The doyenne of couture, Tamara Ralph, is making a triumphant return to fashion with the launch of her eponymous brand – and this time, she’s running it on her own terms. She talks to Sasha Slater about family, femininity and fighting for her fairy-tale ending
IT’S RARE FOR A FASHION LABEL TO MAKE A SPLASH BEFORE THE designer has even presented a debut collection. But in the weeks leading up to the Paris couture shows in July, everyone from Halle Berry to Kate Hudson turned to Tamara Ralph for a gala gown. Queen Rania of Jordan wore a sorbet-yellow dress by the Australian couturière to King Charles’ coronation. Lily James channelled Odette/Odile in Swan Lake by appearing first in snowy, pearlencrusted silk at the Baftas and then in wicked black leather at the Met Ball – both straight from Ralph’s London atelier.
Was the designer surprised by the A-list clamour for her creations? Not in the slightest. ‘I think they were just saying, “Thank gosh you’re back!”’, she says with a smile. While Tamara Ralph Couture is brand-new, she has been supplying the world’s richest and most beautiful women with fairy-tale gowns for almost 20 years.
Ralph’s couture atelier is in Millbank, near the Thames in London, but she lives with her partner Bhanu Choudhrie, an Indian-born billionaire, and their two-year-old daughter Haliya in Monaco. The couple met at an event in Bordeaux, organised by the Young Presidents’ Organisation, which arranges networking opportunities for top executives and entrepreneurs. They aren’t married yet, partly because Ralph would have to design her own wedding dress and she’s too busy with her new label’s first couture show to dream up a bridal extravaganza for herself.
The nature of her work means she spends her time between Monte Carlo and London, and Haliya travels with her. Today, however, Ralph is drinking tea in a central-London hotel, wearing an impeccable draped cream crêpe de C hine top of her own design with a pair of matching Valentino trousers, her fiancé and daughter ensconced in a suite upstairs. It all seems too good to be true, but the dramas and difficulties of the past few years have taken a toll on Ralph. ‘If it wasn’t for my baby,’ she says, ‘I’m not sure I would have found the strength to begin again.’
Behind today’s success lies a cautionary tale. In 2017, Ralph was riding high as one half of the couture house Ralph & Russo with her then partner, Michael Russo. They had been named in Fortune’s annual list of the 40 most successful people under 40 – the only representatives of the fashion world to get the nod. Theirs was the sole British house that the extremely picky Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture allowed to show as part of the official schedule during couture fashion weeks. And then the label became a household name when Meghan Markle chose a Ralph & Russo look for her official engagement
