Inside Sarabande: Lee McQueen’s leading legacy

LONDON – Behind a door on a quiet street in Haggerston, London, you’ll find a staircase. It leads up past a glinting, metallic bar to a large, light gallery space. Beyond it, an office, and beneath that a warren of studios. Some contain ceramic octopus tentacles and racks of ghostly black and white garments. Others host elaborate paintings, engraving tools, sewing machines and science experiments. There’s also delicate, futuristic jewellery, shoes that look more like sculptures, and carefully arranged mood boards teeming with imagery and colourful explosions of fabrics. Right now, the spaces are quieter than usual – many rooms remain closed, awaiting the return of their inhabitants – although laughter and music drift through several open doors. This is the Sarabande Foundation. 

Launching its first scholarship programme in 2012, and opening the foundation’s current base in a set of renovated stables next to Regent’s Canal in 2015, it’s an unusual – and much-needed – space. Aiming to continue the legacy of late designer Lee ‘Alexander’ McQueen, Sarabande provides opportunity and financial support to future generations of artists. And it’s become both a creative haven and serious source of help to those welcomed through its doors. ‘We always make sure that there are makers of all different types here,’ says London member, Trino Verkade, the exuberant, red-haired founding trustee and CEO of the foundation. ‘Jewellery, millinery, fashion, sculpture, performers and always painters. People who would normally fall between the cracks or are very multidisciplinary… craftsmanship in a really contemporary way.’ 

The ethos here is a simple one: to provide artists with all the tools, resources and guidance they need to flourish, and a community around them in which to develop dialogues, soak up ideas, and learn from one another. ‘I started the business with Lee. I was the first employee,’ explains Verkade. ‘I think he was absolutely recognised as being an artist, not just a fashion designer. That was very much what we’ve tried to replicate at Sarabande. My background is [in these] very early stages of working with him, seeing how Lee and the brand worked across many other disciplines with other creatives. It didn’t matter to him if they were a famous name or a young name. It just mattered how they executed their vision, and those are the kind of values we stick to.’

Similar to McQueen’s collaborations with the likes of jeweller Shaun Leane and milliner Philip Treacy, creative exchange is encouraged and shifting artistic practice welcomed. ‘Like Craig Green, for example, who started out in sculpture and went into fashion. That’s a very natural approach to creativity that we really like,’ says Verkade. Green, one of Sarabande’s many success stories, grew his menswear business over the course of his stay at the foundation. He took it from a single studio to a team of seven. It then became a booming brand that earned him both Emerging Menswear Designer and British Menswear Designer of the Year at the superlative British Fashion Awards. 

To date, Sarabande has supported 85 different creatives through a mixture of scholarships – it now provides funding for various BA and MA arts and design programmes throughout the country. It also offers heavily subsidised studio spaces, a tailored programme of creative mentorship, projects, and practical advice on everything from contracts and suppliers to long-term business plans. By the end of the year, the number sup