Rosie Huntington-Whiteley Has a New Job
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley is having a whirlwind of a week. “I haven’t had this many DMs and outpouring of positive support since I announced I was pregnant,” she says. No, she’s not pregnant again, but she does have a new role, fashion director of luxury e-commerce site FWRD. “It’s been a long time coming,” Huntington-Whiteley says, sitting in front of a mood board full of sculptures and neutral colors. The supermodel has a signature style that lands her on everyone else’s mood boards: muted-toned basics, structured silhouettes tailored to perfection, and unexpected details. “I love, love, love clothes,” she says.
Her keen eye and love of clothes isn’t the only thing that makes her perfect for her new position — she’s also been a customer for over a decade. “I started my relationship with FWRD as a customer, so that deepens the storytelling. I feel really connected to the site and the customer. I understand what people are buying and looking for. It feels very natural.” She’s excited to go to the shows during Fashion Week and attend with a different eye, one that’ll be curating a website and our wardrobes. She’s the taste queen, so, ahead of her starting her new role as fashion director, we had to ask her more about what’s to come at FWRD, her style, her favorite designers, and her tips for building a timeless wardrobe.
Tell me about an emerging designer you like?
Recently one of my favorite designers that I discovered is a shoe brand called Christen. Unbeknownst to me, I’d been wearing her shoes for many years. She was the designer at Bottega, The Row, and Loewe. All those iconic shoes that we have become so familiar with over the last ten years, she’s really responsible. She launched her own brand and the day it went live, I kind of purchased a load of shoes so that’s an example of an authentic relationship being born from an emerging designer.
You are 38 now but have been in the limelight since your 20s. How has your style evolved?
In my 20s it was a lot more playful, a lot more prints and patterns. I was a little bit more adventurous because I had the time and I had the freedom to do that, and my life didn’t require as many practical things as it does now that I’m a mom, and I move around the world in a different way. Over the last few years, it has been really important that I’m creating a wardrobe that feels timeless. I’m time poor like most women that get dressed in the morning are. I want to go into my wardrobe and feel inspired by a piece that I may have had for seasons already or feel inspired by a piece that I know that I’m happy to wear now tomorrow, next week, next season.
I always ask myself when I’m purchasing something, Is this a trend piece that I’m going to wear once or twice? I generally try to avoid that now and really look at pieces that will be part of my wardrobe for years to come and hopefully I can even pass down to my daughter one day or even my son — he loves some of the leather jackets I’ve got.
You always have a great leather piece. What makes a great piece of clothing?
I love tailoring. I love fabric. I love structure. I love something that does a lot for me. I can throw it on and it’s doing all the work. I’m a little bit lazy when I get dressed; I don’t like to feel that clothes are wearing me. I want everything to feel very personal to me. I think we can all probably relate to that story of our mom having that one jacket or that one dress that was just hers and she embodied it, and you see it hanging in her wardrobe now and you have these memories of her. That’s really what makes something an iconic piece of clothing.
What’s your favorite leather jacket right now?
I’m absolutely loving a Phoebe Philo black cropped leather jacket with a shearling collar. It has this incredibly buttery-soft feel, and the cropped hem gives the silhouette such strong volume. It’s a classic and modernized in all the right ways — truly a wardrobe staple for me.
Who are your favorite denim brands for the perfect pair of jeans?
I’m loving both Aflalo and Khaite, which are absolute staples for me. Their cuts are exceptional, incredibly elongating, and they offer such a refined mix of silhouettes. They just fit beautifully.
Your interior style is beloved just as much as your personal style. How do you approach mood boarding for your interior design versus when you’re mood boarding for what you’re going to wear?
I love a mood board. For me, before I start any creative project, it begins with image referencing. Specifically for my homes, they always start with a lot of research into architecture, fabric, materials, colors, swatches. I’m very tactile. I like to approach a space thinking about how I need to exist in it. So everything, even if it’s something ultimately we always want, I always hope that everything has this beautiful aesthetic feeling to it and it creates an atmosphere. But equally it needs to be practical, which is a really interesting challenge moving back to the U.K. five years ago because, of course, the buildings here are very old so you often feel sort of confined by the old parts of the building that are kind of obsolete now, and how do you reinterpret that for modern-day living?
The house where I am today is a project small house I bought in Central London when we first moved back. It’s a great two-star listed property, which means it’s very, very protected. There wasn’t a lot I could do in terms of knocking things down, but actually that was what was so charming about it was being able to kind of take it back to its bones, these beautiful Georgian details and interpreting those in a modern way. I’ve got many, many different mood boards that I keep stocked up on my computer and access them, and it’s actually really nice because I have ones that are ten years old and I go back into those and it reminds me of the headspace I was in.
I always like to think that I want to come back to something in ten years and it still feels relevant and it still feels like something I can stand behind, which is definitely an interesting way of curating and gathering research.
What’s your favorite gift to give?
I really love giving gifts that feel thoughtful and meaningful. I’m always drawn to experiences — discovering a new place to visit with family or pieces of art that feel personal to the person. Beautiful homeware is another favourite and, of course, a book someone can really lose themselves in.
What’s the beauty product that gets you through the winter?
The honey-infused hair oil from Gisou. It keeps my hair healthy, glossy, and nourished, and it smells gorgeous throughout the day.
Gisou Honey Infused Hair Oil - 100 ml
If you had to choose five of your favorite designers to go to dinner with, who are you going with?
I would love to meet Phoebe Philo. I would definitely have Daniel Lee there because he’s a good friend of mine. I would love to have Pieter Mulier there; I’m a big fan of what he does at Alaïa. Pierpaolo Piccioli is such a lovely, lovely man, and I really enjoy his company. Who else would I love to have there? Isabel Marant, she’s always so much fun. I love how authentic she is and how she always shows up really true to herself and her brand all these years later, and she just looks like great fun. There’s just something about that cool French-woman attitude that she’s got that I think is deeply inspiring. Ralph Lauren, he’s a genius. There’s so much to be learned from those old-school designers who have built these powerhouse brands.
And, I would love to have met Cristóbal Balenciaga; I think he seems like a really fab man. And also Mr. Yves Saint Laurent. I’m sure they’ve just got such amazing stories. Coco Chanel, of course. I mean, the list just goes on.
Meeting celebrities doesn’t excite me. It’s architects and designers.
More of Rosie’s favorites: