It has been a year, almost exactly to the day, that London it girls and half-sisters turned fashion designers Lady Lola Bute and Jazzy De Lisser teamed up to launch their partywear label, named DeBute. Today, the two blondes, both dressed in black — De Lisser in a tailored jacket, holding a Chanel flap bag and her rescue dog Banana; Bute in a fur Saks Potts coat with Prada purse — are sitting side by side in a booth within the lobby of their new Ladbroke Grove office space, which they moved into three weeks ago.
“I can’t believe we’ve made it here,” 34-year-old De Lisser says. “I can vividly remember the samples arriving the night before our first shoot — and we got in the biggest fight.” Bute, 26, had a crisis of confidence when they opened the boxes. “I hated it all,” she says, bluntly. “And I said, well you can’t hate it because we’ve got to sell it and we’ve got to shoot it tomorrow,” says De Lisser.
Thankfully, the tide has turned — the pair, who have overcome great family tragedy, are content with how their business is shaping up. Things began with a bang. A legendary knees-up at the not-yet-opened Canteen restaurant saw their best friends, who are helpfully the cream of the capital’s high society, turn up in their droves dressed head to upper thigh in skimpy frocks and tartan skirts.
As DeBute launches its third collection, most in their circle have a piece named after them. Currently available to buy are the Sienna dress, a plunging black lace mini named after Sienna Miller (£275) and the Tish dress, a floor-length silky nightgown with lace detailing over the décolletage, after Tish Weinstock (£275). Kate Moss gets a backless mini (£220), Cara Delevingne a fitted halterneck iteration (£150), and Lady Mary Charteris a pair of flared trousers with cutouts revealing the hips (£190). “Lola named the first, I named the second, Lola has named the third,” De Lisser says. “It’s easy when we have a friend in mind.”
The label’s USP is well-made party looks that survive the trend cycles and don’t cost the earth. “We’re finding our feet and we’re finding what our customer wants — and what we’ve realised is they want the stuff Jazz and I love and would wear day in, day out,” Bute says. “We’re not trying to be something we’re not — I love to be half naked, I love a lacy slip dress. Jazzy’s a bit more sophisticated, but in the same kind of realm, very London, sexy, girly. We want it to feel true to us.”
Fashion runs in the family. Their mother, Serena Bute, is a designer, and the sisters fondly recall dressing up in her vintage frocks before nights on the town. “Our house has always been the house where everyone’s come to get ready and mum’s so overexcited and invested in everyone’s outfits,” De Lisser says.
But their lives have not been one big party — they have already lived through more than most. De Lisser’s father, Robert De Lisser, a Jamaican-born Brit, went on the run after being implicated in a suspected drug-smuggling operation while the family lived in the Caribbean. Her mother returned to the UK broke and single with Jazzy and her brother, Josh, before meeting Johnny Dumfries, the racing driver and Marquess of Bute, with whom she went on to have Lola.
De Lisser endured years of painful treatment for hepatitis C, which she contracted at birth — unwittingly passed on by her mother, who had used drugs as a young model. At 18, De Lisser made a documentary about her illness, My Story of C. In her early twenties she was cured, thanks to a pioneering new drug. “We always try and make the best of things,” De Lisser says. “With my Hep C, I started making that documentary as a way of distracting myself and learning more about it. To make the best out of a bad situation.”
It was a similar story for Bute, who channelled her own heartbreak into activism. Her boyfriend, artist Kai Schachter, died by suicide in 2019. She later started a foundation, Eternity, which she describes as “a movement created to bring attention to suicide, addiction and mental health”. “I was so young, I was 19 when Kai died, and I was so naive and vulnerable,” she says. “You hear about awful things like that happening, but you never think it’s going to happen to you, let alone to someone that close to you,” she says. “I wanted to make Kai proud and I didn’t want his life to be in vain. It taught me what it was to work hard. To set myself a goal — I wouldn’t even let Covid get in my way. That’s really helped with my work ethic.”
Grief struck again when her father died in 2021 from an aggressive form of cancer. “Then my dad died, and I got knocked back down. You have to learn to be resilient.” They agree adversity has helped them become the women they are today. “DeBute has been a huge help to my mental health — having a business that I feel so excited by and having structure,” says Bute. “After doing the charity stuff for so long, I didn’t just want to be the grieving person. I wanted to have my own life and not live in the shadow of the stuff that’s happened to me.”
They have been gearing up for their newest winter drop, No Hard Feelings — very much sexy 1990s London, it’s available to buy at their Golborne Road pop-up. “It is all black and pinstripe, I feel like London winter is quite black and dark grey,” De Lisser says. “It’s easy to wear but you feel sexy and elegant in it,” Bute continues. A highlight is the hooded top, £135, and flares, £145, “which you could wear with biker boots and a fur coat all day every day, or you could wear it out with stilettos and a belt,” Bute says. And a flurry of twists on the LBD.
Sexy is the word that keeps cropping up — and one the sisters are keen to usher back into style. “Everything has to be so cool now…” Bute says. “When I was growing up, sexy was such a thing,” De Lisser follows. “We want to bring that back.” What makes someone sexy? “Confidence,” says De Lisser. “And wearing DeBute.”
No Hard Feelings is available to buy at the Golborne Road Boutique, 97 Golborne Road, until October 18, debute.co.uk
