Chaos: the luxury accessories brand loved by Karl Lagerfeld and Beyoncé

As the spring sunshine streams through the 19th-century windows of Chaos’s Pimlico HQ...

I find super-stylists turned co-founders Charlotte Stockdale and Katie Lyall lounging on curved vintage Fendi couches, shaggy sheepskin rugs underfoot and a giant teddy bear commanding one corner of their desk-free ‘design room’. The only evidence that this is a workspace is the abundance of electronic devices strewn about.

But then Chaos — whose cult-issue travel accessories, including phone cases, passport covers and luggage tags, have been embraced by pop culture giants from Elon Musk to Beyoncé — isn’t your ordinary company. The professional-lifestyle blend evident in the room is a fitting metaphor for the 18-month-old brand. ‘Our designs are truly stuff that we really need, want and use,’ says Stockdale, demonstrating the new elasticised ‘Hand Hug’ phone case, named by Cara Delevingne, which effortlessly slips over the hand and keeps your phone still while you film. They gave a few friends, including Adwoa Aboah and Business of Fashion’s Imran Amed, versions to try at Paris Fashion Week: ‘They were like, “OMG, I can now film the end of a show without the wobbles,”’ adds Lyall.

Solving practical design quandaries with style and humour is Chaos’s modus operandi. It launched in November 2016 with a teaser film starring supers Karlie Kloss, Taylor Hill and Anna Ewers, and now employs 17 people. ‘It was born out of the need to go hands-free,’ says Stockdale, her brightly hued Chaos iPhone case (priced from £145) hanging from the handy Chaos elastic lanyard (from £75) looped around her neck. ‘There was a proper gap for a luxury version of all of this that isn’t insanely expensive or too gimmicky.’

Given their visual backgrounds — both have worked as stylists for British Vogue, i-D and Garage magazine in addition to their Chaos Fashion consultancy (established in 1998) working with mega-brands from Victoria’s Secret to Chanel — you can be sure that form is as crucial as function. ‘You’ve spent so much money on your phone, why should it not look as good or be as customised as everything else in your life?’ asks Lyall of their cases, which can be personalised with thousands of variations.

At the time of its launch, customisation was all the rage — and ubiquitous. But Chaos proved more than just a fad. ‘I was beginning to tire of personalised everything,’ says Karl Lagerfeld, one of the brand’s biggest cheerleaders (Lyall and Stockdale have been Fendi consultants for the past decade). ‘But then along came Chaos and breathed new life into the whole concept.’ At a Paris party for Chaos during the recent AW18 collections Lagerfeld could be seen styling Edward Enninful and Jefferson Hack with the pair’s limited-edition football scarves, dropping in May. ‘Now they’ve created a line of products ubiquitous within the fashion community but entirely fun and sophisticated. They gave personalisation personality,’ adds Lagerfeld.

‘He’s our club president,’ says Lyall, smiling when I mention him. ‘We’ve learned so much from him,’ agrees Stockdale. ‘He’s just extremely decisive. He has the ability to look at something and go, “That one”, and it’s done. No second guesses. No worrying about it. It’s done. Move on to the next thing.’

‘Also, he forgets nothing,’ adds Lyall. ‘He has a photographic memory.’

As well as being long-term business partners, Lyall and Stockdale are also the best of friends. At the weekend you’ll find them back together at Scott’s, La Petit Maison or Cecconi’s in Mayfair, or La Poule Au Pot in Belgravia. They met when Stockdale enlisted Lyall to work with her on British Vogue; she admired Lyall’s ‘big balls’. ‘We have lady balls in common!’ agrees Lyall. ‘And an equal lack of fear of a challenge.’

Lyall joined Stockdale at i-D and later at Garage, Dasha Zhukova’s art magazine. ‘We keep each other up and try to do everything together,’ says Stockdale of their dynamic partnership. Victoria’s Secret was another shared client; they were creative directors of its fashion show from 2000-2011. ‘It’s tough now with the current climate. They’re an obvious target,’ says Lyall. Stockdale interjects: ‘But the girls love doing it, so no one should be able to belittle their choice.’

‘Also they’re healthy, they work out, they’re so fit,’ adds Lyall. ‘Paris Fashion Week versus that is a whole different thing in terms of the enjoyment they have doing the show. It’s a dream compared to a fashion week schedule.’

Stockdale, who was brought up in Hampshire, the daughter of former lawyer Sir Thomas Stockdale, 2nd Baronet of Hoddington, began her initial flirtation with fashion through modelling. After Heathfield boarding school (alumnae include Isabella Blow and Sienna Miller), Stockdale was at the Lee Strasberg Studio acting school in New York when she was ‘scouted’ at a party. ‘I got tricked into modelling,’ she exhales. Turns out the partygoer did not work for Elite, but the person who picked up her cold call felt so sorry for her that they told her to drop by. ‘I went in and she was like: “Come back in a month when you’ve lost a stone.”’ Stockdale was 18 and tried until she was 22 to ‘make it’, even relocating to Paris. ‘I hated it,’ she laughs, ‘I hated being unsuccessful — it’s really demoralising.’

What she did enjoy was being on set. ‘I thought, I’ll become a stylist — it can’t be that hard. Put a black dress on someone,’ she remembers. ‘That was my naive approach.’ And so she began following in the footsteps of her mother, Lady Jacqueline Stockdale, an artist and stylist at Panton on Beauchamp Place in the 1980s.

‘I left school and had no idea what I wanted to do,’ says Lyall, who grew up in Stepney. ‘I came from quite a creative family and wanted to be creative — I just didn’t know how.’ Her father, David Lyall, is a cabinetmaker, while her mother, Jackie, ‘can pretty much make anything from anything’, from pattern-cutting to book-binding, upholstering to baking. Growing up, ‘it was normal to be able to pick what colour your dress would be’.

That sense of pragmatism continues at Chaos. Early instigators of the athleisure movement (today they’re both in trainers: Stockdale in a pair of Virgil Abloh’s Nike Air Jordan 1s, teamed with a Chaos Karl T-shirt and black Vera Wang taffeta trousers, and Lyall in some sci-fi Balenciaga sneakers with a Cos cardi and trousers), the pair made their first foray into RTW with a set of ‘evening’ tracksuits designed for Delevingne and Margot Robbie during their Suicide Squad promo tour. ‘There wasn’t a tracksuit out there that is both chic and simple,’ says Stockdale. In June they will be rolling out limited-edition runs in silk, flannel and men’s suiting fabrications.

Before that, in May, there will be a line of ‘tour’ T-shirts featuring imagery from their passion project, Chaos SixtyNine magazine, which they launched last year. ‘We don’t want to lose the editorial side of what we’ve been doing for so long,’ says Lyall. ‘It keeps our world alive and it’s really important to what we do,’ adds Stockdale. ‘People we love like Amanda Harlech did a Mongolia travel section, Katie Grand a cheese on toast recipe,’ adds Lyall. Early versions of the T-shirts knocked up during fashion week featured images of Delevingne and Aboah from the magazine, with proceeds going to each woman’s preferred charities.

After that — who knows? Nothing is off limits. ‘Imagine your 10 favourite things with a Chaos twist,’ says Lyall. ‘That’s what we want to do.’

‘Anything from homewares to a car,’ Stockdale pings back. ‘I mean, you can’t buy a great doormat anywhere,’ beams Lyall.