April 22, 2006

From Times Saturday Magazine

ENGLISH ECCENTRIC

by Hannah Betts

Helena Bonham Carter is launching her own costume drama, with a fashion venture that is big on bloomers

There are moments in a journalistic career that take on a surreal, dream-like quality and this is clearly one of them. I am taking tea with the queen of costume drama, she in bloomers, me in a mop cap, studying a photograph of her wheeling a pig about in her first-born’s pram. The affable woman next to us also appears in these images, thunderous-faced, clad in what appears to be a cloak of raven’s feathers. Mice spill from teacups and songbirds spring from pies, and the three of us are guffawing so hysterically that a tear has just escaped from my nose. “Person who wears crap clothes inflicts crap clothes upon others!”, hoots the drama queen in the manner of an outraged newspaper headline, and we’re off again, fillings flashing, dashing the saltwater from our eyes.

Welcome to the world of Hels and Sagey, aka Oscar-nominated actress Helena Bonham Carter and swimwear designer Samantha Sage, aka hot new fashion combo the Pantaloonies. At first glance, the pair make an unlikely couple. Bonham Carter, countless distinguished performances under her belt since she hurtled to fame as a teenager in Room with a View, with that haunting, vaguely simian beauty that leant itself so brilliantly to a starring role in partner Tim Burton’s remake of Planet of the Apes; and Sage, a feet-on-the-ground commercial superwoman with instant recall of the prices of their various wares.

Nevertheless, aware that, as Bonham Carter puts it, “We both get high on ribbon”, friends had long been endeavouring to bring the pair together. They met finally two and a half years ago at an antenatal class, both massively pregnant. The bumps became Billy and George, and, rather than descend into the postnatal monomania that besets most new mothers, our heroines plunged into a whole new creative process. Sage has form on this front: her swimwear company, Sage Sarong, is exactly the same age as her elder child, Gigi, while Bonham Carter found that 18 months away from filming was the perfect opportunity to indulge an alternative imaginative side.

And thus Pantaloonies, or Pants, as they rather charmingly refer to it, came into being. Enjoyment is the primary objective. “It’s got to keep remaining fun,” insists the actress. “If it doesn’t, we’ll just jack the whole thing because it’s not worth it. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun!” she admonishes in Mary Poppins singsong, adding with heavy irony: “We’re always laughing and laughing.” “Maniacal, hysterical laughter”, interjects Sage dryly. “Indeed,” confirms her friend. “It’s no coincidence that we’ve involved the word loonies.”

Loons they may be, but their first collection, Bloomin’ Bloomers, has proved sufficiently desirable for Harrods to seek to launch it. One can see why its buyers jumped at the opportunity, for Bloomin’ Bloomers is like nothing even the most jaded consumer will have previously encountered, comprising bloomers, camisoles and mop caps. (“Because they’re an essential,” adds Bonham Carter drolly). Each piece is a miniature work of art: exquisite Italian linen, handpainted, dried, reversed, and embroidered on the wrong side in ravishing shades of blush pink and leaf green.

Bonham Carter had always sported vintage bloomers as a dressy girl’s take on jogging bottoms, “perfect for bridging that gap – which can be all day for me – between getting up and getting dressed”. Mop caps may appear more obscure, but mine lends my face a flattering lustre, the inverse of the dreaded “council-estate face-lift”, or jowl-hoikingly tight ponytail; whimsical, certainly, but significantly more comely than the maligned scrunchie.

The Pantaloonies’ other venture is equally and endearingly oddball: a bespoke jeans refurbishing service designed to create “a kind of scrapbook on the bum” through addition of trims, emblems and “frillage”. Sage guides me through the questionnaire devised to steer customers’ style choices. Searching questions such as: “Do you fancy a bum frill?” are accompanied by inquiries as to the owner’s lucky number or favourite song to create an even more customised product. A Wizard of Oz enthusiast’s rear pocket bears the legend “Click 3 times”, Bonham Carter’s agent has a “special agent” motif. The process will take six weeks and a hefty proportion of the £160 fee will be donated to Unicef.

