Collecting Klein: Karen Fricker
Karen Fricker shares her personal memories of a collection of Bernat Klein coats worn by her husband, Laurie.
I had recently graduated in the early 1980s from the Royal College of Art, and was being whisked down Bond Street by a suitor, later to become my husband, Laurie Fricker. We stopped abruptly at a tailor with a beautifully green woven coat in the window. In we went and bought it.
Half-way up Bond Street we returned for the second coat in blue. These were by designed and created by Bernat Klein, whom Laurie had known about from earlier teaching years in Edinburgh.
My husband was a landscape architect and wore the coat on many occasions giving lectures, and where he was asked if he had grown the coat for the occasion!
He was ecstatic some years later to find two more Klein coats in a charity shop in Crewkerne at a fraction of the price paid for the Bond Street pair.
We keep the four beautifully woven coats of many colours in his wardrobe to remember him by, and which are much treasured and loved!
