The celebrity stylist who put Liz Hurley into THAT Versace safety pin dress, and once pinned the late Princess Diana into her frocks, is looking decidedly downcast.
Strange though it may seem, Dean Aslett is mourning a coat hanger, or rather the idea of what the coat hanger – wooden, sturdy, reassuringly expensive – represented.
The list of people Dean has either helped shop or dress over the past 35 years reads like a Who’s Who of the entertainment business,past and present.
It’s a glittering CV – from Elton John to Prince William – but Dean is telling me about the moment he knew his career as a personal shopper-to-the-stars was on the slide.
He was working for the upmarket department store Harvey Nichols last year and one of his younger colleagues had arranged some clothes on a rail – on generic hangers that looked, to his eyes, quite frankly, rather cheap.
Elton John would have freaked. So Dean, 55, did, too.
‘Personal shopping is about presentation and attention to detail,’ he laments. ‘We had a personal shopping suite and I put such effort into displaying everything on the correct hanger so that when the client walked in it looked like a mini boutique.
‘It has to have the wow factor. It has to be curated. But one of my younger contemporaries had put a Celine skirt on a wire hanger! Elsewhere there was a coat on a plastic one.’
Dean Aslett is the celebrity stylist who put Liz Hurley in the infamous Versace safety pin dress
There were no sales targets then but Dean would have certainly busted them all with Elton. ‘He bought three of everything, you see, for his various houses. He just couldn’t stop himself – suits, watches, pieces for his homes,’ said Dean
Dean, is often referred to as Mr Safety Pin – and has also lent his expertise to members of the British Royal family including this dress for Princess Diana
He pauses, processing the absolute horror. ‘I mean you just don’t do that. Visually, it’s a mess and these clothes deserve more, never mind the clients!
‘But when I raised it with my manager she said: ‘Oh we don’t do that at Harvey Nicks’. I thought: ‘Well, don’t sell luxury clothes then.’ Honestly. Plastic hangers when customers are spending that much money!’
Perhaps it was one confrontation with his manager too many because Dean’s career at Harvey Nichols – the iconic London department store that was a second home to Ab Fab’s Patsy and Edina – is, alas, no more.
He was let go in December 2024 after working in the store’s personal shopping department since the previous January.
He’s not going discreetly, however, in the manner the job always required.
He is taking his former employers to an employment tribunal, claiming he was subjected to age discrimination and deliberately denied access as a personal shopper to the new breed of younger affluent celebrity clients such as professional footballers.
His case is due to be opened next May, but the full hearing isn’t likely to be until 2027.
‘The legal action stems from the fact that we had targets to meet but I feel I wasn’t treated fairly,’ he explains. My younger colleagues were given clients like the footballers Bukayo Saka and Ivan Toney, high-worth individuals who could come in and spend £10,000 in one go and who were, on one level, very easy to shop for because they just want labels and have bodies that are easy to dress.
In the Noughties he was head of personal shopping for Selfridges and his most famous client was a young Prince William
‘By contrast, my clients tended to be older ladies, mothers-of-the-bride who were often coming in for a one-off purchase and who often had a much smaller budget.
‘You could see it as a backhanded compliment, I suppose, because with 35-years experience of dealing with all sorts of clients, I could do very well for these ladies, but it wasn’t fair to then expect me to meet the same sales targets.
‘These were often ladies who wore bigger sizes – so there would be fewer dresses available to them. And the whole process was just much more difficult.’
The nitty gritty of this case will come down to the dull detail of employment law, but my goodness there is nothing dull about Dean.
This is a man who, for more than three decades, had a ringside seat on Planet Celebrity.
Actually, he often didn’t have a seat at all; mostly, he was to be found on the floor, pins in his mouth, deftly handling dresses and egos simultaneously. Over the years he worked for designers such as Versace and Gucci and the grief he is feeling at the moment is also linked to tangible human loss.
His big mentor was designer Antony Price, who died last week, marking the end of an era. ‘I learned so much from him – about style and grace, and attention to detail,’ he says. Dean’s styling may have helped launch her career – but La Hurley is only one diva among many.
My favourite stories of his involve Elton John, who, back in the pre credit-card days, would turn up to shop with his manager – who had a suitcase of cash handcuffed to his wrist.
Dean says Naomi Campbell was ‘a dream to dress but once threw an ashtray at a party’
There were no sales targets then but Dean would have certainly busted them all with Elton. ‘He bought three of everything, you see, for his various houses. He just couldn’t stop himself – suits, watches, pieces for his homes.’
Once there was an urgency to get a particular suit so Dean was dispatched on a plane to Atlanta to deliver it to Elton.
‘My God, you wouldn’t get that now,’ he says sadly.
As well as Elton, he dealt (discreetly) with Joan Collins (‘Terrifying. Eyes like Caligula and a mouth like Marilyn Monroe, but with a sharp tongue. But my goodness she spent, even with the discount she had’), Angelica Huston and Jack Nicholson (‘I once helped his daughter buy a cocktail dress and he was hilariously cheeky through the whole process’), Kate Winslet, Meg Mathews, the Beckhams (‘darlings, in the early days’) Bryan Ferry, David Bowie (‘the ultimate gentleman’), Jamie Oliver, Naomi Campbell (‘A dream to dress but I was at a party once and she threw an ashtray.’).
There were a lot of parties. He recalls being at a Beckhams’ World Cup party. He arrived in Mohammed Al Fayed’s helicopter, as you do (‘He didn’t just like women, you know. He patted me on the bum’), and shared a table with Boy George, football legend Sir Geoff Hurst and – yes really – David Beckham’s granny.
