Crolla
| Private company | |
| Traded as | Crolla |
| Industry | Fashion |
| Founded | London, England (1981) |
| Founder | Scott Crolla, Georgina Godley |
| Defunct | c1985 |
| Headquarters | London, England |
Crolla was a 1980s British high fashion brand and boutique founded by Scott Crolla and Georgina Godley in Mayfair's Dover Street. Always niche, it was influential for its juxtaposition of unusual and vintage fabrics (often furnishing fabrics) and traditional tailoring. Describing the brand's signature at the time, Scott Crolla said: "My clothes are for someone who disregards fashion but enjoys fabrics… I would call it a calculated disregard for conventional taste." In the book London: After Fashion, Alistair O’Neill described the look as: “as odd a combination as Coward in Las Vegas, but it communicated a vision of Englishness just as brashly."
The store’s opening in 1981 coincided with the arrival of the New Romantic music/cultural movement. Crolla's use of lavish fabrics and textures on waistcoats, ties, jackets and trousers, including chintz, paisley and velvet, attracted fans including Boy George, Princess Diana and Isabella Blow. It was also the antithesis of the austere palette and sculptural lines of Japanese brands gaining in popularity at the time, such as Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garcons.
Initially, the company focused on menswear and, a year after the brand's launch, Ken Probst writing in The New York Times noted the renewed interest in British fashion created by the success of Brideshead Revisited and Chariots of Fire. Probst singled out Crolla as one of the most interesting of the new crop of men's fashion brands for its traditional cuts and unusual use of fabric, saying: "...its offerings include suits, jackets, shirts, pants, ties and even slippers – all cut in traditional, conservative styles but made out of a rich and diverse collection of fabrics. The unexpected exuberance of the recolored plaids, the hand-woven Indian cottons embroidered with silk and the fabrics from the 1940's and 1950's contrasts with the unchanging designs of the British ‘look', resulting in an innovative fusion of opposing styles."
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Wikipedia