If we’ve learned one thing about Victoria Starmer in the months since her husband Sir Keir became Prime Minister, it’s that she really likes the work of the designer Edeline Lee.
Arriving to watch the Prime Minister headline the Labour Party Conference on Tuesday, Lady Starmer debuted another new dress by the London Fashion Week name – the £1,105 “Echo” style, a new arrival on Lee’s website for autumn.
It was a decided step up from earlier in the day when we saw the Prime Minister’s wife dress down wearing a £36 T-shirt and £100 trousers from the sustainable British brand By Elleven. The Starmers were photographed having breakfast and greeting guests at the Pullman Hotel in Liverpool.
Lady Starmer’s new dress is designed to stand out in a crowd – and provide a vivid splash of colour on the front pages, which she’s no doubt aware she will dominate. A shirt-dress shape, the Echo features contrasting white buttons and a graphic belt buckle and comes, conveniently, in that perfectly-selected shade of Labour-red.
On previous occasions, Lady Starmer has borrowed samples from Lee’s brand to wear to high profile events, including when she sat on the front row at the designer’s catwalk show earlier this month. The designer’s team keenly told the press that Starmer’s fashion week outfit was borrowed, amidst the ongoing row over free clothes that were accepted by the Starmers as gifts from prominent Labour donor Lord Alli. Lee was keen to street that today’s look was another loan, rather than a purchase from the new collection.
At the last Labour Party Conference in October 2023, Lady Starmer wore a red version of Lee’s “Dada” design; a bestseller for the brand which has proven to be popular in boardrooms all over the world. Lee’s clientele, typically, are C-suite executives at global companies.
The designer’s motivation, she says, is to dress all of her clients in a way that exudes “true power, grace, beauty and dignity”.
“I always want to show that the woman is wearing the dress, rather than the dress overtaking the woman,” Lee told The Telegraph after her latest catwalk show, adding that she was “really proud” to dress Lady Starmer. Vanessa Kingori, a managing director at Google UK, and Baroness Helena Morrissey joined Starmer on the front row – a markedly different approach to the many designer brands that invite A-list celebrities to attend their shows.
For Lee’s star client, clearly, the good-feeling is mutual. In order to carry on this special relationship with Downing Street? Lee needs only to ensure that every dress she makes is re-issued in that particular shade of red.
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