The 11 most absolutely fabulous Scottish fashion figures

So here comes everybody: models, designers, photographers, stylists, teachers and style icons. A well-dressed list to represent Scotland’s gift to the story of fashion.

Ronald Paterson

Ultimately all our names are written in sand, but Scottish couture designer Ronald Paterson is one whose name and achievements seem in particular need of reclaiming from the waves. Trained in Paris and London, Paterson set up his own couture house in the latter in 1947 and was soon designing for royalty and high society.

He continued in business until 1968 before turning his hand to costume design for films, including the 1977 James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. The navy silk evening dress he created for Barbara Bach in the movie was sold by Christie’s for more than £40,000 in an online auction in 2022.

Sam McKnight was a miner’s son from New Cumnock (Image: free)

Sam McKnight

Fashion is a team game and any self-respecting stylist would know that hairdresser Sam McKnight should always be on the team sheet. A miner’s son from New Cumnock, he has worked with everyone from Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell to Lady Gaga and Princess Diana (they used to watch Brookside together whilst he styled her royal hair).

“His is the art of the artful pin, the concealed weave, the flamboyant wig,” I wrote when I met him in 2016. Not that he has ever really sought the limelight. “I don’t have a huge ego,” he told me. “My work is to help create the best image. It’s not really about me.”

But for the purposes of today it very much is.

Scottish model Stella Tennant died at 50 (Image: PA)

Stella Tennant

Ayr’s Kirsty Hume can feel a bit miffed, but it’s Tennant who has made the shortlist. The youngest child of Tobias Tennant of the Glenconner family, Stella Tennant was spotted by the photographer Steven Meisel on a Vogue shoot. He offered her the chance to model for a Versace campaign. Soon, she was bringing her aristocratic cheekbones, androgynous looks and not-that-fussed attitude to the catwalk (75 shows in one season, it is said).

Tennant, like Kate Moss, represented a shift away from the supermodel look of the early 1990s. In 1996 Karl Lagerfeld made her the face of Chanel (replacing Claudia Schiffer; Schiffer was not thrilled).

Tennant, who remained rooted in Scotland, announced her first retirement at the age of 30, but found she could juggle motherhood and family life with modelling and continued to do so until her death at the age of 50 in 2020.

Patrick Grant (Image: free)

Patrick Grant

I’m tempted to include him just for the moustache, to be honest. The Edinburgh-born judge on The Great British Showing Bee has been one of the great advocates for the craft of clothes-making, first as a Savile Row tailor and more recently with the fashion label Community Clothing. Like Cathal McAteer, the founder of the Folk menswear label who himself is originally from Cumbernauld, Grant is less about glamour and more about the importance of well-designed, wearable clothes, ones that are the opposite of fast fashion.

Ray Petri

On the cover of the Face magazine issue number 59 (dated March 1985) there’s an image of a young boy wearing a hat with the word “Killer” torn from a newspaper in the brim. He is staring out at the reader with a gaze that says “what are you looking at?” The legend “Hard” is superimposed over the jacket and high white polo neck he’s wearing.

The photograph by Jamie Morgan was styled by Ray Petri cemented the arrival of a formidable new talent. Under the Buffalo label, the Dundonian Petri effectively invented the idea of the fashion stylist through his work for magazines like The Face, Arena and i-D. Drawing on street style, he used flight jackets and brogues to offer up a new vision of male masculinity, one that was both tough and tender. Petri worked with Bowie and Neneh Cherry (her hit Buffalo Stance was inspired by Petri’s collective), but he died far too young, at just 42, of AIDS. He passed away in 1989, at the end of the decade he had done so much to help shape.

Christopher Kane graduated from Central Saint Martins (Image: free)

Christopher Kane

Last year the most noteworthy Scottish fashion designer of the 21st century was forced to put his company into administration. It was a sad (hopefully temporary) end to a whirlwind success story. Kane, from Newarthill, graduated from Central Saint Martins in London in 2006 and was immediately lauded as the coming man. His bodycon dresses caught the eye and only three years later the Guardian was asking, “Is Christopher Kane the hottest designer on the high street?” Kane worked with Donatella Versace and in more recent years has designed clothes for the Princess of Wales and been worn by Dua Lipa at the Brits. Let’s hope the second act of his fashion life begins soon.

Pam Hogg (Image: free)

Pam Hogg

“Once a punk, always a punk,” Pam Hogg believes. The fashion designer known for her blonde quiff and skin-tight designs has been bringing a peacock flamboyance and razor-sharp attitude to fashion since the 1980s. Lady Gaga and Rihanna are among those who have benefitted as a result.

Jonathan Saunders

Michelle Obama, Madonna, Kate Middleton, Lady Gaga. All have worn the designs of the Glaswegian designer Jonathan Saunders. Known for his colourful op art prints, he was a hit straight out of the gate. As soon as he graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2002 he caught the eye of fashion designers and fashion magazines. Alexander McQueen commissioned Saunders to design prints just two days after his graduation show. He would go on to work for Pucci, Chloe and Diane von Furstenberg (where he was chief creative officer). The latter role came after he had closed his own label in 2015. In recent years he has moved into designing home furnishings.

Louise Wilson (Image: free)

Louise Wilson

Arguably the most important name on this list. As the head of the MA Fashion course at Central Saint Martins she helped nurture a generation of British fashion designers including Alexander McQueen, Mary Katrantzou, Phoebe Philo and the aforementioned Christopher Kane and Jonathan Saunders. Born in Cambridgeshire, she was brought up in Jedburgh from the age of nine. She did a textiles course at Galashiels Technical College and then studied fashion in Preston before heading to London. She was offered the job of MA Fashion in 1992 and continued it until her death in 2014. She also was a design director for Donna Karan in New York for five years.

She offered her students tough love and drove them to find their inner resourcefulness as well as ensuring they had the requisite clothes-making skills. “It’s not all fur coat and no knickers,” Jonathan Saunders once recalled her saying. “It’s fully knickered under the fur coat.”

Photo supplied by Pirelli of photographer Albert Watson (second right) with Alexander Wang and model Gigi Hadid behind the scenes during the making of the 2019 Pirelli Calendar (Image: Pirelli)

Albert Watson

“I was never a fashion photographer; I am a photographer who works in fashion,” Albert Watson once noted. It may be why he is not the first name we think of when we think of the creation of fashion images. Well, that and his remarkable catalogue of celebrity and landscape photographs. But Watson, originally from Edinburgh, has shot over 100 Vogue covers and has worked with everyone from Kate Moss to Gigi Hadid. Now 82, he remains one of the most distinctive image-makers in the world. So not just a fashion photographer then. It’s simpler than that. He’s one of the great photographers. But maybe that’s another list.

Bill Gibb

Cheating now with an 11th entry, but fashion is all about excess. The fashion designer Bill Gibb was just 44 when he died of cancer in 1988, two years after his final collection. By then the circus had already moved on, but during the 1970s Gibb was one of the ringmasters. Born in Fraserburgh, the farmer’s son was voted Vogue Designer of the Year in 1970. Harrods even opened a Bill Gibb room. Best known for his eveningwear and knitwear (some of which he created in collaboration with Kaffe Fassett) the patronage of Twiggy helped make his name and soon Elizabeth Taylor and Bianca Jagger were amongst those who sought out his designs.

* McQueen’s Scottish links – like designer Jean Muir’s for that matter – are impeccable, but neither fit the largely arbitrary criteria applied to this list.