Iconic fashion brand Rita Britton is making a comeback.
Iconic fashion brand Rita Britton is making a comeback
Its founder Rita, 80, is reviving it a decade after it closed – and following a retirement she says “drove her mad” and made her want to get back to work.
She told the BBC: “I realised you don’t turn off creativity.
“You might decide to retire, but I looked at the people I admire who are older than me like David Hockney and Alan Bennett. Karl Lagerfeld worked into his ’90s.
“Creativity does not suddenly end, it’s there.”
Rita Britton has its roots in the Yorkshire coalfields in the 1960s.
Its founder opened her high-couture Pollyanna boutique in Barnsley in 1967, but it shut when Rita retired in 2014 after a stroke and brain haemorrhage.
She added she hadn’t realised how famous Pollyanna was and initially steered away from the brand as she felt it was a “name of its time”.
Rita said: “When you work in the middle, you don’t see it, you’re in it, you enjoy it.
“People all over the world have told me Pollyanna was so iconic.
“You gather so much knowledge about the industry you’re working in and you think, I can’t shelve that.”
Rita added she would choose to live in Barnsley over any other town or city in the world and loves teaching young people about fashion.
She said: “You wouldn’t believe the quality of the textile designers we deal with, absolutely incredible. It’s a fabulous industry to be in.
“We’re not in fashion, we’re into style – because style is lasting, fashion is fleeting.
“I’ve come back with a new passion.”
Pollyanna is now producing a handbag with New York, Milan, Paris, London ‘AND Barnsley’ printed on it.
Tagged in Karl Lagerfeld