Talia Byre’s Sexy, Sentimental Vision for Womenswear

Less than 30 guests were present at Talia Byre’s Spring/Summer 2024 show. On a drizzly Sunday afternoon on Cecil Court – a 17th-century street in London’s West End nicknamed Bookseller’s Row for its antique, specialist bookshops – guests were supplied with glasses of sparkling natural wine from Lant Street Wine despite the unpredictable British weather. Then, after being ushered into a tiny room in Tenderbooks, we crammed onto creaky wooden benches to witness a runway show – Talia’s third – that was nostalgic in format. “We’ve been doing loads of research into original Paco Rabanne and Sonia Rykiel shows,” said Talia in a preview from her London Fields studio a week before the show, “watching videos of how they move, how the camera is because it’s such a tight space.”

As swooning jazz wafted out of the speakers, models strutted through the bookshop’s wood-panelled front room in seductive, colourful ensembles with ultra-femme cinched waists, splodgy polka dots and exquisite drapery. This was definitively not a runway show, but a salon, echoing the intimate, old-school glamour of those early (and mostly pre-war) shows that crackled with opulent energy before the advent of the catwalk. As such a young designer, it was a bold choice to host an exclusive show – most are desperate for press and bottoms on seats – but Talia has been quietly and confidently doing things her own way since the beginning. The show’s name was a giveaway; titled Don’t Think Twice after Joan Baez’s 1963 cover of Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right, it’s a song Talia had been listening to obsessively while making the collection. “When we finished styling it, it felt quite confident, quite self-assured, and I was like, oh, let’s call it Don’t Think Twice,” she says. “I think it’s quite a good little mantra to have – it’s basically like, trust your gut.”

Talia Byre is not actually called Talia Byre – her real name is Talia Lipkin-Connor. Launched in 2020, the brand is a tribute to Lucinda Byre, a womenswear boutique run by Talia’s great-uncle Ralph in Liverpool from the 1960s to the 80s, a place she calls “a real hub of the community.” Her great-grandfather was also a tailor, but her late grandma, who helped run Lucinda Byre, is the main reason for her entry into fashion. “The women that surrounded Lucinda Byre, all of my grandma’s friends, had a huge influence on me because they’d be around for Friday night dinners,” Talia remembers. “They were hilarious characters, very Ab Fab.” Her granny’s style, Talia says, was highly edited and very “Patsy-esque” [Joanna Lumley’s character in Absolutely Fabulous], and she would send Talia magazine clippings of instructions for how to create dresses and military jackets. “I saw that community that Lucinda Byre had created, that world and that woman, and I thought that that was a very nice personal thing to recreate,” she says. “It’s good to work like that because it doesn’t feel like it’s about me.”

Talia’s journey into fashion began at Central Saint Martins. After leaving her northern hometown of Warrington behind, the designer completed an undergraduate in fashion design and an MA in womenswear at the hallowed London university. Her 2020 graduate collection, titled The Feral Women of the Inish Fee, was a riotously colourful take on three of her great-grandmother’s skirts, which she made using mostly material from charity shops. Knitwear was the central throughline, with wonderfully askew, asymmetrical cardigans and dresses delicately accentuating the body in off-kilter ways. During her placement year, she interned at Paul Smith, a place she remembers fondly for its small team and warm, nurturing atmosphere. “It was fun and a very different culture to a lot of other places,” she says, “and I learned a lot about shows, colour, tailoring and fabrics.” In between her BA and MA, she landed a job at Alexander McQueen, a place she calls “very, very different … like, the other end of the spectrum,” citing the hierarchical structure of the company. After one year working there, she quit and went back to university. “I burned out basically … That’s what happens.”

Five official collections later, colour and knitwear remain the touchstones of her brand. The idea for S/S24 first came into focus after Talia read Thought Forms, Annie Besant’s seminal 1905 book on colour, emotion and theosophy that had a major influence on artists like Hilma Af Klint and Kandinsky. “I liked the spirituality of that book,” says Talia, “and the idea that colours can change how you feel when you’re buying clothes, because you’re like, ‘Oh, I really need this red to make me feel this way!’” On the day of her show, for example, Talia plans to wear red underpants for luck.

