22.06
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The last thing one expects to hear when discussing the willowy guests at London fashion week is that they are partial to cheese toasties. But Bertie de Rougemont, a caterer whose clients range from Chanel to Louis Vuitton to Prada, knows this to be true.
Catering for the fashion industry, he says, “is about a state of mind. People might be on an extremely low-carb diet, but when they’re being served Nominé-Renard Blanc de Blancs champagne and toasted cheese sandwiches with black truffle, it’s that moment that is important.”
As the founder and managing director of Cellar Society, de Rougemont is the best-known caterer in the fashion industry (he also served the food at Kate Moss’s wedding), so he knows his caramelised onions.
In general, he says, fashion catering tends towards “chic, understated and minimalist. You don’t worry about how full people are. You worry about how things are presented, how they are served.”
“If you are launching a new Ford Fiesta, you are thinking about how to fill the bellies of rotund car dealers. Fashion is a bit more complex. You are always thinking about doing things in a manner that people might not expect. Sometimes, that is street food – particularly for hip, younger brands. Sometimes, it is an exquisite ethereal creation that is so beautiful that you feel guilty eating it.”
The big brands from Italy and France, he says, “will almost always want menus that reflect their history and heritage. Fendi, for example, would never serve a shepherd’s pie. Hackett is much more about seasonal, locally sourced British ingredients – it would never, ever serve risotto. All of Stella McCartney’s food is vegetarian and 100% natural and always has been. Prada is about simplicity [de Rougemont was responsible for the lilac duck egg and soldiers at Prada], elegance and an absolute lack of pretentiousness.” He believes these details are noticed by the fashion crowd, who tend to be sensitive to nuance. Given that the fashion editor gossip after Prada’s last show – where chunks of dark chocolate were served on toast – was as much about the food as the clothes, he’s probably right.
“Catering is part of the bigger picture in fashion – part of the image of the brand and the collection,” he says. “If that season is all about water, it would be inappropriate for us to serve mini-burgers. Likewise, if the collection was about the forest, it would be strange for us to serve spoons of raspberry air.”
And so mood boards are sent, look books are shared, colours are discussed in detail – only black and red canapes might be ordered, to match a season’s colour scheme. Fashion designers love esoteric references – and food is no exception. “We were given one tough brief about different states of mind,” says de Rougemont. “We had to try to illustrate ‘deprivation’ – which is really quite difficult to do with food – and ‘plenty’. So ‘plenty’ was all about the most perfect duck egg and ‘deprivation’ was about the empty shell next to it. I think people got it.”
Less subtly, last season, Cellar Society staffed a party with topless bartenders and naked waiters riding white stallions. Which sounds a bit hen party until you find out that the designer in question was Rick Owens – of penises-on-the-catwalk fame – and, for fashion experts at least, the brand message starts to make sense.
In general, though, more than anything conceptual, a lot of the experience is about “serving something chic with incredibly handsome waiters who are dedicated to the happiness of the guests”.
Ah, yes, the waiters. In general, Cellar Society’s staff are “hot guys – actors and models – who also have manners and the ability to communicate properly”. Mainly, they are men, not women, he says because “men look very good in traditional waiter’s outfits”.
But while handsome men in uniforms will never go out of style, food trends come and go. So, what’s hot right now?
Avocado on toast with goat’s cheese and spinach shoots is a current winner. A tipple he thinks the crowds will go wild for this season is cucumber soda, made with freshly juiced cucumber, raw cane sugar and a bit of lemon juice passed through a SodaStream. De Rougemont also predicts big things for a black-coloured charcoal lime and lychee juice by Botanic labs. “It’s all natural fruit sugars, and the charcoal absorbs toxins. It is delicious with vodka, there’s a feeling that all the badness will disappear into the charcoal – a kind of pop-will-eat-itself drink concept that only fashion could come up with.”
And what is irredeemably naff? Cupcakes peaked around the time the second Sex and the City movie bombed (“although we do some lovely carrot and beetroot ones”), but the worst case scenario is serving something another brand is also dishing up. Bouches would not be amused.
If that makes fashion types sound more exacting than most then – as far as chic is concerned – they probably are. De Rougemont also notes that fashion people tend not to care if their requests are physically impossible. “L’Wren Scott,” he says, “God rest her soul, used to have us serve lunch to 150 people in six minutes, darling. It doesn’t matter if it’s possible – it’s just got to be done. I quite like that about fashion, actually.”
Still, regardless of nuance, some outsiders might find it hard to believe that fashion people would devour more than a lettuce leaf or two (and I have seen them served, with a scoop of creamed chicken, at many fashion parties). Actually, he says, there is a side of fashion that is very homely and convivial. At the launch of Liberty London Girl - AKA Sasha Wilkinson’s book - it was all about chicken pie.
But at many of the shows “guests have been from New York to London to Milan to Paris. You can’t expect them to be up for a big one every night. Sometimes it’s just about food that looks gorgeous. You know, ‘I’ll pop one tiny one in my mouth because I ate last week.’ Ha! But no, more often it’s a very, very, very small starter, a decent-sized main course and no pudding, because, by that point, people are running around being fabulous and popping out for a fag.”
“You need to understand fashion to do this,” he says. “A lot of caterers just don’t get it.”
