Ladbroke Grove local Molly Goddard threw her first fateful off-schedule London Fashion Week installation/party back in September 2014. “It was in a church hall in Mayfair,” she recalled today. “I paid £300. I was given some rum, and went to Brick Lane for bagels. Oh and I had a wedding singer.” Her guests were given Goddard’s tulle-buttressed t-shirt bodices and party dresses to swoosh in. As she added after winning the 2018 BFC/Vogue Fashion Fund: “I did the party presentation because I thought I’d get a job. But then we got orders. I didn’t have any set-up, so it was just me, sewing away. Then, it’s like, ‘Molly Goddard’, the brand!”
What comes around goes around. Once again today it was just Goddard, showing away, in her Bethnal Green studio. She stripped back her structure and returned to the source. Just like that debut collection, this first ‘resort’ collection of the new-Goddard era is being picked up by Dover Street Market. It will be on show (and sale) there from January. As her interludes explaining some of the intricacies of the fabric cutting techniques and smocking ratios that allowed for the creation of these 10 titanic tulle dresses attested, for Goddard the making is the thing.
But why the rupture? “This structure and this system is mad. And it’s so risky.” Goddard said that the collapse of MatchesFashion brought home the Jenga-fragility of the make-now, get-paid-later (maybe) wholesale system, and prompted her to get off the hamster wheel of speculative SKU-churning in order to recenter. The primary consideration, she emphasized, was creative rather than financial: “it’s not been about money, although it has been a harder year.”
Change is hard, and there was tangible regret when we discussed her absence from showing in September, but then excitement too at scouting the way ahead. Goddard isn’t straying down the midlife designer cul-de-sac of rejecting fashion for art; she simply plans to prioritize her fashion artistry over commercial upscaling. “I want to create pieces that I’m proud of and have fun making and then want to be able to sell them, rather than just putting a lot of random cotton dresses wherever.” She will continue to do made-to-order and bridal commissions, and is already scheming on collaborations with other free spirits she admires. “This is totally a choice I have made,” she added. Decade two starts here.