There is a colourful and sequined corner of every British woman’s wardrobe that is forever Monsoon. You’ve doubtless had a floaty blouse or two from them; perhaps a beaded bag. Surely it was the source of your sixth form leavers’ ball dress (heavily embellished, floor-length, right)? And if you say you’ve never run into an airport branch for a last-minute Monsoon swimsuit or sarong, no one will believe you.
Or perhaps you’re an OG; there back in 1973 when Peter Simon, founder of Monsoon (and Accessorize) and still its owner today, was selling Afghan-style coats so authentic they came with animal droppings. “I’d recently come back from being in a commune in Ibiza,” Simon recalls when we meet one afternoon at the Monsoon Accessorize headquarters in west London. In the style of the times, he’d previously dropped out of everything and travelled overland to Afghanistan. Now he was selling versions of that hippy favourite, the Afghan coat, on Portobello Road. “It was a version called the shoat – I made up the name – a cross between a sheep and a goat. And they were very authentic. I mean, they had bits of shit in the wool and when it rained you smelled like a sheepdog. Anyway, they were not commercial.”
