miamilan blog

Kate Holmes, the wife of legendary Scots music guru Alan McGee, famously launching the career of Oasis, has swapped record labels for fashion labels by launching a clothing line with a kinky twist.
Former indie star Kate has created Client - named after her band of the same name - and runs the brand from the secluded mansion she shares with the former Creation records boss, in Hay-on-Wye, Wales.
The 40-year-old hopes women and men will get a kick out of the outfits - inspired by 1940s workwear - that have already won over the likes of underwear model Pixie Geldof and movie star Rhys Ifans (“Spike” in Notting Hill and also in an Oasis video).
Kate and McGee fell in love in 1994, after he saw her band Frazier Chorus on TV and asked his label publicist to set up a blind date.
"When he came out of his rehab, he saw me on telly and asked if the press officer would sort out a blind date," Kate recalled."He took me to an art gallery, chatted about paintings and I thought, 'Oh my God. He's really interesting'. It was just after the first Oasis album, before they got big, and I thought Alan was really gentle and generous and fascinating."
Aware that she is following in the footsteps of Liam Gallagher, who has established his Pretty Green line of fashion (starting in Milan in 2009), Kate said: "I can't compete with Liam. I am just a baby compared to him because he has his shops and everything.
"It is interesting that so many rock people are getting into clothes. Liam has done really well.
"For Oasis fans who like that look, the clothes are well made and Pretty Green is well marketed. I say to him, congratulations. But I don't move in the same circles as the Gallaghers.”
Kate is determined to make sure all her clothes are of the highest quality. She has refused to have the outfits made in Chinese or East European sweat shops, opting instead for British manufacturers.
"I am just now launching properly after working on the Client fashion line for three years," she explained.
"The production has been a nightmare and I want to keep everything in Britain from now on. I have seen the factories in Shanghai with my own eyes, but I think we should make the clothes here where factories are competing hard with these places where a dress costs £2 and people are not being paid a decent wage. At least in Britain, it is not being made in a sweat shop."
She added: "People look at me and say I am bonkers to think about starting this during a recession but Alan started Creation during a recession. Alan was king of Britpop.
"He is retired and does what he wants. I admire him for that. He has an amazing legacy. But I have something to prove for myself. If I could sell them online and break even I'd be really happy because money from the band Client has gone straight back into it.
"Pixie Geldof likes the jackets and has the T-shirts. Rhys Ifans wore my jacket in Hollywood every day. I ask friends to wear it but it's hard as people like Pixie get given Dolce & Gabbana every day.
"But Alan has one style. He loves his Paul Smith coats and hats he gets from Piccadilly and his Gucci shoes. He buys shoes every three years. He is frugal with his clothes. He buys good quality and it lasts for ages."
The band – Kate and former Dubstar lead singer Sarah Blackwood – were originally known only as Client A and Client B with their faces hidden on any publicity photos.
“I wrote to Martin Gore of Depeche Mode back in 2003 asking if we could be their support act on a couple of dates on their tour and he said ‘Yes’,” says Kate, who played keyboards.
“And we ended up being invited to travel on their private jet and play 15 dates.
“We toured Russia and went on to make four albums and tour the world, from Mexico to China.
“We were affectionately known as the ‘Pet Shop Girls’ although our material was quite dark.”
The band released a single, Pornography, with former Libertines co-frontman and Dirty Pretty Things frontman Carl Barat, and it reached number 22 in the UK charts.
But while they were big in Germany, they never reached “beyond Barfly-level” over here thanks, Kate believes, to the music press not taking to what she describes as an underground cult band and she finally became jaded with her rock lifestyle.
“I’d had enough of not getting enough sleep and of life backstage,” she says.
“It was at that point that I decided to turn our band into a brand.”
She put all the money she made from the band into turning Client into the fashion, film and music business that it is today – but is at pains to make it clear that she has always been “totally self-funded”.
“I didn’t want people to know I was married to Alan otherwise we would have become ‘McGee’s Mrs and that bird from Dubstar’,” she reveals.
“The only help we had from Alan was that he gave us confidence – we were signed to Mute Records.”
She created her unisex lifestyle brand to target the Eastern European market – all firmly based in Wales and the UK.
“Manufacturing at a factory in London is more expensive but it is really important for me to keep the brand British and sustainable.”

Check out the Client line at clientlondon.com