Dressed To Empower

Eight years after launching Beulah London, Natasha Rufus Isaacs proves it takes more than aristocratic lineage and friends in high places to build a successful fashion label, learns ROHAIZATUL AZHAR

- Rohaizatul Azhar

IN 2011, JUST a year after its launch, British luxury womenswear label Beulah found itself in the international news. Pictures of Catherine Middleton in one of its bespoke designs, a longsleeved dress in powder blue she wore during a trip in Malaysia, made the rounds. The Duchess of Cambridge, arguably one of the most photographed women in recent years, was accompanying her husband, Prince William, on the Diamond Jubilee tour of Asia and the South Pacific.

“It was really exciting to see the Duchess in one of our dresses, especially at such an early stage of the company,” says the label’s co-founder Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs. “People really admire her style, and it was such an honour to have dressed her.”

In Singapore to showcase the label’s latest Autumn/Winter collection at the National Dressage Championships and British Expo in May, Rufus Isaacs admits having the Duchess of Cambridge as an “unofficial ambassador” was a great boost for the then-fledgling fashion label.

Almost immediately, Beulah experienced the full magnitude of the “Kate Middleton Effect”, a fashion phenomenon where almost any garment she appeared in sold out in days, if not hours. “We still get people ordering custom designs of the dress she wore,” she says with a laugh.