WILD about fashion Susannah Constantine has always worn it well, as co-conspirator with Trinny Woodall in the early Noughties and now as presenter of the Wardrobe Malfunction podcast. She’s also the author of two novels and a keen proponent of the benefits of wild swimming. Was fashion always the plan for Susannah Constantine? She describes attracting a certain kind of ‘fag hag’ label early in her career and believes it stuck. Peter Berthelsen, who owned the Armani franchise, got her started. She had a job in an Armani boutique, and Berthelsen asked her to work as a runaround for the designers he was working with: John Galliano, Savile Row tailor Richard James and shoe designer Patrick Cox. She loved sitting with the pattern cutters and seamstresses and got a real understanding of how clothes were made.
Trinny and Susannah presented the hugely successful BBC series ‘What Not to Wear’ in the early Noughties
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It’s hard to imagine Constantine without What Not to Wear co-presenter and friend Trinny Woodall, but they didn’t initially get on and moved in parallel social circles. “She was more Eurotrash to my Sloane”. But Constantine had started writing for The Telegraph sports and motoring pages and was commissioned to do a fashion column. Over lunch Trinny talked about wanting a column about ‘real’ High Street fashion. The Ready to Wear column was born in 1994 and ran for seven years. “We were looked down on by the fashion industry and never went to the shows because we were about clothes for ordinary woman like ourselves” (if you can count someone who dated Viscount Linley and Imran Khan as ordinary!). Constantine argues that what was different was the pair modelling the clothes themselves, and doing their own hair and make-up. “It was quite rough and ready but ultimately accessible. This, of course, was a bit frowned upon. Plus if there was a style coming out by Karl
