コリアー・ショアのマーガレット・ハウエル・キャンペーンは26年の歳月を経て完成した

Some shops you enter because you need something. Others allow you, for half an hour or so, to imagine a slightly better version of yourself. At least from my experience, a Margaret Howell store belongs firmly to the latter category. At London’s Wigmore Street flagship, you cross dark varnished floors, pass pieces of 20th-century furniture and find yourself beneath a generous, slightly biblical wash of natural light. Somewhere along the way you are likely to find something heavenly: a pair of wool trousers, perhaps with a little cashmere in them, that sit at precisely the right height on the waist and fall just as you’d hoped they would; or a jumper in one of those desaturated, goes-with-everything shades of smoky grey, followed by a necktie that pulls the whole thing together – just right. There is little meaningful delineation between the menswear and womenswear because there is little need for one. What is on the rail is yours.

This sense of ease is the product of discipline. Founded in 1970, Margaret Howell opened its first shop six years later and has spent the half-century since remaining faithful to a simple, increasingly radical proposition: that clothes should be useful, beautifully made and capable of lasting. It is easy, then, to imagine the force with which they struck Collier Schorr when she first encountered them in the 1980s. 

Born in New York in 1963, the artist and photographer has built a formidable practice around the female gaze and the construction of masculinity and identity, often offering total power to the person standing before her camera. Her timeless photographs are held in major institutions, have appeared in magazines including this one and have shaped fashion campaigns seen around the world. Margaret Howell, however, remained out of reach.

This was not for lack of trying. Around the year 2000, Schorr left one of her art books at a Margaret Howell store in the hope that somebody might pick it up, pass it on and suggest her for a campaign. Nobody called. The book must not have travelled especially far, although Schorr’s reputation soon did. More than two decades later, the invitation finally arrived. “So, this is 26 years in the making,” the photographer says.

As AnOther exclusively debuts Schorr’s first campaign for Margaret Howell, she recalls her earliest encounters with Howell’s clothes, and the long-delayed pleasure of collaborating with one of Britain’s most influential designers.

“I probably first saw Margaret Howell’s clothes in advertisements in i-D. This was in the early 1980s, when I had started wearing vintage clothing and thinking about Bloomsbury, about those original references, somehow mixed with military surplus. I was drawn to the possibility that the clothes could belong to both men and women and that they might fit into my own in-between. There was a boyishness to them, but also a softness. They seemed made for poets, and a poet can be anyone who walks around daydreaming. That is easily done in clothing that allows you to remain slinky and anonymous.

“Around 2000, I was in London photographing a campaign for Topman. I brought my first book, Conquistadores, with me, intending to visit the Margaret Howell shop and leave it there for her. I imagined that, somehow, magically, we would connect and she would ask me to photograph a campaign. I’m not sure how the book would have landed: German lesbians, children dressed as soldiers and wrestlers – that was what I was doing then. But I left it in the hope that someone would give it to her. I remember thinking: I’m here, shooting for a highstreet brand, and I’ve just bought the most amazing Gore-Tex windbreaker from Margaret Howell. I thought I had the perfect life. Advertising has always felt like fiction and nonfiction to me: real people and real things, arranged in a way that projects a fantasy. The fantasy doesn’t have to be real in order to be achieved.

“I didn’t get a call to shoot the campaign, and eventually I forgot about it. Then, last year, I suddenly told my agent, ‘Tell them I want to shoot their campaign.’ And they said yes. So, in a way, this has been 26 years in the making.

“Richard Prince, whom I worked for in the 1980s, once told me that it had taken a while for him to get the exhibitions and attention he had. I always carried that with me as a lesson: you develop what you do until it is unmistakably yours, and then, eventually, it enters the mainstream. Two and a half decades later, I felt able to make this campaign in a way I might not have been able to then. I could be myself and project that, rather than trying to become the person I thought I needed to be.

“When I heard that Margaret had been inspired by my photographs and that they had appeared on past mood boards, I felt an enormous sense of pleasure and permission. I saw my own pictures in the collection and my own way of casting. One of the people I photographed is a friend’s child, and seeing them in one of the looks felt very close to me.

“I’m always moving when I photograph. Sometimes I ask the person in front of me to move, but so much of the movement comes from me circling them. From making dance videos, I learned that we change when we move and that clothing metamorphoses when it is forced to follow the body. That is where the secrets underneath can be revealed. I have always had a sense that I could move in Margaret’s clothes, and that was what made photographing them exciting.

“The first piece I responded to in the Autumn/Winter 2026 collection was a dress, which I immediately wanted to buy for my partner. Isn’t that funny? There is less scarcity in my life now; I have more. But I still want my old windbreaker back. I lent it to an ex to walk home in the rain and never got it back. I later found out that Margaret owns the same one. I still have a shirt jacket and two striped shirts from the early 2000s, and I am always rediscovering them. Wearing them is like wearing a particular time – one defined by my ardent desire for, and belief in, clothing.

“While making the campaign, I imagined who I had been when I was younger. Then I let go of her, so that I could be who I am when I’m no longer thinking about fitting in. After waiting 26 years, the campaign felt like a beginning.”

