Roald Dahl’s Granddaughter Gives Back with Fashion
Courtesy of Faircloth & Supply
For Phoebe Dahl, clothes are much more than a reflection of individual style. The Los Angeles clothing designer’s company Faircloth & Supply creates hand-crafted pieces that are both fashionable and philanthropic. The designer, who launched the company last August, aimed to create a line using natural fabrics that would empower women in some way. Dahl quit her job working for Amsterdam designer Jupe By Jackie and moved back home to Los Angeles after her mom urged her to take the leap.
It shouldn’t be surprising that Dahl’s family encouraged her to take a creative step. The designer is the granddaughter of acclaimed children’s author Roald Dahl and the cousin of model Sophie Dahl, who has appeared in campaigns for Versace and Alexander McQueen. Dahl’s mother is her biggest champion, wearing Faircloth & Supply around town and handing out a business card to anyone who compliments the clothing, but Sophie has been instrumental in the line’s fast success.
“She’s incredibly helpful,” Dahl says of her cousin. “When I started I had many, many, many questions. She told me who to contact and how to contact people and what to do. She was like, ‘You need to go buy every single magazine and every single Vogue from the past year and read them.’”
Photography Michael Flores
Faircloth & Supply uses natural fabrics, primarily linen. The line’s new 25-piece winter collection, which launches today, introduces dead-stock cotton (which means its entirely recycled) into the mix and Dahl uses both fabrics often unexpectedly. Many of the pieces reflect Dahl’s Eastern influences and draw on an interest in loose garments, drop-crotch pants and simple, refined silhouettes.
“I wanted to play with shapes that wouldn’t normally be made out of linen,” she notes.
Dahl describes her overall aesthetic as “comfortable, minimal and elegant” and acknowledges that most of her pieces may not be for everyone.
“It’s not fitted. It’s meant to be worn oversized so you have to be confident in yourself and your style and your body to not want to show it off. It has a very Japanese utilitarian vibe to it, like 1800s workwear. My whole brand is about empowerment,” Dahl says. “You can wear something that’s actually comfortable. Our sizes are very large – we do make clothes for bigger girls. Our size small is probably more like a medium or large even.”
The empowerment reaches beyond the clothes, as well. For each garment Faircloth & Supply sells, the company outfits a girl in Nepal with a school uniform, school supplies and a scholarship to attend school for one year.
“We’ve donated upward of 900, almost 1,000 so far,” the designer says. “It doesn’t cost as much as you might think to send a girl to school. It’s as much as if someone were to forfeit going out to lunch one day a week.”
Dahl hopes to continue engaging women on a global level as Faircloth & Supply grows. She wants to source textiles produced by women from all around the world, like hand-printed printed fabrics from Africa or linens from Asia.
“Products that would be indigenous to those countries coming out and being sold through Faircloth,” Dahl says. “And I’m still searching for the best linen. It will never end.”
As for her famous grandfather? “Everyone always asks me if it matters and I don’t really have an answer for it,” she laughs. “I haven’t really noticed any impact positive or negative. It’s this additional bonus. But it helps coming from such a creative family because everyone’s so supportive of what everyone wants to do.”
