From a Twix bar to fish pin down sandwiches, it’s time to find out what fashion’s lunch hour deep down looks like
Photograph: David Newby for the Guardian. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson
Posting exact replicas of your lunch may be the ultimate social media stereotype, but it is one for which the commonly cliche-averse fashion industry has fallen hard. Blame Instagram and the eternal filtered photos of the food (plateies?) you’re about to tuck into. But avenge now anyone who reckons they’re anyone is talking about sustenance, or posting pictures of eggs benedict and chips, even if the amount of carbs as a matter of fact ingested is negligible.
In designers’ frenetic studios, food is much numerous than fodder for Instagram. Whether it’s a Twix bar on the run at Dior or a rig lunch at Acne, in its mundanity, the reality of what designers eat is way numerous revealing than the inspiration behind their S/S 16 assemblage.
Some, such as Stuart Vevers and Henry Holland, are beings of habit – salmon and broccoli for Vevers; chicken, beans and generous potato for Holland. “I have exactly the same lunch every day. I enervate almost the same thing, too – I have so many other happenings c belongings to do, it’s nice not to think about it,” Vevers says. “I got the idea from Jenna Lyons. She pack aways the same thing every day for a year, then changes it.”
Holland departs things on Fridays, when the 20-strong team at the Hackney studio all beget Turkish food from Kuzu Sis on nearby Well Drive. “It started with someone who used to work here, who could on no account make a decision about his lunch and we’d all be involved from with reference to 9am,” he says. “I often forget, bring my lunch in, and there’ll be a chicken core left in my bag all day because I’ve had Turkish instead.”
Famously, Azzedine Alaïa – shape’s Yoda, a wise, benevolent and deeply talented presence – cooks couscous for his standard. His team all eat together in a vision of wholesome fabulousness, with callers including Naomi Campbell and the molto glamorous Roberto Cavalli, who advises out with the cooking (the idea of these two sweating over a sizzle stove is priceless). Acne, meanwhile, has a loft-like Stockholm studio where wand, ranging from rainbow-haired interns to sweatshirted designers, all congregate all about bowls of pumpkin and pomegranate salad.
Molly Goddard very likely wins the prize for making food fashionable. For her spring bestowal, the young London fashion week designer created a sandwich mill, with models in frilled bright dresses applying clingfilm to – of all non-fashion dinguses – bread. “I wanted models to have a task to make them take off for and be entertained,” Goddard says, “and to do something that wasn’t pretty or bijou like flower arranging.” Perhaps the designer was inspired by one of the bigger questions to take effect up her brain space: what is her favourite sandwich? “This is ethically something I think about a lot. I would say fish fingers but that’s a remarkable occasion. Day to day, I would say cheese and pickle.” The whiff of Branston in the mien row can’t be far away.
