Where Cheap Is Also Chic.(vintage clothing and fabrics in British fashion)(Brief Article)

Sally Sage's wedding dress was beaded cream silk, shot through with rot and mildew after 40 years in her attic. Last week she cried as she watched a model parade it on the catwalk, closing her son's show at London Fashion Week. Designer Russell Sage, 31, is British fashion's latest enfant terrible, and the most recent of its designers to fall sway to secondhand materials. Mixing antique cloth with modern fabrics "makes the clothes much more poetic," he says. "This season, I reused white damask tablecloths, white linen bedsheets and wool blankets bought at antiques dealers."

Vintage clothes have long inspired designers the world over, but it is London that has catapulted cheap chic into the mainstream. If the New York fashion scene is about global brands and big budgets, and Paris's designers excel at couture, it is recycled antiques and creativity that make London shine. "The Brits have always had a much more bohemian approach to fashion," says Bronwyn Cosgrave, associate editor at British Vogue. "They're more willing [than Americans] to push the boat out and make things interesting."

In part, it's because they have nothing to lose. Alexander McQueen, who won the Designer of the Year award last week, criticized the government for failing to give young designers the financial support they need. Without big brands or hefty backing, ...