“It’s quite rare to find sexy clothes done in a way that’s not really obvious. Because also, you don’t really want to have everything out. You’ve got to be clever about it” – Talia Lipkin-Connor

Talia starts off each season by sticking up a colour palette on her studio wall – previous collections have referenced the colours of an abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler painting, or the costumes of Merce Cunningham’s dancers in the 80s – and then builds out from there, “thinking more about the woman, what they do.” Of this season’s theosophical colour code, she speaks of lilac’s high spirituality, and how certain blues represent devotion. On the S/S24 show day, the display window of Tenderbooks is full of books with only blue covers, including Deborah Levy’s latest novel August Blue, which Byre is currently reading.

The colour, shot through the new collection, is truly delicious. Taking cues from what worked last season, there’s the brand’s signature thin diagonal stripe in summer colours: baby pink, candy red, and a zingy yellow so subtle it’s easy to miss, that – an ensemble that “looks like a child’s bedroom”. These stripes are continued in socks bunched thickly over heels, while the show also features the brand’s first ever bag, The Bolter, a chic white leather and suede number with a bold red strap. Scratchy blue woollen tights echo Talia’s grandma’s “raggedy old tights with holes in”, adorned with “mad” green and white polka dots inspired by her old assistant’s obsession with the pattern. The bandeaus, and a khaki skirt and a snugly draped parka, are inspired by Topshop, that now-defunct high-street chain beloved by teenage girls. “I remember when Topshop came to Warrington, and it was like, pow, mind blown,” Talia remembers. “I think it made fashion very accessible. Most of my wardrobe is still Topshop, so we were pulling references from there.”

This quality of realness is essential to the brand, both in the sense of the practicality of the clothes, but also where the designer takes her cues from. “It’s clothes for everyday life, where you’re at work, and then you’re going on to drinks or dinner,” says Talia. “Like, that’s kind of how my life is. I think that’s how these people like to spend their time, they’re not massive ravers.” Her previous shows locations echo the food-and-drink-centric lifestyle of her community, with A/W23 unfolding in a candlelit wine bar in Borough – Lant Street Wine – and S/S23 in a Victorian fish and oyster bar in the heart of the city – Sweetings – where guests were served fish and chips and sticky toffee pudding. “I just think everything is better when you’ve got a glass of wine,” she laughs.

The quality of sexiness, as seen through a female lens, is an equally integral part of the brand’s output. Talia’s studio team often incorporate the brand’s clothes into their own wardrobes to see how they work in real life, and this season, the S/S24 puffball silhouette was inspired by the baggy T-shirt and miniskirts combo favoured by the team over the last six months. “Sexiness is everything … it’s something we talk about a lot, but it’s like a clever sexy,” says Talia. “It’s quite rare to find sexy clothes done in a way that’s not really obvious. Because also, you don’t really want to have everything out. You’ve got to be clever about it. I think it’s to do with posture, having a very fitted waist. Even though you don’t need to show it, it makes you stand a certain way. I often think: how does the customer want to feel?”

Talia is practical about the future of her brand. “It’s never gonna be like, huge. I definitely want to see growth. The business side is really important to me,” she explains. “It’s very satisfying to me when people buy something again in a different colour. It means it works. So I want to reach that point where that’s happening.” And as the intimacy of the show locations and her undying love for her studio team prove, the Talia Byre brand is ultimately about bringing people together. With S/S24 being such a small, intimate show, guests were forced to speak to their seatmates – a simple social act that is so often avoided on the front rows of fashion in favour of scrolling on one’s phone. “Shows work well for us because they introduce people to the world more,“ says Talia. “It’s important to see the clothes on people, moving, rather than it just being online, online, online. It should just be fun and feel like a very joyous thing where you’re bringing people together.“