Heritage

Richard Allan: The History of the Silk Scarf Business

Richard Allan, scarf designer, established his eponymous design house in 1962. He left an extensive archive of designs which Cate Allan, his daughter reworks for interiors and fashion.

Richard Allan designs reflect the world in which they were created.  It was a time of great social change when boundaries were pushed and Britain led the way. Post-war there was an explosion of talent in music, fashion and art.  The Beatles, Carnaby Street, the Kings Road, Peter Blake, Mary Quant, Terence Conran to name a few, exemplified the movement away from past austerity to colour and fun.


Richard Allan possessed an extraordinary eye for line and colour, basing designs on both organic and geometric forms. Aesthetics mattered to him, his style was eclectic, his collections included the daring and the bold from avant-garde to classically elegant, sometimes amusing, often whimsical.

His groundbreaking designs and off-beat colours were perfect for London in the Swinging Sixties where Richard was based.  Popularity for his silk scarves grew, rapidly allowing him to create bi-annual collections referencing contemporary art and design alongside Art Nouveau and William Morris.

In his first year of trading Richard Allan sold over 50,000 scarves. His fledgling company moved from its temporary room to 87 Duke Street in Mayfair, where it flourished for the next twenty years.

Richard created his designs on a drawing board in the back office alongside his devoted assistant, Joan Shepherd, who also oversaw production.  Throughout the years, scarves were screen-printed and hand-finished in the UK, a tradition Cate Allan continues.

The designs were drawn or painted in solid colour on paper for each proposed colourway and the artworks were dispatched to David Evans & Co in Crayford, Kent where the silk was printed on long tables in lengths of approximately ten metres. Once dry the rolls of printed silk were returned to Duke Street where the individual scarves were cut, packed in brown paper parcels and delivered to hand hemmers, a team of outworkers based in West London.

Hems rolled, the finished scarves were collected and taken back to Duke Street and for critical inspection by Miss Lamb, quality controller and stock room manager. Buyers made appointments to visit the showroom for a consultation with Richard and latterly Cate, to see his latest collections and place their orders.

Scarves were sold initially to London’s most iconic stores.  Fenwick, Fortum & Mason, Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Liberty and Selfridges.  Over time a global reputation was established and scarves were sold to Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and in all major stores throughout the USA; markets were achieved in Canada, Australia, throughout Europe and the Far East.


Richard also developed a bespoke market for exclusive corporate commissions. Clients included Dunhill, Newmarket Races, the Rank Organisation and Harper’s Bazaar.  He collaborated with Schiaparelli and Yves St Laurent, who licensed a number of designs. Richard Allan Scarves were frequently seen in film and television productions such as those famously worn by Dame Diana Rigg in The Avengers and Mary Tyler Moore in the American, Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The Richard Allan Archive encompasses the 1960s through to the 1980s ~ a spectacular, extensive collection of designs.  Cate relaunched the business updating archival designs and re-working colours for interiors: framed limited edition artwork prints as well as framed silk scarves. Recently she has added a collection of silk and velvet cushions and always maintains a small, yet perennially popular collection of silk scarves. 

It is an exciting era for Richard Allan London with new collections and collaborations, for example, the hugely successful clothing line with H&M globally, ‘Richard Allan x H&M’ and similarly considering the broad scope within the archive of designs to develop for interiors,  there are extremely exciting projects on the horizon.

Richard Allan's legacy lives on with characteristic vibrancy, a testimony to the best of 1960s and 1970s pattern, distinctive in design and colour, setting a stage for stand-out style, rarity and quality, exuding British heritage and fashion.