The loonies are definitely on to something here. Women who cherished Anya Hindmarch “Be a Bag” accessories, where a beloved snapshot could become the motif for a bag or purse, will compete to have their children’s images adorning their backsides (we discuss the profound psychological scarring that could result). Though not a jeans wearer, I find I hanker after each and every version, curious how artful additions of gingham, lace, pompoms, or even vintage tea towel take the butch, overly ascetic quality out of denim. The customers themselves ensure that each garment fits like a glove, and then personality – yours, theirs – is worn or worked into them. Most fortuitously, as in the quilting tradition, an object’s being aged means that it is all the more valued.

Ah, yes, age. Bonham Carter attributes this change in direction to “35itis”. “I woke up on my 35th birthday and thought, ‘I’ve got to do something other than act.’ What doesn’t sit well with me is waiting for others to employ me. Plus using me always as the raw material. It’s nice to make something out of something that isn’t oneself.” Not that she will be abandoning film, merely indulging her artisanal bent. She has always been crafty, she quips, in both senses of the word, always pottering away at something between takes. On the set of Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, she established a veritable cottage industry, rubber-stamping fabric, moulding resin hearts. And this year, as she and Sage both hit 40, perhaps her hobby can rescue her from a mid-life crisis? “What do you think this is, Hannah?” she asks mock-stridently, brandishing a broderie-anglaise hem.

While we are talking amateur psychology, I tell Bonham Carter how indignant I am regarding the constant vilification she receives from the press for her fashion choices. Is it hurtful? “I do get a bit hurt, yeah, but, um,” she falters, suddenly small-voiced. “But that’s just my label. It’s a narrative. You have to give up a public self as soon as you become well known. And I guess people make money out of photos of what I’m wearing.” Indeed, entire families must be supported, judging by the constant paparazzi presence that besieges her North London home. “What I resent is that they’re so rude. It’s a bad atmosphere and you’ve got the baby with you. Be gracious. Say thank you. Be humane. And you know there are so many newspapers that are out to make you look horrible. There are magazines built only out of that… It’s the lowest common denominator, this hit and miss thing.

“Tim and I, our taste might be somewhat different to other people’s, but we always go, ‘We love the misses!’ It’s like Trinny and Susannah. We’re like, ‘They’ve made her look worse!’ The other thing which is unfair is that I am usually going out for the milk, so it would be really peculiar if I stopped to get dressed and do my hair and make-up. At the end of the day it is hurtful, or puzzling, but if I get to heaven and they say, ‘You’re not well-dressed enough. You’re going downstairs. Then I’ll think, ‘Oh my God, they were right!’”

Sage, on the side of the angels, chips in with an emphatic: “You always look fantastic.” The designer Lulu Guinness is also a fan and asked the actress to write the foreword to her recent book. Bonham Carter found this hilarious. “I said, ‘What are you doing asking me because I am so not Mrs Style. I am not your Sienna or what have you. Of all people you homed in on the Antichrist of fashion!’ And she said, ‘But I love you because you dare to be different and that’s my big thing.’ Fashion is taken so seriously, all the fun goes out of it. All these draconian rules, so actually women are not expressing themselves. They’ve become sheep.”

Chicly unsheeplike, Bonham Carter is clad in an ankle-length Westwood skirt, tartan with a hint of bustle, and black silk Girbaud blouse. Sage, otherwise in black, sports an Hermès scarf in place of a belt and Ferragamo shoes “because of my big feet”. “Well done,” nods the Antichrist in mock approval. I joke that it is courageous of Sage to sally into business with such a sartorial pariah and we all fall about laughing again, mop caps bobbing. “Someone will say it,” intones Bonham Carter with parodic solemnity: “‘How brave of you, Sam. How very brave of you!’”