On a stark winter’s afternoon on Savile Row in Mayfair, two plainly dressed women walk into Fedro Gaudenzi’s Savile Row atelier. They pick up a “priceless” jumpsuit on display and walk out before anyone could notice. In a flash, a piece that had taken months of painstaking work to create was gone.
“It was horrible,” Gaudenzi tells me. “It was our first prototype so it wasn’t perfect like we’d make for a client, but the piece had soul and history. The time that went into it, the thought process. It really pisses me off.” Determined to find the piece, Gaudenzi posted pictures on social media and paid to make them reach bigger audiences. But the fashion world thought the posts were a marketing stunt rather than a plea for help. “Everyone thought it was a campaign,” says Gaudenzi. “A campaign called ‘The Stolen Dress.’ People would comment saying: ‘I love this piece, I want to see it.’ I had to tell people, ‘No, this is not a joke.’”
Gaudenzi was inundated with requests for the dress as his posts travelled around the world. It was the opposite of what he’d intended, which was to incentivise the UK police to search harder for the stolen piece and ultimately get it back. One of those who read about the stolen dress was Julia Fox, the actor and former girlfriend of Kanye West, who got in touch to say she’d like to wear it. After explaining the jumpsuit was missing, Fox decided she’d commission the Italian-born Londoner Gaudenzi to make her a speciality piece anyway, a delightful silver lining after the horror of the stolen jumpsuit. Gaudenzi has since worked on an exclusive piece for Fox to wear on a forthcoming red carpet.
“I felt very pleased,” says Gaudenzi. “It’s the first time we’ve tried to make a piece in less than a month without seeing a client, based on a mannequin.” While Gaudenzi says he had yet to install security cameras at the time of the theft (he has now!) he believes the piece could be found and returned to him if the police gave the case more time.
The designer pushing the boundaries on Savile Row
Gaudenzi’s risk-taking fashion is shaking up Savile Row. He is a street level atelier, meaning he makes all his pieces on site in the cutting room. Only a handful of the historic houses still make their pieces on Savile Row – most of the modern designers have workshops elsewhere. “I think that’s the beauty of it,” he says. “Otherwise you’re detached from how things are made.”
The stolen dress provided priceless publicity for Gaudenzi, who relies on hype to get his work in front of clients. In the fashion world, odds are stacked against smaller designers, as big names like Chanel, Alexander McQueen and Versace have contracts with actors to guarantee their collections get publicity on places like red carpets, generating publicity and sales. Gaudenzi is outspoken about how more could be done to support independent designers in the capital. “The British Fashion Council could help by showcasing pieces by young designers,” says Gaudenzi. “But this is the way the world works – it’s money at the end of the day.” Thank goodness Hollywood came to save the day.
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