MAUREEN DOHERTY: A MONUMENT IN FABRIC AND FASHION
Maureen Doherty, a monument in fabric and fashion, who helped to build Issey Miyake’s brand and who founded the destination boutique Egg in Belgravia, died aged 70 on 18 November 2022.
egg opened its doors in 1994, a converted dairy on a quiet Belgravia street. Maureen Doherty wanted to create her vision of what a shop should be, to sell the beautiful and everyday.
Image courtesy of egg
egg makes and sells timeless pieces, clothes and objects. Walking down Kinnerton street, you can find the egg family walking, steaming and sewing. Pots, books, scarves, boots, pencils and jars of flowers sit amongst the collections displayed or piled throughout the rooms, on hooks, rails and stacks. Coffee is freshly brewed and lunch is cooked in the kitchen upstairs. egg is also a meeting place for young makers and designers to experiment and find their way. This has always been integral to the life of egg. Youth and experience, laughing and learning.
It was the first place that potter and author Edmund de Waal had a solo exhibit, where Keiko Hasegawa made one thousand pots in a year to set in rows on the floor and where silversmith, Bill Phipps, hand forged very small and very large silver spoons.
Image courtesy of egg
Ahead of her time, she continued to trade quietly. Most importantly, her clothing vision has endured. egg have customers that have been with them since the beginning: they still design and manufacture shapes they sold originally, but that have gradually evolved in terms of new fabrics and colourways. A new collection at egg will be as much about subtle colour and fabric changes or new button details, as new shapes and collaborations.
Shopping at egg is the opposite of high street rush and disposability – where you buy it, wear it and throw it away. At egg, the space itself is white and textured and they have left, if not enhanced, the original features of the building. It is an especially nice place to visit in the winter as smells and sounds stroke your senses. Knitwear in great colours stacked just so; socks and mittens and bobble hats and tactile woven and knitted scarves; and a real fire upstairs to warm your cockles. As you go around the shop and touch the merchandise you realise all of their fabrics have a subtle feel and sound to them as well. The rasp of silk taffeta, the uneven stroke of quilting, the hiss of glazed and waxed cottons and the murmur of moleskine. The moleskine, by the way, is in the form of a capacious off-white skirt with a real crinoline underneath.
Image courtesy of egg
Dotted among things to wear are things to use at home: from plain black A4 Daler Rowney notebooks and small boxes of pretty art pastels, to the book Wabi Sabi by Leonard Koren. Then there is the joy of plain and simple and exquisite craft pieces: Scottish kilt pins next to silver hammered beakers by William Welstead, and Murano glass tumblers and spoons by Yali.
The clothes are the stars of this show, however. They are either designed and manufactured by egg or by complementary labels like Apunto, Casey Casey, Ricorrrobe and Sara Lanzi. The egg look might be described as artisanal. Not tailored, but loose. Not darted, but pleated with drawstrings. Not short, but calf length. Not zips, but self-covered buttons. Layered and draped and gathered, the clothes are designed to work with each other, on top of each other. Customers can add new purchases to old purchases and it will all work together. And most of the items have pockets, which is glorious.
Image courtesy of egg
egg came late to the web. For years, their presence was just a simple holding page but they are now selling online in their own minimal and understated way. It can’t be denied that shopping at small expensive shops tucked away in rarified places can be intimidating. Most of their customers, they tell me, are ‘strong women’ who won’t be told what to wear or where to buy it. My suggestion, if you are keen but wary, is to think of egg as a gallery where you can touch the art, try it on, look at the inside seams, admire the handwork and, if you are lucky, buy it.
Text by Jane Audas
Extract taken from Selvedge issue 80, p78-79.
egg remains open at 36 Kinnerton Street, London.
Visit their shop and follow them online:
www.eggtrading.com
@eggtrading