So the fatal day is almost upon us: British Prime Minister Theresa May is supposed to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon on Wednesday. After that, the negotiations for the UK to exit the EU will finally begin. At the moment, many issues surrounding the Brexit remain rather vague, from border control and rules regarding international trade to the position of European citizens living and working in the UK and that of UK citizens residing in Europe, but, interestingly enough, the current position of Great Britain seems well-summarised, or rather, simbolised by the origins of certain fashion items and collections linked with a nationalistic sense of Britishness.
Last November Samantha Cameron, wife of former British Prime Minister David Cameron, announced she was launching her own fashion line. An ambassador for the British Fashion Council (BFC), Cameron stated she aimed at providing a "urban uniform for busy women who love fashion" (as long as they are size 14, because her line does not offer larger sizes, maybe because women above size 14 are not busy and do not love fashion...) at a relatively affordable price point.
Called Cefinn (the resulting and convoluted acronym of the first and last letters of the Cameron name, and the initials of the couple's children Elwen, Florence, Ivan and Nancy), the line was officially launched in February and went on sale online on Net-a-Porter and in Selfridges in London.
Thanks to a (terribly biased) article featured on British Vogue (having a sister who is also Vogue's deputy editor always helps...) enthusiastically supporting the brand, the collection (looking more or less like a more expensive and maybe trendier version of what you may find at Marks and Spencer), registered fast sales at the very beginning, with an initial rush that allowed certain items to go out of stock in 24 hours, though rhythms stabilised soon afterwards.
A while back Cameron worked with the BFC on the "Let's Make it Here" database listing and supporting local manufacturers in the UK, but her clothes are actually manufactured in Lithuania and Macedonia (on Net-a porter, Cefinn's garments are just described as "Imported", while the site indicates for other garments if they are "Made in England/France/Italy"; the actual labels on the garments reveal more about them).
Obviously, this choice is not Cameron's "fault": fashion companies regularly turn to low-wage European countries such as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Poland and Romania and, in some cases, they take advantage of the European outward processing trade (OPT) scheme that allows to cut a product in one place, assemble it in a low-wage country and label it as made in the original country (quite a few Italian companies opt for this trick, it is certainly not a secret). There are actually many other British fashion labels and houses producing in Europe (or outside it) who do not seem to have a problem admitting that. for money or quality reasons, they manufacture their garments and accessories somewhere else, but what surprises in the case of Cameron's label is the way it seems to be marketed to make consumers believe this is a 100% British product.
Mind you, while Sam Cam turns to Eastern European countries to manufacture her stuff, Theresa May wears made in Europe fashion items: last week the British Prime Minister donned a pair of customised Charlotte Olympia red velvet kitten heel shoes (a unique version of the brand's trademark feline "Kitty" flats) that designer Charlotte Dellal created for her to mark the annual fund-raising initiative Red Nose Day (the shoes are currently being auctioned for charity here).
Charlotte Olympia's shoes are actually hand-made in Italy, so, again, here we have a product designed in the UK and made somewhere else.
Now, lingering on superficial aspects such as garments and shoes may sound like drifting away from politics and from more serious issues such as last week's Westminster attack to focus on more ephemeral aspects of life.
But, at the same time, these fashion items seem to have summarised pretty well the wider Brexit dilemmas: wanting to go solo and longing to be "liberated" (as Boris Johnson states...) from Europe, but being terribly and impossibly linked with it, and exploiting or benefiting from it (in the current global market it is impossible to think about an entirely "Made in the UK" fashion industry as it would be killed by the competition out there).
We're going to give Cefinn less than a year (max 9 to 10 months - first it will become an accessories brand and then it will disappear...the market is already too saturated). As for Brexit, we'll see, but May's efforts sound like Trump trying to reform Obamacare and failing, realising that healthcare is a terribly complicated issue.
For the time being, bizarrely enough, the sweater that Margaret Thatcher donned in 1975 in support of the European trade agreement (and she wasn't certainy pro-Europe...) and that featured the flags of the nine countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, West Germany, Ireland, Denmark, and the United Kingdom) that made up the common market at the time, remains a more genuine example of a "Made in Britain" garment - it was indeed given as a gift to Thatcher by a Scottish mill.
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