“I Could Never Be Kate”: Cara Delevingne Announces Her Debut Topshop Collection

A little over a week ago, as Cara Delevingne turned 34, the model, actor and musician gathered with her godchildren to watch the solar eclipse in Mallorca. It was fitting, really, that this particular birthday took place as the sky above was rearranging itself: Delevingne is also in the midst of change.

More than a decade after becoming the first model to front a Topshop campaign solo, back in 2014, Delevingne is returning to the beloved high-street label in a new guise: as the creative lead of her own collection. “I feel like we’ve been through a lot together,” she says, with a laugh. “But as you get older, and you take a step back, you have more of an appreciation for things. People will be quite surprised by this collection, it did feel quite out of my comfort zone. I want this to be for every man, woman, gender non-confirming person.”

True enough, of the 16 pieces – ranging from wide denim culottes to off-the-shoulder minidresses and cropped trench coats – perhaps only the white tank, pinstripe denim suiting and slim-cut jeans map immediately onto Delevingne’s signature raffish style. “When I designed stuff for brands in the past, I would make things only I would really wear,” she says. “This time, I wanted to think outside of that realm, to put a designer’s hat on and create something that felt cohesively for everyone. Like… am I really gonna do a long skirt?”

She did: a wraparound denim maxi that she describes as the sort of thing she might admire on “someone else”. And yet, since stepping back from clothes-horsing for other people full-time, the parameters of her own wardrobe have begun to broaden. “When I’m alone and in private, I’ll always dress like a 15-year-old boy, but when I’m more public-facing, I find it a lot more fun to play with fashion now that I don’t have to. I love trying on different clothes I wouldn’t have when I was younger because maybe I was stubborn, or trying to be rebellious, or trying to be, I don’t know, an individual. Now I’m like, yeah, maybe I will wear that skirt…”

It’s this outward-looking approach that distinguishes Delevingne’s collection from that of the other model whose name became synonymous with Topshop at the height of its powers. “In so many areas of my life, people have compared me to Kate, which I always find so sweet, but I just could never be her,” she says of Kate Moss, who Delevingne has previously mentioned stepped in to support her when the intensity of her early success began to take its toll. “She is her own incredible force to be reckoned with. I couldn’t have emulated that.”

While many of Moss’s 15 collections for the brand drew on pieces already hanging in her wardrobe, distilling her personal style into clothes for the masses, Delevingne has refused to make herself the blueprint. “I still have a Kate Moss for Topshop dress I could never wear because if I bend over, everyone will see the moon shining out, but also, you know, that was so of its time. It has its own look, its own smell almost.” What Delevingne learnt from watching Moss promote those collections as a 21-year-old was that “you’ve got to make it individual to you,” she says. For Delevingne, though, individuality doesn’t mean personal. “It would be hard to represent all elements of me in a 16-piece capsule.”

Which might also explain why Delevingne isn’t starring in the accompanying campaign. “I want it to represent the people!” she adds. What does unite the collection and its forebear, however, is a pronounced sense of London-ness – an identity that was also central to Topshop’s decision to appoint her. Managing director Michelle Wilson describes Delevingne as “a global style icon with deep London roots”.

“I don’t see the world through anything but a London lens,” Delevingne continues, pointing to asymmetrical cuts that “feel like the architecture of London”, as well as pieces designed to be swapped in and out of an existing wardrobe. That, to her, is what separates London from other fashion capitals: “mixing and matching time periods, vintage with new, and enjoying something forever.” Hence the collection’s emphasis on denim. “Denim gets better over time. We want these clothes to last for a really long time.”

And though Delevingne has spent much of the past few years in Los Angeles, her frame of reference remains stubbornly British. “You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl,” she says. “I mean, if Topshop was in any other city, wouldn’t that be weird?”