake – Philo is in control, and likely wouldn’t have it any other way.

With male designers almost exclusively helming luxury brands, we need more women designing for women. Market conditions might be tough, but there will always be a place for Phoebe in women’s wardrobes. Even if they have to sell a kidney to afford it. Watch that space. Literally.