Rose Williams On Falling For Dior Haute Couture & Remaking ‘Mrs Harris Goes To Paris’

Rose Williams’s first Dior haute couture presentation might have looked markedly different than expected given Covid-19, but the Sanditon actor found the prospect of live-streaming the show deliciously nostalgic. “It reminds me of being a teenager in the 2000s when the internet suddenly ‘happened’, and I would be sitting at our family computer waiting for images of a Dior show to load or refreshing the ShowStudio homepage,” she tells British Vogue over the phone from her London flat. “Obviously there’s a magic to being on the front row – but this is a full-circle moment for me.”

That statement is true in more ways than one. While the 26-year-old is known as a star-on-the-rise, her first dream involved a career in fashion. “My mother worked as a costume designer for the BBC in the ’80s,” she recalls. “She encouraged me to be creative in every possible way – sketching, painting, and making my own clothes. There’s a shelf in our house behind the TV that is literally groaning with coffee table books about fashion houses. I used to study them for hours and trace the photographs – taking the outline of a Christian Dior gown and adding my own pattern to it.” At some point during her A-Levels, a work experience placement opened up at Dover Street Market, and she left school to work there part-time in between art courses – studying what she calls the “rule-breakers of fashion” along the way, including Vivienne Westwood, Rei Kawakubo, and, of course, John Galliano.

Another key reason for Williams’s devotion to the house of Dior? “My mother is a spiritualist, and I’ve been raised around tarot cards and geometric stars,” she says.

And while her acting talent may have pulled her away from a career as a designer, she’s on her way to becoming a key figure in the industry regardless – taking on a role in the remake of fashion classic Mrs Harris Goes to Paris alongside Lesley Manville and Isabelle Huppert, expected later this year. Also set to make an appearance in the buzzy comedy? Emily in Paris heartthrob Lucas Bravo. Like the original, the film shadows London maid Ada Harris in the ’50s as she becomes obsessed with going to Paris to purchase a couture gown from the house of Dior. Williams appears as Pamela Penrose, a bombshell wannabe actor in the vein of Diana Dors or Jayne Mansfield, who “tries desperately hard to be fashionable but just ends up being a bit crass”, she explains with a laugh. “The film itself is impossibly glamorous, but Pamela is all about pearls and clashing scarves – a real foil for that effortless Dior style.”

Williams, will, however, be impeccably dressed for the haute couture livestream on 25 January. “I’m wearing a denim jacket and trousers, which have been amped up with some beautiful jewellery,” she says. “Honestly, part of the genius of Maria Grazia Chiuri is that she completely understands female bodies and how to dress them. Ever since 1947, Dior has been about accentuating curves and refining the silhouette – and that’s as true of a denim outfit now as it was of a bar jacket then. There’s also a floral element, which, as a Rose, I love!”