Once sold exclusively in the UK, designer Katherine Hooker will be hosting a series of trunk shows in NYC. Here, she fits writer Melissa Whitworth for a stylish beige jacket. (Caitlin Thorne Hersey)
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On a recent windy day in Wales, with the eyes of the world’s press and her future British subjects on her, Kate Middleton took a “walkabout” to chat and shake hands with her fans. She was wearing a honey-color herringbone wool coat with brown velvet trim at the collar, cuffs and pockets: a bespoke jacket instantly recognizable to fashion watchers as the British label Katherine Hooker.
It was Middleton’s first official outing since the announcement of her engagement to Prince William.
SEE THE PHOTOS: DRESS LIKE KATE!
Middleton has been photographed wearing Hooker’s designs since she began dating the prince. That she chose Hooker for her first appearance as Wills’ fiancée is something of a royal seal of approval; what Diana did for the Barbour jacket, Kate could very well do for Katherine Hooker’s designs.
Middleton first discovered Hooker’s label in 2005, and has been photographed in another of her jackets — a powder-blue wool tweed jacket with paisley trim. (Hooker’s other London fans include Plum Sykes, model Jemma Kidd and Jerry Hall.)
At the Regency Hotel in New York last week, Hooker hosted one of 20 trunk shows this year to give her American clients the royal treatment.
I stopped by because — let’s face it — who doesn’t want to look a bit like Kate?
Hooker helped me slip on a beige wool tweed jacket with velvet piping and a paisley print-lined collar. She eyed my body up and down. “You have got an absolutely tiny waist,” she said. “I think the ‘Hacking’ jacket.”
We then tried on a forest-green tweed that suited my coloring — she promised it would make my eyes “pop.”
She measured the sleeves and nipped in the waist, then voila, I looked almost regal — chic, classic and sophisticated.
“I have been honing my eye ever since I popped out,” says Hooker. “My mother is a painter, and has always taught me about composition.”
There were two garment rails of jackets and coats — all in luxurious British wools and tweeds. On the coffee table rested piles of swatches: velvets, suedes and a soft camel cashmere sample that Hooker held up to the light and stroked lovingly.
“Kate is so elegant. Her style’s so appealing because it’s very subtle,” says Hooker. “She doesn’t take her style too seriously, but she really knows what she likes and what she wants. She knows exactly what works for her.”
Middleton’s style marks a return to timeless elegance. Hooker’s jackets — which are custom-made with any combination of fabrics, hand-finished and tailored to “fit perfectly” — will last a lifetime, she says, the antithesis to “fast fashion.”
It takes many women years to work out what suits them, but, like Middleton, Hooker had a definite sense of her own style at a young age.
“When I was 18, I bought this amazing black, silk antique coat in a junk shop in Jerusalem. It was hand-made for a 14-year-old Hasidic boy,” says Hooker.
“It just so happened that I was the right shape for it, with tiny little shoulders, and it was cut really high in the arms . . . I wore it to death.”
Eight years ago, Hooker designed a coat with a local tailor in India, based on the same antique jacket, and her business was born.
“I am a really lazy shopper. I just want to put it on and love it,” says Hooker. “That’s why I specialize in a core product. I like having one fantastic item of clothing.”
Tracy Springer, an attorney in her early 50s, hosted a private trunk show at her Upper West Side apartment on Saturday for 12 of her girlfriends. She discovered Hooker through a friend and bought a gray-and-blue tweed “Tali” jacket with a gray crushed-velvet collar the last time the designer was in New York.
Her friends from New York and Connecticut ranged from a recent Harvard graduate in her early 20s to women in their 50s.
“What I love about her designs is that they are based on a very classic style but I can make it my own: as contemporary and edgy as I want to be, or as classic as I want,” says Springer.
As for the Kate Middleton factor, Hooker says, “The best advertisement is the coats themselves . . . My customers get stopped in the street.
“Someone came up to me [at a department store in London] and said, ‘Sorry to bother you, but is that a Katherine Hooker coat?’ I said, ‘I am Katherine Hooker.’ It was a wonderful moment.”
Custom-made jackets cost from $860 to $1,200. Her next New York trunk show will be at the Regency Hotel on April 7; katherinehooker.com.