The Business of Fashion Podcast Sep 18, 2026 33m 20m saved
With Christopher Kane, the designer who closed his own London label and has made his debut collection for Mulberry
Christopher Kane teased his Mulberry debut on Instagram with an image of an axe chopping at a tree — posted three times, he said, not twice.
The obvious reading was destruction. His was horticultural: a tree that is cut back produces more fruit, which is how he describes what he did to a 50-year-old archive he was handed.
"to produce more fruit, you have to cut back."
Kane closed the label he ran with his sister Tammy for two decades, and this is the first job he has taken since. He spent the interval making art, traveling and doing projects he says nobody heard about, and he arrived at Mulberry with the archive at the Rookery, the brand's Somerset factory, to work from. Christopher Kane, designer of Mulberry's new collection, on The Business of Fashion Podcast.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 33 minutes of audio, 13 minutes of reading.
Here are the 13 moments that matter.
Key Takeaways
He calls heritage a foundation rather than a limitation, and took details from existing bags to build new pieces
The debut is bags and shoes as well as clothes, made with the Somerset team that produces Mulberry's leather goods
His memory of the brand is Scottish football casuals, not the Alexa Chung era London remembers
The collection is deliberately wearable — he says he has always made wearable clothes and that it is simply not for everyone
Mulberry hired him to add an audience, not to replace one: he says the existing bags still sell well
He says British brands only succeed when they are authentic, and that the London cliches are not the authentic part
Louise Wilson's rule was to be loved or hated but never in the middle, and he still works to it
Nothing about a designer's business is visible from outside — not the first collection cut from saddle leather, not the closure
He is optimistic about creativity and says commerce was always there, with a top creative tier feeding everything else
1. The Axe on Instagram
Asked whether this counts as a comeback, Kane said it does: this is his first job since closing his company. The teaser images that ran before the collection were of an axe against a tree, which he explained through Mulberry's own name and a long-standing interest in how trees are kept alive.
The axe is a pruning tool, not a weapon
to produce more fruit, you have to cut back
Christopher Kane
He described looking into the preservation of trees, and the axe as one of a tree surgeon's main tools for maintaining a healthy life cycle. The host's joke was designer-slash-arborist; Kane added jam maker, on the strength of the berries.
The same discipline applied to the collection
I have been editing heavily and pruning as you would say to like fine tune this really clear message but also having like a blade like precision
Christopher Kane
Twenty years in the business taught him the heavy edit, he said, and the axe is symbolic of it.
2. Heritage as Foundation
The host read back a line from an old Kane interview — that people just want newness — and asked how it shaped the collection. Kane could not remember saying it but agreed with it, while rejecting the adjacent idea.
Trendy is the word he objects to
But I do think newness is something as human beings we always love.
Christopher Kane
He and Tammy always pushed not to be trendy, he said, calling it a dirty word, and worked instead on things that are emotive in the present. The newness in this collection is in the leather and in the treatment of the archive.
The line that names the whole approach
for me, heritage is a foundation. It's not limitation.
Christopher Kane
Parts of existing bags, and details that have stayed with the brand over the years, were used to make something new.
3. Codes, Moved 100 Miles
Asked whether Mulberry felt heavily coded, Kane said the archive at the Rookery in Somerset kept producing pieces worth using, and that some of the codes are recognizable without being famous — a customer will see one and remember it.
His own treatment moves them a long way from the original, on his account: "we've moved it 100 miles ahead in the sense that oh, it's completely different, but it has that design line or detail, but it's not obvious." Mulberry is not a brand that sells on its logo, he said, which leaves the work somewhere else.
What the collection is built on
For me, the collection is very focused on great cut, great silhouette, and obviously my love of leather
Christopher Kane
4. Casuals Wore It First
The host's framing was that Mulberry's remembered moment is the Alexa Chung era, and that Kane's own references have always been stranger than that. Kane agreed the golden period was real and then described where he first saw the brand, which is not London at all.
Growing up between Glasgow and Motherwell, he said, the football casuals — the neds, in his word — wore Mulberry alongside sportswear labels, as part of an amalgamation of street and youth culture. It was not the bag that signaled the brand to him but the rugby shirt or the football t-shirt.
He also credited the founder's own instincts. Roger Saul, he said, worked out of London but took the products to the towns and the country as well, and the town–city–country idea is something Kane has picked up for the collection.