‘That was hilarious. Boy George and [socialite] Philip Sallon were dressed as pantomime dames and David Beckham’s granny leaned over and said ‘why don’t you get yourself a nice girlfriend and get married’. I’m not sure what Geoff Hurst made of it all.’
Dean segued into personal shopping after working on the sales floor. ‘Some work I did for the designer Tom Ford was key to that,’ he says. ‘He asked me to shop personally for him. I ended up arranging the Diet Coke in his fridge in a particularly meticulous way, which he loved.’
But he says the high-end personal shopping industry has ‘died a death’.
Aslett has a glittering CV, styling the likes of Elton John to Prince William
‘It’s really not what it used to be. The big A-listers don’t spend money in the way they used to. The industry has changed so much. Now all the big hitters just get clothes for free, and the designers send dresses straight to them!’ And don’t start him on the influencers, who have filled that void with their loud posturing and look-at-me antics.
Dean shudders.
‘The thing about old-style personal shopping was that it was discreet. My clients would come in the back door, no fanfare. They didn’t want to be seen.
Influencers? I felt like rigor mortis was setting in because it was all so predictable.
‘They operate by a different set of rules – no interest in the quality of the products or the work that goes into them. And they don’t spend money!
‘I could spend three hours pre-selecting dresses for them to try on, setting it all up, then they’d try them on, take endless pictures of themselves in the clothes, posing all over the place, and then bugger off!’.
And as much as he wanted the deep pockets of the footballer clients, even they were a bit . . . yawn.
‘You see someone like Bryan Ferry – who I always thought was the most stylish man on the planet – appreciated the attention to detail. He wanted quality. He loved fashion, style. These footballers just want labels. They might as well order online.
His most nightmarish client, he says, was singer Kanye West, who he says ‘was dismissive of everyone’
‘So much of what I used to do is obsolete. Even shopping in some of the big department stores is like having a Tesco delivery, which breaks my heart. I think what we did was special.’ It’s a particular dagger-to-the-heart to Dean that I’m talking to him in December, the busiest time of year for the personal shopper.
In the Noughties he was head of personal shopping for Selfridges and his most famous client was a young Prince William.
‘I’d help dress his mum when I worked with Gianni Versace, and she had traditionally used the personal shopping services at Selfridges for her Christmas shopping – although I wasn’t working there then.
‘I was when Prince William came in to shop, about five years after she died. He came back for about four years.’
How does it work? ‘Well, it started with a call from Special Branch,’ he recalls. ‘It was all very cloak and dagger. They called my home number, I suppose to check I wasn’t a member of the IRA.’
He met Prince William in the car park on the day, escorting him up the back stairs of the flagship store, then around the shop itself, gathering gifts as they went.
It says everything that Dean can’t remember what he bought, ‘because it was all so ordinary. The royals never did ostentatious, maybe in case it leaked out, but the Queen was famously frugal, too, with her Cornflakes-in-Tupperware.
Dean remembers how Jamie Oliver used to spend thousands on his wife
‘There was nothing bling about anything William wanted. It was DVDs, fragrances, little trinkets.’
He does remember – and who would forget – that the Prince bought a Doctor Who box set for his grandmother. ‘I was tickled by that because I was a Doctor Who fan, too. But you don’t think of The Queen watching it.’
Who else needed a hand with their shopping, Christmas or otherwise?
‘I remember Jamie Oliver coming in. He’d spend thousands on his wife. Jamie Rednapp and his then wife Louise.
‘Katie Price and Peter Andre, when they were married. Actually, they were lovely to deal with. Katie loved that she could park her Land Rover and use the secret entrance.’
Kate Winslet only wanted one frock for an event, so that doesn’t really count. Ditto the then Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.
‘I wasn’t dealing with her but – and this is an example of how, back in the day, we always went the extra mile – the dress she picked was strapless and she wanted something around her shoulders.
‘Nothing was suitable but I ran out to Borovicks, the theatrical outfitters, and bought yards of emerald silk and organza and we fashioned it into a shawl. You just wouldn’t get that nowadays.
‘Some young personal shopper would say: ‘Try Amazon.’ ‘The biggest spenders, after Elton, were the foreign royals.
Dean recalls struggling to keep up with members of the Qatari royal family who strode around ‘saying ‘that, that, that’ and ‘quick, quick, quick’. They could spend £30,000 in one go. We’d pack it all up and everything would be sent to their hotel.’
His most nightmarish client, he says, was singer Kanye West. ‘I wasn’t even supposed to be working on the day he came in but I had a call from a stylist friend in LA asking me if I could help him. It was around 2006 and the internet wasn’t what it is today.
‘I hadn’t heard of him, and couldn’t find out much about him, but one of my colleagues said: ‘Dean, he’s the most famous rapper in the world.’ Well, I can tell you he’s also the rudest rapper in the world. He arrived with an entourage and he was sullen. No hint of a please or thank you. He was dismissive of everyone.
‘I said: ‘This guy is going to be a nightmare.’ And he was. He still spent about £45K, though.’
And now, it’s all gone. In recent times Dean has gone back to his first love – music – and has been busy in the recording studio recording an album of his own songs.
‘It’s not as strange a move as it seems. I only got into the fashion business because of people like Bryan Ferry and David Bowie, because in those days the worlds were inseparable.’
My, but he misses the divas, though, even Joanie. Would she have accepted a plastic coat hanger? ‘I’d never have stooped as low as to give her one to find out.’
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