Fashion Verkade was Lee Alexander McQueen’s first hire in 1994. As she puts more than 50 key pieces from her archive up for auction, she tells Joe Bromley the true stories behind them Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga and Zendaya might well have their trigger fingers ready — one of the largest and most rarefied personal collections of Lee Alexander McQueen’s work today goes under the hammer in London. The more than 50 lots going at Kerry Taylor Auctions, many of which were whisked straight off the catwalk and have been wrapped in acid-proof paper and kept in boxes ever since, make up The Trino Verkade Collection — the wardrobe of McQueen’s first ever employee.
Verkade is a London fashion legend. Today, I find her, with her lipstick-rouge locks cut into a stern fringe, perched on a stone-grey sofa beside two taxidermy birds, at the top of her Sarabande Foundation studios. She started her career as McQueen’s PR (“but it was very clear the role was: you do everything,” she says) in 1994, and worked with him until his death in 2010.
McQueen founded Sarabande, a charity to support rising creatives, in 2006, and Verkade has been CEO since 2017. In her seven years, she has succeeded in growing it into a vital organ for London’s artistic support system. Insider refer to her as a “fairy godmother” for blossoming talents looking for leg up.
On a sunny afternoon at their Haggerston plot — Sarabande doubled in size, opening its Tottenham outpost in 2022 — the 30 studios.
