Scarborough fashion designer Isabelle Randall makes heritage tweed coats and bespoke wedding gowns

Her designs are underpinned by her experiences of living in Scotland and Yorkshire, marrying the rich heritage of both to create designs that have character, quality and charm, yet are practical, hardwearing and versatile.

Originally from Dewsbury, Isabelle attended her first fashion show - staged at The Frontier nightclub by Batley School of Art, now Dewsbury College - at the age of 12. “I announced there and then that I wanted to be a fashion designer,” she says. “As soon as I could leave school, which was 16, I applied to Batley School of Art to do a BTec diploma, a two-year course, in Fashion Design.”

She attended the college from 1988 to 1990 and became friends with two students in the year above, Christopher Bailey, later to become creative director of Burberry, and Kevan Aspinall, who went on to found his own Halifax-based special occasion label, Kevan Jon. “Those first two years were just magical because I was surrounded by so much talent,” she says.

After Batley, Isabelle studied for a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design at the University of Leeds. “Leeds was the making of me - the fashion, the individuality, the music,” she says. This was followed by an MA in Fashion Design at the Royal College of Art in London, after which she stayed in the capital and worked in the fashion industry for several couture designers including Roland Klein, Bella Freud and Hussein Chalayan. She learned a great deal, she says, but adds: “London was tough. Unless you had a lot of money, you lived from A to B, B to A.”

In 1997, her brother suggested that she come up to Aberdeen, where he and their father, who worked in the oil industry, were living (as a child, Isabelle also lived in Monaco and Norway, returning to Yorkshire when her parents divorced).

She planned to stay in Aberdeen for a month, but decided instead to stay there. “There was no fashion industry and I thought, what on earth am I going to do?” she says.

Isabelle decided to make use of her design skills by transferring them to the field of web design, and was taken on by a company that agreed to train her on the job. “The late ‘90s was a real boom of multi-media companies,” she says.

Her new career as a web designer took her to Brussels, and she moved there in 1999, running a web unit for an international online bank, staying until 2003, when she moved back to Aberdeen.

All the while, she still had clients who commissioned her to design and make bespoke clothing, as she had since her Batley days, gaining a reputation for tailoring and quality. “My signature style has developed but, fundamentally, I am all about the cut and the fabric and the quality,” Isabelle says. “Colour and textures I am passionate about, and I think that stills runs through my work.

“Even though I was still doing my fashion design out in Brussels, I was starting to get that calling - ‘Isabelle, you need to return to it full time.”

And so, in 2004, she decided to do exactly that and launched her own label, called Isabelle Randall, “from my brother's bedroom floor, with pennies in my pocket”, she says.

She sold her first collection, made using linens handpainted by herself in calligraphy, to a boutique owner, who also bought her next collection made of silk dupions, taffetas and organzas. Before long, she was selling her designs wholesale to a number of retailers. “But again the bespoke kept coming, so surely but slowly, the business evolved into offering bespoke only,” she says.

Isabelle’s work has clearly been influenced by her time in Scotland, as it has been by her native Yorkshire, and she works using Yorkshire tweeds from Dugdales in Huddersfield alongside the Harris tweeds she also loves. Alongside, she is known for making enchanting wedding dresses and show-stopping special occasion designs.

Get Yorkshire lifestyle stories delivered to your inbox here

She moved back to Yorkshire in 2021, so she could be close to her mother, author Linda Randall, whose book Effie Gray: Fair Maid of Perth tells the story of the woman who divorced Ruskin and married Millais.

“My heart has always been in Yorkshire, I’ve missed it,” says Isabelle. “I am getting new customers and I am so passionate about being back in Yorkshire and working with Yorkshire mills and fabrics.”

She has an online teaching service called The Fashion Academy, which she launched in 2021, after researching the project in 2020 when she could not see her clients in person. “I had this epiphany, of my goodness, the wealth of experience that I have got that I can pass on,” she says.

Although she continues to create bridalwear and evening wear, Isabelle’s new collection is called Country Couture, and it showcases the beautiful tailoring outerwear and tweeds that have become the focus of her current work. They are modelled here by friends and family members for a shoot that took place on a friend’s farm in Malton. She also made matching dog coats.

Much of her work is bespoke, for which she drafts the patterns and then has a toile fitting with clients, buit she also wants to partner with boutiques who can stock an example of the collection, perhaps on a mannequin, and receive a referral fee when they send people on to have a piece made. She also plans to showcase her designs across the country at horse trials, saying: “I want to fly the flag for Yorkshire.”

https://www.isabellerandall.com