Comfort over style? Not for me

Bella Freud says her M&S collab is far from cosy

- JOE BROMLEY

When Bella Freud thinks of a moment that helped consolidate her style, a photograph of her father, the artist Lucian Freud, aged 15, standing alongside her great-grandfather, the “father of psychoanalysis” Sigmund Freud, comes to mind. Both are a strict sartorial vision in their constrictive tailoring. “They’re not dressed for a special occasion, just in this stuff — and it looks so good,” she says, grinning from her study, dressed herself in a punkish, loose-knit black jumper and fully buttoned white shirt.

You cannot say it falls into the family of comfy, every-woman garments one might expect to find on the shopfloor of M&S, then. Nevertheless, Freud, who has been designing clothes for an upper-crust group of west London friends and fashionistas since she launched her eponymous label in 1990, is here to discuss her new capsule collection with the British high-street behemoth, which is out in all its 27-piece glory today.

“There’s something particularly English about M&S,” she says. “It always had that kind of grit that you associate with something authentic.” That attracted her, as well as its history of kitting the country out in school uniforms “which I’ve always been obsessed with”.

Her Sparks line ranges from £15 for a tote up to £139 cashmere jumpers. It’s in stark contrast to her own, best known for its £875 blazers and £375 merino wool “1970” jumpers which Kate Moss and Alexa Chung made notorious in the 2010s. Still, she insists standards have not declined with the numbers on the tags. “To place comfort above a look is a terrible thing,” she says. “There’s no reason why you should be in actual discomfort, but the aim is to be like a fearless warrior. When you go out, you’re looking your best, and people are responding to you as your best self. If you get too cosy, you can disregard that.”