Christopher Kane

Kane was born as the youngest of five children in Newarthill, near Motherwell, in North Lanarkshire to an engineer and draughtsman and housewife mother.

Glaswegian-born Christopher Kane’s designs creatively fuse fabric, colour and print. In the year 2000, Christopher moved to London when he was 17 years old to enroll at Central St Martins School of Art, where he completed the Foundation course, a BA Womenswear degree and finally an MA Womenswear degree, which earned him both a Distinction and the prestigious Harrods Design Award.

While still in college, Kane worked for fellow designers Russell Sage and Giles Deacon. Christopher presented a private viewing of his work to the editor-in-chief of US Vogue, Anna Wintour, after winning the Lancôme Colour Award in 2005. This led to him being invited to sit front row with Anna Wintour at Versace’s A/W 06 show in Milan. Thereby he attracted the attention of Donatella Versace.

Kane subsequently won the Harrods Design Award for his MA Graduate collection, consisting of L1,500 and a showpiece window in Harrods from February 24 to March 8, 2006. The collection consisted of stretch-lace dresses decorated with brass rings. He was immediately hired by Versace to work on the label's Atelier couture collection as well as consulting on shoes and accessories.

In September 2006, Christopher was awarded New Generation sponsorship from the British Fashion Council and he held his first solo catwalk show.

In December 2006 Kane was photographed by David Bailey for British Vogue alongside Antony Price, whose 1980's bombshell evening dresses and curvaceous feminine styles foreshadowed Kane's bandage-tight tailoring.

His successes culminated last year with the receipt of the New Designer of the Year award at the British Fashion Awards in November 2007.

Since establishing his own label in 2006, Christopher, working in tandem with his sister Tammy (collaborator and business partner) has shown for four seasons and built the label into a major player in the high-fashion world.

His first independent show, presented on 20 September 2006, consisted of super-short bandage dresses in neon shades he finds it very kinky. Kane said of his collection that he " only used neon last year because it was [his] first collection and I wanted to go as bright as possible." The collection was lauded by prominent international fashion critics and credited by various sources as a major contributor to summer 2007's 'fluoro' trends. In April 2006, Kane was awarded the Young Designer of the Year at the Scottish Fashion Awards. Subsequently, the designer launched a capsule collection for British high-street clothing store Top Shop.

In addition to designing his own label and consulting at Versace, he is also part of Atlier Swarovski, a small collective of designers who create special jewellery collections for Swarovski.