5 minute read
Good golly Miss Molly
from GOODWOOD | ISSUE 22
by Uncommonly
GOOD GOLLY
Words by Hannah Betts
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One of the world’s most exciting young fashion designers, Molly Goddard became a household name when she dressed Killing Eve’s Villanelle in Calpol-pink taffeta. Now her festive, fabulous creations have earned her the Goodwood Talent in Fashion Award
MISS MOLLY
Goodwood has long been associated with fashion, festivity and having the most fabulous time – with the requisite modish insouciance – meaning this year’s winner of the Goodwood Talent in Fashion Award could not be a more perfect fit.
Molly Goddard, 33, has found global renown as one of the fashion world’s most thrilling and influential young designers. Her eponymous label has not only been showered with prizes, it has changed the way we dress, heralding a shift towards maximalism, volume and meticulously constructed creations-as-confections.
Her fascination with artisanal processes such as shirring and smocking is matched by a radical approach to proportion that can mean 40-metre hems of the sort more usually associated with the V&A (to which she recently donated a frock for its permanent collection). One of her dresses might consume a dizzying 90 metres of material.
Goddard’s is a “go large or go home” ethos of Crayolacoloured frills, flounces and tiers of her trademark tulle. Her dresses are very much gowns – fantastical pieces for everyday exuberance, and spot-on for a post-pandemic party atmosphere in which life is the party, with sequins donned by day.
Goddard girls are dressed up without being trussed up, or, as the designer puts it, “straightforward, uninhibited and comfortably overdressed” enthusiasts for show-stopping drama sported with nonchalant cool. Fans include Rihanna, model-turned-actress Agyness Deyn, model muses Edie Campbell and Adwoa Aboah, and actresses Rosamund Pike and Jodie Comer. Comer has proved herself a Goddard groupie on and off the set of Killing Eve, in which her exquisitely dressed assassin, Villanelle, strode about Place Vendôme in Balenciaga biker boots amid a Calpol-pink Goddardian cloud.
Goddard grew up in west London, a clothes-obsessed tomboy. Her art-teacher mother took her daughters to Portobello market – “the most incredible resource” – and Vintage at Goodwood, where she enjoyed both the style and the carousing. Like her heroes, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen, Goddard was determined to study under the Central Saint Martins professor Louise Wilson, who secured her an undergraduate internship at Galliano.
Unhappy in her MA course, in 2014 she hosted a party to showcase her work and thus acquire a job. Instead she acquired orders, and her brand was born. Today her collections are sold by the world’s most prestigious stockists, including Browns, Dover Street Market, Trading Museum Comme des Garçons, Matches and Net-a-Porter. Like Goodwood, Goddard Inc is a family affair: her mother makes her sets, her sister, Alice, collaborates as the brand’s stylist and her managing director is a former primary-school ally. The company has turned a profit from day one, with no outside investment or grants.
The Goodwood award calls for three gowns, inspired by its heritage, “to create some drama and ideally be showstopping”. Not that our heroine will require any persuasion on this front. Goddard and I speak early in her design process, and already she has been hitting not only the library, but the house. “I’m finding the history really exciting – the flamboyance and the eccentricity, the tapestries and the paintings. I’m endlessly pulling out imagery. I want to know not only about Goodwood’s female icons, but what the men wore and what their servants were dressed in.” Her outfits
Above left: Molly Goddard. Left: a portrait of Louise de Kérouaille, mistress of Charles II, from the Goodwood Estate provided inspiration. Right and above: Goddard at her studio with some of her maximalist creations
BBC
Above: Jodie Comer as the Killing Eve assassin Villanelle, in a pink Goddard gown that soon became iconic. The designer's creations cleverly combine exuberant excess with extreme practicality
will join the house’s archive, meaning there is the allure of “making future history – a sort of time capsule”.
We discuss the estate’s portrait of Louise de Kérouaille – Duchess of Portsmouth, mistress of Charles II and mother of the 1st Duke of Richmond – whose plush scarlet robe Goddard deems “seriously sexy”. Tales of Edward VII, a man who took a keen interest in what should and shouldn’t be worn at the racing track, have also intrigued her. “I’ll draw and re-draw the designs hundreds of times with my pattern cutters. Then we’ll make a toile so that we can play about with fabrics and construction.”
As ever, we can expect barely contained excess, combined with Goddard’s signature practicality. These will be gowns that can be crammed into washing machines. “Fashion can be special and for busy, working women,” she says. “Dressed up doesn’t mean having to be laced into skintight costumes, or staggering about in the highest heels. That really is the least attractive look. Women need comfort to feel confident.”
Goddard is “definitely a feminist,” and was uneasy with some of the princessy terms initially deployed to describe her aesthetic – until Villanelle became her poster woman and the world understood that this was feminine not as in fey, but as in subversively hyper-femme.
As Goddard notes: “It worked because they totally got what that dress was about.” Or, to quote The Guardian’s Jess Cartner-Morley: “Villanelle is to Goddard as Audrey Hepburn was to Hubert de Givenchy.” The dress took its starring role on the BBC in September 2018. A few weeks later it had become the Hallowe’en costume du jour. Its designer referenced it in fuchsia a year later, while by 2020 Primark had concocted a ghastly £15 parody that served only to emphasise the genius of the original. The Goddard name had gone global, meaning even those with no interest in fashion can immediately conjure up an image of her work.
Many of us will be anticipating a “thinking pink” element in Goddard’s Goodwood creations. “Interesting…” says our heroine, but she will not be drawn. Princesses may be out, but perhaps we can hope for a duchess – in taffeta and bovver boots, striding towards the winning post? Molly Goddard’s collection for Goodwood, in association with the British Fashion Council, will be revealed at the Opening Ceremony of the Qatar Goodwood Festival, July 26.
