Descended from a family of creatives and high achievers, Jasper Conran trained at Parson’s School of Design in New York and then worked briefly at Fiorucci, Wallis and a clothing manufacturer in Barnsley, England. With the aid of a bank loan, he founded his own business in 1979, initially working from his father’s Regent’s Park house. In 1982 Vogue was calling Jasper Conran a ‘British superlative’. At 26 years of age, he won the British Designer of the Year Award and had a turnover of £2.5 million. In 1991 he was nominated by Tatler as Mary Quant’s tip for the top ‘because he makes clothes women want to wear’.
Jasper Conran is one of the few designers who can switch from menswear to womenswear, from commercial, wearable clothes to watchable theatrical costumes. He rarely confuses the two. Conran has designed many times for the theatre including The Scottish Ballet’s production of Sleeping Beauty, My Fair Lady directed by Simon Callow, and Jean Anouilh’s The Rehearsal, for which he won a Laurence Olivier Award in 1990. His bridesmaids’ dresses for the wedding of Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones stand out as some of _the most stunning ever produced.
