Mama knows best
THE LAST TIME Italian fashion designer Luisa Beccaria visited Hong Kong was, she thinks, about a decade ago. 'That was two children less,' she says (she is now the mother of five). 'And many collections less, when I was doing haute couture in Paris. I'd been invited to go to Tokyo, with this incredible first-class ticket, but in Hong Kong it was a disaster from the jet lag.' This time, however, things are going much better: 'I feel spectacular from the beginning.'
Beccaria, perched on a sofa in Joyce - which stocks her line here - in one of her signature floating frocks with a little cardigan and a huge sparkling brooch pinned to her bosom, is indeed looking spectacular, especially for someone who has been out clubbing until 3am with her 16-year-old daughter, Lucrezia. 'Every time I travel I try to take one of them,' she says of her children, who range in age from 19 to almost four, and are euphoniously named Lucilla, Lucrezia, Ludovico, Luna and Luchino.
'Luna is seven and a top star,' says her mother fondly. 'When Teen Vogue came to my Sicilian home to make an interview with the two grown-up girls, someone rang from New York to say, 'Don't forget to photograph Luna, she gives life to her mother's clothes.' They ask her who's her favourite designer and she said, 'Luisa Beccaria! Have you ever seen a similar use of fabric, the cut, the shape?'' Beccaria laughs, shaking out her (spectacular) curls in amazement. 'Seven! Later I asked her did she really mean that and she said, 'Of course I love the clothes a lot. And this is business.' She's very business-orientated, that one.'
Is her mother? Beccaria, who has been in fashion for more than 20 years - during which time she has progressed from showing the clothes she made for fun in an art gallery in Milan to building up a reputation among select fans for feminine garments of a certain graceful individuality - looks thoughtful.
'Not so much, I must say. I have a more artistic vision of life, I'm a poetic person. But I'm more commercial than I was. If the others don't buy your stuff, you don't feel understood - someone has to respond if you want to communicate.'
The initial response in Hong Kong to Beccaria's look came from the socialite Teresa Cheung Siu-wai who, readers may recall, once had a shop in The Galleria which introduced names such as Luisa Beccaria and Colette Dinnigan to local consumers, but has since gone on to rack up what is, from all accounts, a spectacular degree of debt.
Beccaria says, loyally, 'She's very talented, I think she has an eye. Yesterday I went to see a show [this conversation took place during Hong Kong Fashion Week], I don't remember the name of the designer, but afterwards Teresa introduced me to all the journalists, apparently my picture is in some of the newspapers today. She's very supportive.' (In response to a deeply vulgar question - whether Beccaria is owed money by Cheung - she shakes her curls emphatically, looks properly pained at the suggestion, falls into a moment's uncharacteristic silence and then brightly resumes the conversation.)
'We have a lot of clients in Hong Kong,' she says. Beccaria, who is 1.71 metres, can carry off that swirling, faintly fin de siecle look with great aplomb. But what about shorter women? As if a little PR button has been triggered, Beccaria now smoothly moves into the name-that-celebrity routine without which no interview with a fashion designer these days is complete. 'It looks good on very tall women like Nicole Kidman,' she begins. 'But it also looks good on small women - Lucy Liu wears it a lot. It depends on how you style them. It sells very well from teenagers to the 70s.'
A pack of press cuttings, of considerable heft, is magically produced and Beccaria goes through each glossy photo with charming determination. (Dickson Lee, who is supposed to be taking her photograph for this newspaper, arrives during the process but as she is evidently reluctant to draw breath during the holy litany of Hollywood, he has to hang around for a while listening to the roll-call.)
'So many,' says Beccaria, reverently, turning the pages of Beccaria-clad stars. 'Catherine Zeta-Jones ... the future wife of Donald Trump ... Hilary Swank ... Look! Jennifer Lopez! Look! The day she received the ring off the fiance! [this in reference to a photo in Hello! magazine of Ben Affleck and J.Lo looking, at least at that stage, nuptially inclined] ... Halle Berry, so beautiful ... Sandra Bullock ... look, so many we have ... Uma Thurman!'
Peering at the People magazine picture of Thurman at a Kill Bill party, it is apparent that the name of Luisa Beccaria which, in the credits, is listed as Louisa Veccaria is not yet one with which magazine editors, at least in the US, are reliably familiar. Beccaria takes this setback philosophically. 'These are not fashion magazines, they don't know me so well.'
Had she taken a different fork in the road some years ago, however, she might have become exceptionally well known. After Karl Lagerfeld left Chloe, in that pause before Stella McCartney was noisily appointed, the job of creative director was offered to Beccaria. 'At the beginning of course, I said yes, yes! It's the occasion of my life, I always dreamt to leave Milan, they said that they give me the apartment in Paris. But then I thought, 'Oh my god, if I go to Paris with the four children - at that stage - and new place, new stuff, and if I have to travel to London and to America, and they're lonely, this is scary'.'
Beccaria leans her head against the wall of the Joyce store, makes several grand gestures with her hands, and adds, 'Who knows what would have been? I would have had much less freedom than before. I'm not a very planning sort of person, I'm instinctive. They needed someone like Stella, all the time in the atelier. I don't think I was the right person, they found a much better solution.'
At this point, Lucrezia arrives ('Amore! How beautiful you look!' coos her mother, then adds, as an aside, 'You see how young girls wear my stuff?'), the photograph is taken (Beccaria spreads out her skirt, adds a bag she bought in Stanley Market as a prop, flings herself back on the sofa and generally performs, as she has throughout the interview, with loveable gusto) and Beccaria implores her daughter to recount a tale about some earrings she bought in Stanley. Lucrezia opens her mouth. Her mother, without pause, tells the story.
Is she going to the Oscars? Beccaria sighs (all those stars). 'I was thinking maybe to be going. But this season, they're so stupid in Milan, the collections, it's the same time. I'm just one person. How can I show a collection and go to the Oscars?' Perhaps the ever-business-minded, commercially savvy Luna, aged seven, could organise the collections in her place.
Her mother nods, contemplating this pleasing prospect with a grin, and says, 'Maybe next time.'
