Pollen: Success not to be sneezed at

Press, 10 February 1988, Page 16

Pollen: Success not to be sneezed at

KATHRYN SAMUEL

rags to riches tale with a happy ending.

finds a

Even a cursory glance around any gathering of the more glamorous members of the London social crowd will reveal their current favourite designers in an instant. Short, snappy little suits, feminine and shapely, with a flattering fake fur collar, a nippedin waist or a swagger of bold buttons are the unmistakable signature of Arabella Pollen. “She has caught the young, sharp fashion mood of the moment more precisely than any other designer just now,” says Annette Worsley Taylor, director of the London Designer Collections. “Her clothes are just so easy to wear.” Arabella Pollen herself is more than happy. “We

closed our order book for next summer three weeks ago,” she says. “And another three shops rang this morning hoping to see the new collection. We had to disappoint them. It has been another fantastic season.” A satisfying state of affairs for any designer, but doubly so for Arabella, whose career began with instant success and then took the kind of dive from which few recover. in 1981, with no formal design training and the backing of publisher Naim Attallah, the Pol-

len label was born. The Princess of Wales was an early customer, the magazines enthused and the shops followed suit. Success came frighteningly fast. But then backer and designer did not see eye to eye and then began the lengthy and debilitating process of extricating themselves from the arrangement. Arabella’s collections suffered as she lost her ability to update English classic looks with a modern stamp. “The damage those rotten collections did us,” she says, refer-

ring to the new company she now runs with her brother, Marcus, “has taken a long time to recover from. “Most designers do their learning at school; I made all my mistakes in public. Buying myself out of the original company virtually bankrupted me. But by some act of God I have survived.” Arabella has done more than merely salvage her reputation. The Princess of Wales is once again wearing her clothes along with other high fashion figures. With more than 60 outlets in Japan, an order book full from both British and international stores, she has become one of Britain’s brightest hopes. — Daily Telegraph

Pollen wears Pollen: Left, floral ottoman jacket, satin skirt. Right, emerald green Harris tweed jacket, black wool skirt