“Quiet luxury is not a thing for a girl on a night out up north,” says Karen Elson, the Oldham super whose Pre-Raphaelite beauty took her from the outskirts of Manchester to Milan as a teen. “You go to Flannels, you get your designer dress, you get your bling… It’s putting your best foot forward. I love it!”
Elson’s own shopping mecca back in the day was Afflecks Palace, the indie emporium in the Northern Quarter. “I wouldn’t say I was a cool kid back then, but that was where the cool kids went, so it was where I wanted to be.” She has fond memories of catching the No 412 bus into the city with her twin sister, Kate, to hit up Topshop and HMV in the Arndale Centre. “It was every teenage girl’s dream to work at that Topshop in the ’90s,” she sighs. “I do miss it.”
Now based between New York and Nashville, the super is back in town for one night only as a guest of honour at a party to celebrate the new Soho House Manchester – her first trip home since she flew in to close Chanel’s Métiers D’Art show in the Northern Quarter in 2023 (yes, it rained). That show – and the arrival of Soho House – reflect just how much the city has changed since Elson was growing up there in the early ’90s. But some familiar elements remain – namely “really real, funny, unfiltered people”.
There’s a charm to the north and to northerners in general, according to the model, who remembers being encouraged to lose her accent when she first moved to London to start working aged 16 (a piece of career “advice” she elected to ignore). “I grew up in a working class family,” she says. “I hate to generalise or stereotype, but I think the challenges that some people have… it just makes you a much nicer person.”
Elson has loved witnessing the Madchester revival – this summer’s epic Oasis reunuion tour ushered in the return of bucket hats and Adidas Firebird trackies. “I love Oasis,” she says. “I was meant to go to the New York gig, my friends Cage the Elephant were supporting… but I got a bloody fashion job and I couldn’t go.” Like the rest of us, Karen is hoping that – given the Gallagher brothers buried the hatchet sufficiently to get them through 41 live gigs – there will be more tours and maybe even more music to come from the band in the future.
Elson, who namechecks fellow model Agyness Deyn and Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner – as well as a personal icon, her childhood French teacher Miss Hayes – as examples of great northern style, is also keeping a keen eye on the up and coming fashion faces from her part of the world. Saddleworth-born Libby Bennett – recently seen walking Matthieu Blazy’s debut Chanel show in Paris – is naturally a fave. “I love her,” says Karen. “She’s so sweet and so interesting, and she still lives with her mum. But she has such a presence.”
The super confesses to feeling protective towards the next generation of runway stars – not least her own daughter, Scarlett White, who made her Paris Fashion Week debut walking for Ann Demeulemeester in October. “She’s really doing it and I’m so proud of her,” says Elson. “It’s so funny because it’s like me, when I was starting out I wasn’t the typical ‘model’. My daughter is very petite – she’s 5ft4in – but she’s finding her own path and standing up for herself.”
All that’s left now is for her Tennessee-born daughter to connect with her roots. “She has a British passport,” her mum says. “My little girl should come to England. British culture is just so inspiring, more so than ever these days. And especially up north.”
