Designer Interview – Barbara Casasola

There’s every chance you won’t even know her name. But this Brazilian designer has made more of an impact on what you buy from the high street than you might realise

- Hannah Rochell

Those pleated silky trousers and metallic skirts you wore all summer? Superfine knitwear? That urge to wear your woollen dressing gown coat slightly off the shoulder? Yep, they’re all down to Barbara Casasola.

And when the Duchess of Cambridge decided to give her look a slightly vampish refresh this year at an Art Fund event, it was one of Casasola’s mesh-panelled, off-the-shoulder midi dresses that she chose to stride out in, causing the designer’s name to go into Google meltdown.

When I meet the woman discreetly responsible for large swathes of our fashion landscape at the moment, it’s in the restaurant of her favourite hotel in west London. She’s in chic all-black, with her hair swept back from her face. Just as I’m feeling totally in awe of her look, she compliments me on my own hair. Because this is a woman who really knows how to make other women feel good. Being on the receiving end of her warm, thoughtful manner makes you realise why so many of her clients have become friends. Backstage at her London Fashion Week show a few weeks earlier, I’d watched her personally unstitch the shoes so they fitted the models more comfortably before steering them with a maternal hand towards the fire to keep warm (it was a freezing day in February).

Trained first as a child by her seamstress grandmother, then at Central Saint Martins in London, and later at Roberto Cavalli in Florence, the 32-year-old Brazilian is now London’s go-to for pared-back chic of the highest quality. I caught up with her to chat winter, people watching and the wonder of dressing women from all walks of life.

So, can you sum up the Barbara Casasola woman?