The method he and his sister have always used
We've always went underground and dug deep, went to the basement
Christopher Kane
Research is the best part of designing, he said, a habit he traces to Louise Wilson, who would take a razor blade to a student who came in with a reference she had already seen.
5. The Steelworks Closing
Motherwell is where the taste came from, and Kane described an industrial town with a steelworks at the center of it and a household full of women who dressed with no reference to fashion at all.
The town he grew up in
I grew up in a small town in Scotland called Motherwell.
Christopher Kane
His mother was the boss of the house, he said, his sister Tammy was wearing designer clothes at 13, and another sister, Sandra, wore leather jeans in strange colors. None of it followed the rules of fashion, which he treats as the useful part.
Not fashionable, and that was the advantage
They were never fashionable. So we never followed the rules of fashion
Christopher Kane
Behind the clothes was the closure of the steelworks that employed the town. He described a new romantic sister with blended contour makeup against a background of the industry being shut down.
What the closure looked like from inside
so you saw this thriving bustling community of strong men and women literally being decimated
Christopher Kane
And the detail he remembers
And it was really sad because you saw people's color leave them.
Christopher Kane
6. Never in the Middle
The host put another old Kane line to him — that a designer needs to be doubted in order to be creative — and said he had never seen Kane doubt himself. Kane attributed the thought to Louise Wilson rather than to himself.
Her version of competitive pressure
there's always someone more skinny, more handsome, more talented. So you always need to be 10 steps ahead
Christopher Kane
He called it healthy in an industry where you have to stay at the top of your game. The corollary was the rule he says he still works to, about the reaction a show should get.
The one outcome she would not allow
People would need to love you or hate you, but don't be in the middle.
Christopher Kane
Asked whether he still feels that way, Kane said no — he and Tammy have been nice people and have worked hard for the respect they have — and he does not expect the Mulberry collection to polarize anyone.
7. What Nobody Ever Sees
Both ends of a designer's career are invisible from outside, and Kane went through each. At the start, working from Dalston Lane, he and Tammy cut up leather made for saddles because he liked how black it was, and sewed it on a domestic machine while the suppliers asked how they had managed it. That became the second collection.
The part of the industry that stays hidden
No one ever sees that what designers and creatives go through cuz it's a tough game.
Christopher Kane
And the reason people stay anyway
But some reason we're truly addicted to it and we love it.
Christopher Kane
The host said the closure must have been heartbreaking, and Kane agreed it was, then described what he and Tammy did about it: kept working, kept interviewing, took collaborations nobody heard about, to keep going. He was clear he was not alone in a hard few years.
His read on the industry he left
now we're starting to see hopefully the fashion get on track
Christopher Kane
The time out had one benefit he keeps returning to. He could research, and travel, and see parts of the world he had missed, because the calendar no longer ran his life.
Why the calendar is the hardest part of the job
Season to season is life or death. Every designer you've ever met, they've all had the same struggle. Next season, there's always a deadline that was last week.
Christopher Kane
Being out of that for a while means it no longer rattles him, he said.
8. Why British Brands Win
Asked what he said when Mulberry called, Kane leaned on the unlikeliness of the pairing — he and Tammy have never played by the rules and have always done things that make people ask why — and then made the argument for the job.
His test for a British label
British brands truly succeed when they're authentic.
Christopher Kane
Authenticity, in his telling, is not the London postcard. He described the reflex to reach for Big Ben as a cliche, and the material he actually wants as the untapped parts: a street photographer shooting children in Manchester in 1960, the television he grew up on, the subcultures sitting next to the establishment. His own family gave him the range — one brother a mod and then a punk, a sister a new romantic — and he counts being British as an advantage because so much has happened there across fashion, popular culture, politics, art and music.
9. Wearable, Not Trendy
Kane said he has found it funny to hear what people expect from the collection, and that it is none of it. Two guesses in particular came up: color, which he loves and has done well, and rubberized lace, which he has made his whole career. Neither is what this is.
What it is instead is a grounded tonal palette, with some colors in it that he calls a little bit dodgy — drawn from his own history and childhood, and not obviously meant to go together. The unexpected part is at that level rather than at the level of spectacle.
His answer to people calling it a departure
I've always done wearable clothes. It's just not for everyone, and that's okay, too.
Christopher Kane
The personal material is all there, he said: school uniforms, because he was brought up Catholic and wore one; a great deal of television and film; and the character he has always designed for. He has never used a mood board or pinned down one woman, and describes the recurring figures in his head as bad cool girls, modern and strong-thinking. Every collection he has done, he said, has been somewhat autobiographical.