Margaret Howell’s Autumn/Winter 2026 collection is available to shop in store and online now.

Some shops you enter because you need something. Others allow you, for half an hour or so, to imagine a slightly better version of yourself. At least from my experience, a Margaret Howell store belongs firmly to the latter category. At London’s Wigmore Street flagship, you cross dark varnished floors, pass pieces of 20th-century furniture and find yourself beneath a generous, slightly biblical wash of natural light. Somewhere along the way you are likely to find something heavenly: a pair of wool trousers, perhaps with a little cashmere in them, that sit at precisely the right height on the waist and fall just as you’d hoped they would; or a jumper in one of those desaturated, goes-with-everything shades of smoky grey, followed by a necktie that pulls the whole thing together – just right. There is little meaningful delineation between the menswear and womenswear because there is little need for one. What is on the rail is yours.

This sense of ease is the product of discipline. Founded in 1970, Margaret Howell opened its first shop six years later and has spent the half-century since remaining faithful to a simple, increasingly radical proposition: that clothes should be useful, beautifully made and capable of lasting. It is easy, then, to imagine the force with which they struck Collier Schorr when she first encountered them in the 1980s. 

Born in New York in 1963, the artist and photographer has built a formidable practice around the female gaze and the construction of masculinity and identity, often offering total power to the person standing before her camera. Her timeless photographs are held in major institutions, have appeared in magazines including this one and have shaped fashion campaigns seen around the world. Margaret Howell, however, remained out of reach.

This was not for lack of trying. Around the year 2000, Schorr left one of her art books at a Margaret Howell store in the hope that somebody might pick it up, pass it on and suggest her for a campaign. Nobody called. The book must not have travelled especially far, although Schorr’s reputation soon did. More than two decades later, the invitation finally arrived. “So, this is 26 years in the making,” the photographer says.

As AnOther exclusively debuts Schorr’s first campaign for Margaret Howell, she recalls her earliest encounters with Howell’s clothes, and the long-delayed pleasure of collaborating with one of Britain’s most influential designers.

“I probably first saw Margaret Howell’s clothes in advertisements in i-D. This was in the early 1980s, when I had started wearing vintage clothing and thinking about Bloomsbury, about those original references, somehow mixed with military surplus. I was drawn to the possibility that the clothes could belong to both men and women and that they might fit into my own in-between. There was a boyishness to them, but also a softness. They seemed made for poets, and a poet can be anyone who walks around daydreaming. That is easily done in clothing that allows you to remain slinky and anonymous.

“Around 2000, I was in London photographing a campaign for Topman. I brought my first book, Conquistadores, with me, intending to visit the Margaret Howell shop and leave it there for her. I imagined that, somehow, magically, we would connect and she would ask me to photograph a campaign. I’m not sure how the book would have landed: German lesbians, children dressed as soldiers and wrestlers – that was what I was doing then. But I left it in the hope that someone would give it to her. I remember thinking: I’m here, shooting for a highstreet brand, and I’ve just bought the most amazing Gore-Tex windbreaker from Margaret Howell. I thought I had the perfect life. Advertising has always felt like fiction and nonfiction to me: real people and real things, arranged in a way that projects a fantasy. The fantasy doesn’t have to be real in order to be achieved.

“I didn’t get a call to shoot the campaign, and eventually I forgot about it. Then, last year, I suddenly told my agent, ‘Tell them I want to shoot their campaign.’ And they said yes. So, in a way, this has been 26 years in the making.

“Richard Prince, whom I worked for in the 1980s, once told me that it had taken a while for him to get the exhibitions and attention he had. I always carried that with me as a lesson: you develop what you do until it is unmistakably yours, and then, eventually, it enters the mainstream. Two and a half decades later, I felt able to make this campaign in a way I might not have been able to then. I could be myself and project that, rather than trying to become the person I thought I needed to be.

“When I heard that Margaret had been inspired by my photographs and that they had appeared on past mood boards, I felt an enormous sense of pleasure and permission. I saw my own pictures in the collection and my own way of casting. One of the people I photographed is a friend’s child, and seeing them in one of the looks felt very close to me.

“I’m always moving when I photograph. Sometimes I ask the person in front of me to move, but so much of the movement comes from me circling them. From making dance videos, I learned that we change when we move and that clothing metamorphoses when it is forced to follow the body. That is where the secrets underneath can be revealed. I have always had a sense that I could move in Margaret’s clothes, and that was what made photographing them exciting.

“The first piece I responded to in the Autumn/Winter 2026 collection was a dress, which I immediately wanted to buy for my partner. Isn’t that funny? There is less scarcity in my life now; I have more. But I still want my old windbreaker back. I lent it to an ex to walk home in the rain and never got it back. I later found out that Margaret owns the same one. I still have a shirt jacket and two striped shirts from the early 2000s, and I am always rediscovering them. Wearing them is like wearing a particular time – one defined by my ardent desire for, and belief in, clothing.

“While making the campaign, I imagined who I had been when I was younger. Then I let go of her, so that I could be who I am when I’m no longer thinking about fitting in. After waiting 26 years, the campaign felt like a beginning.”

Margaret Howell’s Autumn/Winter 2026 collection is available to shop in store and online now.