BEYONCE MAKES A STAR OF LONDON DESIGNER OSMAN THANKS TO GRAPHIC GRAMMYS JUMPSUIT

Posted by Melanie Rickey, Fashion Editor at Large

Now here is a story to warm your heart. At the Grammys in Los Angeles last night while Adele wore a flower beaded Valentino haute couture prom dress, and Rihanna worked a flowing red custom made gown by Azzedine Alaia, the indisputable queen of pop Beyonce went off-piste and opted for a crisply tailored black and white jumpsuit by little known across-the-pond London designer Osman. Osman? His full name is Osman Yousefzada, and if you are among those who know little about the British couturier, it won't be for long.

Overnight the Birmingham raised 38-year-old son of migrant Afghan parents, who has been quietly showing his now signature linear, modern tailoring cuts on the London Fashion Week catwalks for six years, has become a name to know in America, and rightly so. He says his cleverly cut clothes are aimed at powerful independent women, and he has an enviable client roster of the kind of elegant professionals designers dream of dressing. These include but are by no means truly represented by Lady Gaga, Tallulah Harlech, the influential art collector Valeria Napoleone, and now Queen Bey herself. 

Osman

"Its pretty amazing really. I didn't expect much of a reaction, but the phone and email has been buzzing with American interest since mid-morning," said the ever-modest Osman from his atelier on London's South Bank today between fittings for his London Fashion Week show this coming Monday. "I knew Beyonce's stylist Raquel Smith had borrowed a couple of pieces from my Los Angeles showroom La Chambre, but I didn't know it was going to happen until ten minutes before..I was in bed trying to get to sleep when it came through on the text." 

"I don't think he quite knew how to react," his London publicist Narmin Mohammadi of The Communications Store told me this afternoon. "He asked me if it was a big a deal as he thought it might be and I was like, YES!!" 

Osman's SS13 monochrome jumpsuit, Beyonce's version is from the selling collection

Gaining attention from the fashion watchers of the wider world is nothing more than Osman deserves. I'm a fan of his seasonal journal The Collective and have ripped out the below pages from his AW12 edition for my study walls.

Ortensia Visconti and Anne-Catherine Frey in The Collective

When I interviewed him for this blog last year he explained what drives him. "I grew up watching women coming and going from my mothers workroom...I think that is why I love dressing women, and no two are the same," he says. "I know the transformative power of well cut clothes, and I guess what I do is work with my experience of women to create the right clothes for them. My method is, well...basically I will bend over backwards to help someone find the right thing. If a client comes to me " - 15% of his business is bespoke, and he has 80 global retail clients - "and needs something in two days, I will do it. I'm a worker. My motto is "I learn by client" which is something I have also heard Azzedine Alaia say, he needs to work on his women in order to keep learning. He is an inspiration to me."    

Visit Osman's website here.