We’ll have whatever they’re buying: meet the fashion buyers. They're employed for their impeccable taste and unerring instinct for what women will want in their wardrobes each season. Julia Robson meets Britain's top fashion buyers. BY Julia Robson | 01 September 2012 Paul Baptiste Photo: LAURA HYND Paul Baptiste, 42, is the operations and buying director for The Shop at Bluebird in London. My desk is on the shop floor so I can observe customers. The backbone of my womenswear buy is contemporary, urban classics like a strong jacket.
Sometimes people just rock up at my desk with products, but I go on a lot of foreign trips. Paul's Top Three From left: Silk blouse, £595, Mother of Pearl, Wool coat, £1,685, McQ, Acrylic-mix blazer, £1,050, and matching trousers, £725, by Meadham Kirchhoff Natalie Kingham, 38, is international buyer for Matches boutiques Natalie Kingham wearing a Jonathan Saunders dress. I'm buying for very glamorous customers but I don't have one woman in my head; I have five. I'm a grafter. Natalie's Top Three I oversee seven buyers. Rihanna, Naomi Campbell, and Iman Model Balmain by Olivier Rousteing. Bethann Hardison Reintroduces the Black Girls Coalition. Photo: Getty Images Bethann Hardison doesn’t plan to police this season’s catwalks; in fact, she has slight stage fright after receiving this year's CFDA Founders Award for her championing of racial diversity. “It’s a big one this time,” she says.
“It’s one thing when you’re trying to get people to wake up and smell the coffee. But, when the [CFDA] honors you, and everybody knows, and they use your name in their letters, making a special paragraph to say, ‘Remember, Bethann Hardison said ba-da-ba,’ that’s a lot. You hope you don’t get out there and it’s like, whatever.” A year ago, Hardison’s newly formed Diversity Coalition dispatched its own set of letters to the directors of the CFDA, the British Fashion Council, the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana, and the Fédération Française de la Couture, reading: “Eyes are on an industry that season after season watches fashion design houses consistently use…one or no models of color.
For this go-around, the Diversity Coalition stayed mum. Lupita Nyong’o | Rising Star & Captivating Presence | Ciné Kenya. Lupita at a Dinner hosted by Vogue’s Sally Singer for fashion label Sacai, 23rd Oct 2013. Photo: Pablo Frisk What a pleasure it was to spend time with someone so talented and charismatic. In April 2013, Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o was my very first ‘Profile of The Week’ feature where I noted her early accomplishments including In My Genes, a documentary that detailed the plight of people living with Albinism in Kenya, her stage work while she studied at the Yale School of Drama and her leading role in the MTV award-winning drama series Shuga.
Since then, she has gone on to garner considerable fame and acclaim for her searing role as Patsey in the historical drama film 12 Years A Slave directed by British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen. The story is based on the memoir of Solomon Northup, a Black man and talented musician who was born free in New York state, kidnapped in Washington D.C., then sold into slavery and kept in bondage for 12 years.
Fashion Icon Photography: Inez & Vinoodh. We’ll have whatever they’re buying: meet the fashion buyers.