Music is the other code. The host recalled Kane opening a show with a track from the Cruising soundtrack and the room reacting badly; Kane said the song still gets him going, and would not say whether the debut does anything like it.
10. A New Audience
Pressed on whether Mulberry means climbing back onto the hamster wheel he said he had stepped off, Kane said no, and explained the commercial brief as he understands it.
The job is addition, not replacement
the bags are still doing really well, but we wanted to bring in a new audience
Christopher Kane
The launch was done on his terms as well as the company's, he said, after real thought about what both sides wanted out of it. Long-standing customers who have bought the bags from the beginning are not the problem to be solved; he wants to keep them while adding a new crop of buyers. He made a point of the customer who has owned one beautiful bag for years, and said she does not deter him in the slightest.
What he thinks he brings
I think this launch is something that we've done in our terms
Christopher Kane
The accessories are where he is most confident about the result. He loves drawing shoes and bags, has wanted to work with real bag makers, and called working with the Somerset team a strong and clear outcome that is specific to the brand.
11. Painting as a Resource
Kane trained in fine art before fashion and spent six years at art school, where drawing was the main way of communicating; he credited his first professor, Howard Tangye, for keeping him at it. The art he made during the shutdown, when the industry stopped, was not a change of career.
Painting did a particular job
painting was my resource to really express myself and enjoy my time
Christopher Kane
Asked whether he ever imagined a life without fashion, he said never, twice. His partner works in the industry, which he says helps rather than complicates, because both of them understand the highs and the lows.
12. The Grand Pyramid
Asked how fashion itself has changed, Kane pushed back on the standard complaint.
He does not accept that creativity has gone
everyone's always banging on about, oh, there's no creativity. There's so many creative designers out there.
Christopher Kane
The evidence he gave was a recent trip
I was in China recently and I was thrown back by the multitude of creative talents in China.
Christopher Kane
Commerce is not new either, on his account.
Selling bags was always part of it
I think commerce again, we need to sell bags or perfumes, but that's always existed.
Christopher Kane
And the structure he thinks makes it work
I always think of the grand pyramid. You always need that top tier message, that creative gem, to then feed into everything else
Christopher Kane
He described himself as always optimistic, and said he likes the down times too, because every creative industry moves in cycles.
13. Cynthia Payne, Still
The host closed with a third old Kane line — that he always wants to look at things he is not meant to — and said it was the essence of the work: fabrications and ideas that were not in fashion's vocabulary. Kane traced the taste to being 14 and watching designers on television who used materials people laughed at.
He said he is never happy with something that sits in the middle of the road, and that he learned the taste young. The reference he returned to was Cynthia Payne, the brothel keeper he used in one of his earliest collections, who he said served the upper class out of a small house in a quiet suburb. Lady Macbeth came up in the same breath. Both, in his framing, were forces of nature, and he said the range from high to low is what makes them exciting.
Asked how he himself has changed, Kane called it a loaded question and gave one answer.
What two decades taught him
I'm much more focused on what I want, what I don't want.
Christopher Kane
Bonus Insights
He and Tammy work as each other's editor. Kane described his sister as his rock and his lethal weapon, and said the value of working that closely with someone from the same background is that she will tell him something is terrible and ask if he has lost his mind — which he says she does often.
The work at Mulberry leans on repetition. Stripping a collection back to two key ideas and repeating them produced his strongest collections, he said, and there will be repetition here in the same sense.
He never saw the socio-political reading of his shows as deliberate. The host said he could walk out of a Kane show and read social comment into it whether or not it was there; Kane agreed he probably had not thought about it.
Bad taste, per Louise Wilson, does not exist. Her position was that it is simply different, which Kane says freed him to source lace and hosiery from Ridley Road market for pennies when he had no money, and to bring the result to her. She told him to make more.
Kane's bottom line is that the archive he was handed is raw material rather than a constraint: he has cut it back to two ideas, kept the details existing customers will recognize, and built a wearable collection with bags and shoes meant to bring Mulberry buyers it does not currently have.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Mulberry (Over 50 years of archive, a factory in Somerset called the Rookery, and bags that Kane says still sell well to customers who have bought them from the start)
Christopher Kane (The label he ran with his sister Tammy for two decades and closed; the second collection was cut from leather made for saddles)
Central Saint Martins (Where he studied after fine art, and where Louise Wilson taught him to research harder than anyone else in the room)
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