From Paris and London to Milan and New York, Mrs B left no stone unturned, going to countless appointments and graduate shows. In 1984, she was sat front row at Saint Martins and witnessed the graduate collection of John Galliano, Les Incroyables. Rather than simply applaud like everyone else, she went straight backstage to find the designer. “In the midst of the backstage chaos, Mrs B looked serene, and calmly told me to come and see them the next day,” Galliano told me. “Next morning, I arrived at Browns and she bought my entire graduate collection, then gave me the front of the shop and the window. A month later I was in business.” Mrs B knew. She can see potential, so before the internet and social media, she placed entire collections in the window of Browns, a powerful platform back then.
What sets her apart? “She had both vision and courage, and although fashion is a business, she always brought a sense of fun to it. She truly sparked a fire in everyone who worked for her and everyone who met her,” van Noten told me last year. “Mrs Burstein is truly one of a kind in the world of fashion, a visionary ahead of her time. She has an extraordinary ability to see the light in people and follows it with both heart and mind,” Chalayan told me. And another fashion legend weighed in, Suzy Menkes. “You need imagination and energy to get anywhere in fashion – and she had both. Mrs B was probably the first person to see fashion internationally.”
Joan Burstein (née Jotner) was born in 1926 to Jewish parents and grew up in North London. In 1943 she met Sidney Burstein, also a Londoner, and they married in 1945. “He was a market trader and I was working in a chemist’s shop,” she recalls. Together, Mr and Mrs B were a formidable team. In 1948, they opened their first store, a lingerie shop called Wilbuer, and went to open Neatawear, a high-street chain that was the Topshop of the 1950s and 1960s. Almost overnight, in 1968, it folded. “Retail is detail,” Mr B used to say, as the couple dusted themselves off and started again, this time with a high-end boutique selling their pick of international designers. “I wanted to do what no-one else had done,” says Mrs B, as back then London only had designer boutiques that sold a single label’s clothes (Dior, Yves Saint Laurent etc). Influenced by European style, the Bursteins opened Feathers on Kensington High Street, where Manolo Blahnik got his first job in fashion. He told me, “When I arrived [in London], it was six months of pure joy working for the Bursteins. I was young and they took me on just like that – no letters of recommendation – and got me a green card.”
“Look for individuality. That is number one and remains as true today as it did back then,” says Mrs B without hesitation when I ask what she looks for, how she spotted designers that had that spark. “Be focused on your objective. That is what I wish for young designers starting out – have a focus in mind. Of course, you can spot talent, but they have to know who they are designing for. That is the most important thing: if they can picture that, they can achieve it.”