Harry Lambert was a fashion-obsessed British Vogue intern trawling Mayfair charity shops for designer vintage before dressing Harry Styles for the Grammys and Emma Corrin in Miu Miu’s knitted knickers at the Venice Film Festival. “I didn’t have the budget for any of it when I first moved to London and got into fashion.” “It wasn’t my time to buy a Prada shirt, but I still wanted to come to work feeling amazing and like I was trying,” he says.
Lambert quenched his thirst for luxury fashion through charity shop hauls and the high street/designer collaborations that exploded in the late 2000s, when Topman was bringing clothes by Caroline Massey, Meadham Kirchhoff, Christopher Kane, and JW Anderson to young customers at a reasonable price. That’s why launching a capsule collection for another high-street behemoth, Zara, feels like a full circle moment for Lambert. “Very selfishly I was like, this is my opportunity to design for myself 15 years ago,” he goes on to say. “The high street was really important to me discovering my own style.”
His Cutie Chaos line is brimming with retro cuts, ’70s-inspired shades and quirky cartoon prints (“I was trying to think of something that would look great on a T-shirt,” Lambert says of naming the line). “I had a huge moodboard full of vintage references, including illustrations from vintage toy cards.” I discovered these nostalgic but adorable characters – I’ve been carrying the bag [printed with an illustrated fox] around a lot. “I wanted to create a sense of playfulness in this collection.”
Lambert is also acutely aware of the issues inherent in high-street fashion, as well as the environmental toll that overproduction in the industry generally imposes on the planet. “I wanted to make sure that we were being as responsible as possible,” he says, explaining why the 60-odd pieces in the Cutie Chaos collection are made mostly of low-impact fibres and recycled raw materials like recycled wool, polyester, nylon, and cotton. Lambert also paid close attention to the details. “The buttons are all covered, which is unusual for high-street collections.” Each piece’s quality had to be exceptional so that people would either keep it forever or sell it.”
Cutie Chaos takes cues from the Norwich-born stylist’s work with A-list clients, and Harry Styles fans will notice certain pieces – the sweater vests, the exaggerated collars – that appear tailor-made for one of pop’s most celebrated dressers. “He has chosen a few pieces, as has Emma Corrin,” Lambert confirms, laughing. Despite all of his influential celebrity friends placing orders, Harry is most excited for the fashion-obsessed teenagers who remind him of his younger self to get their hands on the collection. “The first time I see Cutie Chaos out in the wild… that’s what I’m most excited about.”