The Deep Fashion Roots Of London’s Fizzy New Startup Label “Debute”

The splashy London debut of Debute, the eponymous brand of two of whom we might call the storied “Bute” sisters — Jasmine “Jazzy” de Lisser and Lady Lola Bute (aka, Lady Lola Affrica Crichton-Stuart) — in October a year ago was attended by all the grand It-People, bold-faced and not, that London could possibly muster, including the founders, who are very much It-People. But unlike a number of their cohort, the ladies come with a certain family gravitas. Consequently, this October 29, their first-year anniversary was feted with an aptly faux-dark lark of a “murder-mystery” dinner at the London Edition, pictured top, at which the label’s sisterly principals danced a bit of a latter-day jig, insofar as one could in stilettos, at the festivities’ onset. They had survived.

It’s fair to say that, a year on, the label has legs, and it’s also fair to say that the sisters — technically, half-sisters — come by this enterprise naturally, via the fashion DNA of their mother, Lady Serena Bute (nee, Wendell), founder of Serena Bute London. That the gossamer French preposition “de” in de Lisser smashed into the rock-hard name of the family’s Hebridean island of origin carries a breezy “first-time-out” kind of pun only adds to the fizz around the label.

But the sisters’ story goes a bit further back and is quite a lot more colorful than that simple fact. Lady Lola’s father was John Colum Crichton-Stuart, the 7th Marquess of Bute, scion of one of Scotland’s oldest families who, after a proper public schooling that he didn’t finish, carved his way in sports as the young UK racing driver who dominated the 1984 F3 season, raced briefly for Lotus in F1, and then won the 1988 LeMans endurance for Jaguar. He had grit, and talent. Below, the young 7th Marquess is pictured with his Lotus in 1986.

Upon his retirement from racing, the 7th Marquess returned to Bute to manage the family estates and related businesses, very much including its star operation, Bute Fabrics, founded by his grandfather, the 5th Marquess, in 1947 to provide employment for local Scots returning from war service and now a notable mill nationally for cotton and wool fabrics. The 7th Marquess died at 62 after a brief illness in 2021, having grown the size of the family holdings considerably. Titled since the 18th century by George III, the family occupies the ancestral home of Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute with an estate of some 28,000 acres, currently tended by the 8th Marquess, John Bryson Crichton-Stuart.

Put differently, with their father/stepfather having passionately run a fabric mill in the Hebrides — the global mecca for tweed — Lady Lola and Jasmine de Lisser get their fashion DNA from the paternal side as well.

Below, the 7th Marquess is pictured with his wife Serena, daughter Lady Lola, stepdaughter Jazzy De Lisser at a Christie’s benefit in London in 2009.

A final homage to the motoring Marquess: Pictured above, the 7th Marquess’ hearse, an elegantly restored 1948 Chevrolet pick-up with the coffin draped in the Crichton-Stuart banner, led his typically iconoclastic 2021 funeral procession. Behind it, and the mourners on foot, was a parade of his vintage cars.

Below, the 7th Marquess is pictured in 2007 with the then Prince of Wales as the ownership of the Crichton-Stuarts’ second historic manor house, Dumfries, was transferred to the Prince of Wales’ Trust (now the King’s Trust) for national conservancy.

Sustainability and local manufacture is a laudable mantra for the label — the brand is entirely made in London and out of deadstock British fabrics, including that from Bute Fabrics. In a word, and in an industry infamous for waste, that’s refreshing. In the first year’s line there are Debute kilts in the Crichton-Stuart family tartan, but they aren’t exactly the kilt designs that your mother wore, what with a racy ladder of cutouts down the side.

The sisters are quite frank about having fought over the same clothes growing up in Mount Stuart. As Lady Lola explained it last year, that sisterly friction was the germ of the brand’s founding. “That’s what it’s about, sisterhood and friendship and community. Creating those pieces that sisters can both have — so that they’re not fighting over them like me and Jazzy once were.”

De Lisser, pictured below with her younger sister and friends at Debute’s May show in London, put her view of the 7th Marquess of Bute this way: “(My stepfather) so believed in craftsmanship and community. That’s actually why Bute Fabrics was started, to bring that into the community in Scotland.”

De Lisser, pictured above with her younger sister and friends at Debute’s May show in London, put her view of the 7th Marquess of Bute this way: “(My stepfather) so believed in craftsmanship and community. That’s actually why Bute Fabrics was started, to bring that into the community in Scotland. It’s paying respects to what has come before, and bringing it into our new journey.”