She says she’s no businesswoman but Caroline Burstein founded Molton Brown and is now behind Browns fashion boutique’s radical expansion. Here, she talks about being part of a fashion dynasty and why the harshest lessons in life still hurt.
Caroline Burstein has a tough act to follow. And no one knows this better than her.
The daughter of Joan and Sidney Burstein, founders of Browns, the fashion boutique that helped launch the career of everyone from John Galliano to Christopher Kane, they aren’t just her parents but the parents of cutting edge British fashion.
Now Caroline and her brother Simon have been tasked with taking up this baton. Following Sidney’s death in April, Joan turning 84, and the shop celebrating its 40th anniversary this summer, the festivities heralded the end of one golden era but also the beginning, British fashion hopes, of another.
No one feels this more keenly than Caroline. Even though emulating her parents’ success, she says, is impossible these days. “It was a different time,” smiles the 61-year-old creative director. “It was the 70s, there were just about fax machines, no Internet, business wasn’t global and there were only two collections a year.
“There were also no other boutiques, no other designer stores, not even department stores like Selfridges and Harrods had fashion floors. They only realised in the 90s that that was the route to go down. My mother and father were a unique, great team, and my brother and I are very aware that. But we are who we are and we have to work within our strengths and weaknesses, and also in very different times.”
And yet despite all this talk of perceived weaknesses, Browns remains very much at the forefront of cutting edge fashion today. In part, this is down to their heritage, so famed is the shop for being the barometer of British cool. In part, it’s down to her beloved mother’s continued input and her brother’s business skills. But a large part is also about Caroline.
“A big part of what we do is really taking risks and using our eyes to discover new talent. Real talent though, because real talent is actually very rare”
Like her mother, or Mrs B as she’s affectionately known, Caroline has that same eagle eye when it comes to spotting true talent. “A big part of what we do is really taking that risk and using our eyes to discover new talent. Real talent though, not just someone for the sake of it, because real talent is actually very rare.”
But her input is felt much further than that. She is behind the boutique’s online development over the past ten years and its recent expansion in new and exciting directions. Like Brown’s Brides, which she launched to much fanfare and acclaim two years ago.
“I have always been ‘alternative’ in my personal taste,” Caroline explains, “never wanting the conventional. I started noticing so many girls coming in desperately looking for a wedding dress that was outside the conventional, so I did the research and discovered a big gap in the market.”
Earlier this year, she launched the similarly successful Brown’s Shoes, and followed this with the ‘Future Collectibles’ this summer, a series of collaborations which gives clients access to modern but classic iconic pieces that can be used again and again over the years.
Yet Caroline Burstein insists she’s no businesswoman. It’s a belief that goes back to the heady days of Molton Brown, the business she founded with her first husband back in 1970.
Aged just 21 at the time, Caroline had married the top Vidal Sassoon hairstylist, Michael Collis, and both wanted to develop hair care products that were natural and an alternative to the over-synthetic ones only available at that time. “We made our first shampoo literally in a bucket with a recipe from a Culpepper herbal book,” she laughs.
Opening their flagship store on South Molton Street, which is still there today, they expanded into beauty over the next 20 years, while Caroline juggled the retail and product development side with bringing up four children.
But it was far from the global success it is today. “It was very creative but we learnt and made mistakes as we went along,” she says, adding, “the fact that we weren’t business people is the reason I don’t have Molton Brown today and wasn’t able to benefit from the sale financially.”
Things began to fall apart for Caroline in 1989, with her marriage getting into trouble and the British recession sending interest rates sky high. “It just wiped us out. We couldn’t get any loans, it was literally hand to mouth. It was a very hard, very unhappy three years in my life,” she admits.
She and Collis would divorce in 1990. He would buy the hair care side of Molton Brown while Caroline purchased the beauty side with the help of her parents. But, by 1993, on the advice of her father, she sold up completely for a small sum, and went to work at Browns.
Sidney Burstein is not known for getting things wrong. Caroline says of his legacy: “He had a great nose for a bargain and could always pick out the winning item. My mother would show the collection to him and say ‘Which one do you think we go heavily in, darling’ and he would say ‘That one’ and he was always right.”
On this occasion, Sidney’s advice to sell Molton Brown was wrong. “Very wrong,” Caroline clarifies with a sigh. “And I blame myself because I knew he’d got it wrong, I knew in my heart of hearts. We make decisions and we pay for them for the rest of our lives. But we also learn from them.”
“We weren’t business people. It’s the reason I don’t have Molton Brown today and wasn’t able to benefit from the sale financially”
What she’s learnt is to appreciate life, her children, her second husband and her health. What she hasn’t mastered, she insists, is being a businesswoman - though her words and actions suggest otherwise.
Like she says the recession has made her sharper. "It focuses the mind, which I think is no bad thing and makes us feel we have to be better than we were yesterday." The long hours she puts in are helping her realise her wish for the company: "To see Browns going into other, newer markets that are becoming more sophisticated and ready for our sort of store." And following her gut instinct is now essential. "I’m sticking with Browns through thick and thin because I’ve got something really special here."
If those aren’t the words of a businesswoman, then I don’t know what are.
Visit the Browns Fashion website
By Barbara Walshe
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