THE INSIDER: SAVANNAH MILLER

The British designer hits New York with her collection!

In 2006, Sienna Miller appeared on her second NYLON cover with someone the public eye had never seen: Her older sister, Savannah.  Trained at Central St. Martin’s fashion college (which also produced Stella McCartney, John Galliano, and more recently, Christopher Kane), the British blonde worked for Alexander McQueen and Matthew Williamson before staking out her own label.  Called Twenty8Twelve (after their birthday months and days), she’s now got three London stores and six collections under her (cinched and studded) belt.  We paid a visit to Savannah’s hotel suite to check out her latest outfits.

Savannah’s such a cool name.
Yeah, but my middle names are Elizabeth and Louise, after the Queen.  Sienna’s middle names are Diana and Rose.  How funny is that?  Our first names are both like totally out there and mad, and then my mum said, “Oh, let’s name her after the Queen, too!”

Your new collection looks massive.  Our 2010 collections ship in three deliveries, and each has a different theme. Initially, there was a lot of inspiration from Sissy Spacek in Badlands; I love that the girl’s quite prim. And then I look at a movie called The Honeydripper, which is about the cultural shift in the fifties that melted the divide between the black and white kids on the dance floor. So I did a lot of washed out cottons and soft prints. I really wanted to convey the heat and energy of that moment, with lots of dancing and all that… And for the first time we really embraced summer, with really short-shorts and floaty things.  This one feels good.  Really sort of cheery.

You work in a London studio but also in your London boutiques.  Do you learn new things from watching girls shop right in front of you?  Totally. The big thing I’ve learned is it’s really hard to keep everyone happy. But there is nothing better than seeing a girl on the street in our stuff… and just before they buy something, I get scared like, “Oh, they aren’t going to want that, they won’t buy it!”  But then they do.

Has designing always been your passion?  I was knitting with pencils from the age of seven. I went to boarding school, and we had string and pencils, so we would knit these long scarves.  It’s quite hard to do, because you can’t push back on a pencil!  Also, I always made costumes for Sienna; I have done a funny edit of all the dresses I made when she was growing up.

And she wore them?  Oh sure, she loved them.  The first was a ladybug outfit I made when I was nine and she was six.  It was red leggings, a red t-shirt, and a box that I painted red with black spots. I said, “Sienna, kneel on the floor,” and I strapped the box to her back and said “Okay, you’re a lady bug, you cant get up now”. So her entire body was on the floor, with a box on her back. I had a great time at the party while she sat on the floor.  That picture is on our website; take a look at it.  It’s pretty funny.

What music do you play in the studio?  I’m liking the Golden Silvers at the moment, they’re very cool. Always gets me jumping.
--FARAN KRENTCIL

See the Twenty8Twelve lookbook!
And watch the girls backstage before their London fashion show.



This story was published on November 10, 2009.