Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1543791
how to wear it We crossed the pond to visit with Cher Coulter, whose new roster of talent is embracing the celebrity stylist's moodboard packed with color, texture, and cheeky fun. BY INGRID SCHMIDT ILLUSTRATION BY KELLY BAILEY it-brit style After years in Los Angeles building a haute Hollywood roster including Kate Bosworth, Elizabeth Olsen, and Sienna Miller, British-born fashion stylist Cher Coulter quietly returned to London just before the pandemic hit. "I really had to start over again," she says. "Coming to London, my only existing client was Bel Powley, because she had been in LA a lot. There was a different set of publicists. It was a whole new world." These days, she's on top of that world, dressing a bevy of stars. Among them: Powley and husband, Douglas Booth, Michelle Dockery, Callie Cooke, Hermione Corfield, Denise Gough, Caitlin FitzGerald, Rosy McEwen, Sylvia Hoeks, Mia McKenna-Bruce, and Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of Tilda Swinton and playwright John Byrne. "All the girls I work with are truly individual and have either popped off or are about to," she says. "Bel's in the upcoming HBO Harry Potter series, so she's going to blow up, and Mia plays Ringo Starr's first wife in Sam Mendes' forthcoming four-film Beatles biopic. They're all great actors and the kind of brilliant girls I would have over for dinner any day of the week. I don't have space for divas." From her home in London, Coulter shared her early forays into fashion, what spring pieces are feeling most forward, and the investment pieces she plans to wear now and forever. Did you have an early interest in fashion? I always loved dressing up. From a young age, we played Fashion Wheel, a game where you move bits of plastic with tops and bottoms round in a circle to create the silhouette of an outfit. In my small town of Letchworth, there was a fashion illustrator, Sarah Leete, whose boyfriend modeled for Bruce Weber. She was my world! She would bring me to jobs in London with her and let me color some of her drawings. When I was 16, she introduced me to a woman who hired me to help with dressing at fashion shows alongside [legendary stylist and editor] Katie Grand. Then I got into Central Saint Martins and was living the London fashion dream! Weren't Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen at Saint Martins then? Stella was a year above me and so was Anita Pallenberg, smoking cigarettes in the print room. McQueen was older, walking the corridors, but I didn't know him. Phoebe Philo was my good friend, and we lived next door to each other in West London. You designed for brands and also your own menswear label, AKA? Yes, my classmate Anne Marie Ng and I set up a label and had a stall at Portobello Market on Saturdays. Then we started making fast fashion for Urban Outfitters in the UK. We would scavenge around, buy a roll of fabric down Brick BALHAR B O U RSH O P S .CO M