Toast of the town: fashion meets food at the British label

The love-in between clothes and food has never been so hot — and one British label is making the most of it, says Karen Dacre
Neil Gavin
6 November 2013

Contrary to every sweeping generalisation that has ever been made about the fashion industry, haute couture and haute cuisine have long been cosy bedfellows. Or, to put it in other, more inelegant terms: PEOPLE WHO WORK IN FASHION EAT FOOD. Surprised by this news? Try spending time at the shows in New York, Milan and Paris where chatter among the British contingent is not only about Marc Jacobs’s new take on the biker boot but which variety of fried potato tastes best with lasagne: fat chips or fries. Or at the Topshop-sponsored space at London Fashion Week where hungry editors, writers, models and photographers swarm like ants around chic snack bars in search of their next cauliflower cheese fix.

Yes, while it might pain their greatest critics to admit it, fashion folk are a decidedly hungry bunch.

It’s a fact acknowledged by those behind major brands and press agencies who use dinners at swanky London eateries and events catered by the hottest young foodies in town to leave a pleasant taste in the mouths of the fashion fraternity and by a number of dining hot spots that consider having their tables crammed with Céline shoe-wearers a major coup.

Witness, for instance, David Waddington and his business partner Pablo Flack (a former fashion designer and the man behind Nineties label House of Jazz), who have been filling the bellies of London’s inner fashion circle since they opened the Bethnal Green restaurant and bar Bistrotheque in 2004. The duo, who also run canal-side cool-kids hotspot Shrimpy’s, recently took over the dining area in Shoreditch’s newly opened Ace Hotel with Hoi Polloi — a restaurant and bar to which they invite friends (old and new) to wind down after work on Friday afternoons with DJs, wi-fi, cocktails and pistachio-and-olive cake.

Keen to cash in on this love-in between fashion and food (or fooshion, as the Danish Fashion Institute recently christened the union), fashion labels are turning to the food industry as a way to market their labels not just to the clothing industry but to their customers too. Britain has had a good go at eating its way out of recession and so it makes sense that the clothing world should see the food industry’s greatest assets as a way of promoting its own cause.

Last year, preppy US brand Gant enlisted Phil Winser and Ben Towill, the chefs from farm-to-table New York eatery Fat Radish, to star in its autumn/winter campaign. This season, the quintessentially British label Toast (its affection for snacking is in the name) has gone a step further by centring an entire campaign on London’s most stylish restaurateurs and foodies — many of whom are forging a “second career” within the industry.

With a series of images that show everyone from Wahaca founder and Masterchef winner Thomasina Miers to Polpo head chef Tom Oldroyd and “bread pedlar” Martin Hardiman modelling clothes from the label’s current collection, Toast cements its position as a lifestyle brand with a firm grip on who its customers are: aspirational types with their feet comfortably under the table of London’s social dining scene.

“All those we photographed are young, bright people working incredibly hard for the love of their produce,” says Toast’s co-founder Jamie Seaton. “Within them is a refreshing wholesomeness, an earthy, visceral reconnection with fundamental things that chimed with what we try to do at Toast.”

Feast your eyes.

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