“I always tell my kids that the more you play, the more you learn,” she said, using a fruitier term than “mess.”
“I realized pretty quickly that a job was what I needed,” she said. “And I think I had a feeling that it would actually come into fashion,” despite the fact that she knew she didn’t want to return to what she was doing. In most large houses, designers’ work ends on the catwalk. They don’t oversee promoting campaigns, merchandising or store design. Mrs. Philo wanted to have her fingers in all this. Even if independence and a start-up meant giving up flying firstclass, having a driver or having a number of orchids within the office.
“Basically, that’s not what makes me happy,” Ms. Philo said. The things that make her joyful are baking, galleries, horse riding, clubs, family and friends. She said she is continually “walking a tightrope” between ensuring downtime and discovering inspiration. “Once he knows he can trust you, there are no barriers,” Mrs. Rogers said.
After Mrs. Rogers’ husband, the architect Richard Rogers, fell during a visit to Mexico and was hospitalized for months, Mrs. Philo got here to breakfast in the future wearing a big gray tweed coat that Mrs. Rogers admired. “She just took it off and gave it to me,” Mrs. Rogers said, and refused to accept the item. “He has kept me safe and warm ever since.”
Edward Enninful, the previous editor of British Vogue who has been friends with Ms. Philo since childhood in west London, said he continually pestered her about making men’s clothing. “I always expected I would have to buy one of her women’s coats and have it custom-made,” he said.
Then, just before last yr’s Fashion Awards in London, she gave him a gray double-breasted suit “just because she wanted me to feel good about myself,” he said. “I always wear black. I had never worn gray in my life, but I trusted it. It was very liberating.”
