February 15, 2023 |
Samantha McCoach has been on a bit of a sabbatical as of late, focussed on raising her toddler son, catching fast-fashion fatigue and reevaluating the context of her heritage-rapt brand Le Kilt – named for the iconic, now defunct, Soho club. “My perspective on what I needed to do and the reasons I needed to do them changed and shifted,” she said of her time away in a Zoom interview. You might have heralded the brand back in 2018 when it ditched the feigned charade of London Fashion Week in favour of the slower, more conscientious Craft Week. When the fanatic fashion press caught wind of the pivot, they were intrigued: why not partake in the most pertinent and frenzied week of fashion? For McCoach, ticking off the seasonal checklist felt tired, wasteful and disingenuous. She opted instead for cultivating craft and all its intricacies, injecting traditional Scottish kilts with a dose of off-beat cool. Two years on and that philosophy has evolved into the objective of, “giving people, women in particular, what they really want, and not compromising on the make, finish or fabric.” Now, Le Kilt is silently slipping back into the fashion sphere.
Of the new, improved and polished Le Kilt, McCoach says: “The attitude of the brand is very much a reflection of where I’m at, at the time, and right now, as a woman, I need different things from my clothes than I did ten years ago and recognise that lots of other women do as well. So I don’t want to work with any synthetic fabrics going forward… like at all. I want to continue to work with the made-in-Scotland fabrics and made-in-UK fabrics that last and hold their structure,” she explains. “I don’t want to have any waste left over [either]. I want to only work with things that feel relevant; now and forever.” That’s what sustainability is all about at Le Kilt: “It’s about investment, buying something that’s made to last – something that you can pass down – buying something that is biodegradable, that doesn’t have synthetic fabrics in it.”
Her message is that in this very fast-paced capitalist world, we should be mending, not spending. “There’s obviously something amazing about convenience, but it’s so important to know how to care for your things and to appreciate them. Actually taking the time to learn how to mend and look after things and just care for your clothes creates conversation. It’s what people used to do together, you know?”
What hasn’t changed is the canon of the brand which, of course, is the Scottish kilt, fabricated in tartans, checks and wool gabardines alike. A dark editorial supports the soft-launch of Le Kilt’s latest collection, reflecting on the collective experience of a world rocked by lockdowns. It brings brand classics back into the fold and builds a portrait of a timeless, season-less day-to-day uniform. “I’ve never wanted people to wear head-to-toe Le Kilt,” McCoach says. “I want to provide garments that fit seamlessly into an everyday wardrobe.” She calls her clothes the “underpinnings” of a core wardrobe. “You know how a lot of men have that one suit that they get dry cleaned and take crazy good care of? I want our clothes to be like that,” McCoach says. “I don’t want to see any of our clothes going in the washing machine.”
Returning to the fringes of fashion was a little bit nerve-racking for the Scottish designer. She explains that she went from being fully immersed in it, to being an “onlooker”, so a “quiet-relaunch” resonated with her more than something drastic. “I like the idea of people discovering what we are on their own, rather than us pushing it on them,” she says. “I don’t want Le Kilt to ever feel as if it’s like a gimmick of Scottish heritage or anything like that. The whole goal is to be aspirational and to really push what contemporary modern culture is for Scotland.”
At its heart, Le Kilt has always been about McCoach’s Italian grandmother, a former kilt maker who worked on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile for over 40 years. “My grandmother is the most understated, amazing woman on the planet and I’ve got even more admiration for her now that I’ve become a mother myself.” Signora McCoach made her granddaughter – a Royal College of Art student at the time – her first ever black watch kilt, a slick little number that would spark the young girl’s fascination with craft. “It was almost like she gave me an heirloom,” McCoach says, “Something to be passed on and that could last forever.”
To McCoach, family is everything. “Le Kilt wouldn’t exist without my family,” she says. Her grandmother never pushed her to get into making clothes, she only offered organic life lessons – for example, the principle that less is more – and gave the girl space to develop her own interest in design. “That’s kind of how I see Le Kilt growing too; it’s almost like these quiet whispers of what it is we do.
“Something I really wanna do going forward is think of heritage in an even more contemporary way,” McCoach continues. “The fabrics don’t necessarily have to be tweeds and tartans; I love marled fabrics, grey marl; they remind me of the stones in the streets in Glasgow.”
Apropos to the Scottish metropolis, Le Kilt’s quiet-relaunch arrives alongside a haunting photo series by Ben Beagent that captures the desolate stillness of Glasgow during February 2020, at the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. “My little boy was only four months at the time and I was on maternity leave and going kind of mad… I was just really keen to do some new work.” So, McCoach came quickly out of maternity leave and dove head first back into the arts. “Ben and I got on a plane to Glasgow one morning – like really, really early – and took a cab all around the city. We paid the driver for the day; he was amazing, he took us everywhere and we took loads of photographs.”
For Samantha McCoach, Fashion Week is but a far-off memory, so from here, she’ll be focussing on fashioning the perfect trouser, a little Scottish waistcoat and widening the Le Kilt wardrobe in general. Le Kilt’s clothes are made to last
Photography by Ben Beagent.
