Style Notes

Trend forecasters predict what we will be wearing, watching, eating and even where we will be going both in the short and long term future. In the fashion industry there are many subscription services offered to support design teams in their quest to deliver on trend ranges sought after by the consumer.  These trend forecasters take inspiration and collect data from all over the world and can segment the upcoming trends as global movements or localised trends happening in one particular country or even specific to one particular city. Each brand will interpret trends to suit their style and brand values, as not all will be relevant, and the execution of a trend will also differ depending on the level of the market that brand is pitched and their target customer.

Designers work at least 6 months ahead of the season, sometimes even further ahead depending on the business model they are working to. They take inspiration from everywhere pulling together trends through a mood or feeling based on what is going on around them. Whether it be through travelling to a new destination and seeing a new culture, a big event, current film or exhibition right down to on the street current style trends and, in today’s world, social media influencers. Trends come and go and are also reinvented season in season out to feel new and different however there are certain things that remain consistent, like the little black dress, for example.

I personally am obsessed with flowers and floral prints and this is something that has been on trend in fashion in several guises from ditsy florals to painterly or digital florals for sometime. They rarely go ‘out of fashion’ but sometimes feature more prominently depending on the wider trends. Inspiration for floral prints comes generally from nature or artworks. I have followed the work of Rebecca Louise Law and seen many images of her hanging floral installations for some time now and have also seen this style of floral decoration popping up as wedding theme decor on Pinterest and Instagram so it felt really new and relevant as a print style.

Rebecca Louise Law recently featured at Kew Gardens with her ‘Life and Death’ exhibition and I was lucky enough to go and see her work in person and it was truly breath taking. She is passionate about the process of natural change and preservation, allowing her work to evolve as nature takes its course offering an alternative concept of beauty, so the hanging style installations are designed to start fresh and then slowly dry. Her inspiration for this style of installation actually came when she started suspending flowers to dry them for other works and she saw the strength of the change in perspective. Life and death has been created using her personal collection of preserved flowers, saved over the past decade, and hand crafted into one thousand garlands suspended in time. Her installations take anything from 1 day to 1 month to complete depending on the size of the space she is working to and she always works to fill the space. When asked what inspires her Law says ‘observing the earth and nature itself inspires me. My parents taught me to appreciate natural beauty from an early age; the way they look at the world has always been an inspiration to me.’

The Viola Hanging floral stem print alongside Rebecca Louise Law’s….. photo source unknown

The Luciana ditsy floral print alongside Rebecca Louise Law’s ‘The flower garden’ photo source unknown

Above you can see our prints alongside images of Law’s work, when designing and selecting our prints we were influenced by her artwork with the floral stem print featured on the Viola dress emulating her hanging installations with the white ground, delicate flower design and hanging effect and the ditsy floral inspired by the mix of floral colours on the dark rich back ground making it very impactful

See our instagram story highlights for more images from Rebecca Louise Law’s ‘Life and Death’ exhibition and Shop the links for the Viola hanging stem print and Luciana ditsy print

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LIVING – APRIL 2020

Click here to read the full article on page 82

HERTFORDSHIRE LIVING – APRIL 2019

OX WEDDINGS – FEBRUARY 2019

Click here to read the full article on page 39

Click here to see the Sakura Kimono as seen in Ox Wedding

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE LIVING MAGAZINE – JANUARY 2019

FABRIC MAGAZINE – MAY 2018

CONDE NASTE TRAVELLER – MAY 2018

SHEERLUXE – APRIL 2018

Article

LONDON DIPLOMAT – APRIL 2018

DRAPERS RECORD – FEBRUARY 2018

I don’t know about you but I love a pocket in a dress, not so I can ‘store’ anything in them, but just to put one hand in. I mean, what do you do with your hands if you don’t have a pocket or a glass of fizz when you are milling round at an event?? A pocket in a dress just makes the look that bit cooler so for that reason all our styles are made with that all important pocket discreetly hidden in the side seams, to give your feminine look that little bit of modern attitude…
It did get me thinking though, why do some dresses have pockets and others don’t and do other people like pockets or is it just me? So, I started googling and found it absolutely amazing what I found. Did you know there are actually websites giving instructions on how to add a pocket to a dress that doesn’t have one? There is also a website (called pocketocracy) whose sole purpose is to highlight brands that include pockets in their designs, there is such a demand for this small but important feature!
I also discovered that historically there is a really interesting story to the use of pockets and that it has always been a topic of great interest or should I say debate with men’s clothing generally always having a good functional pocket and women’s clothing lacking this functionality for many years. It’s good to note here that we perhaps wouldn’t have the purse/clutch bag today if this hadn’t been the case though so silver linings and all!

      
A brief history of the pocket:

Pockets have been a part of fashion and ingrained in society for the last 400 years since the 17th century. Although according to London’s V&A museum women’s clothing didn’t really have internal pockets for most of history. Instead they had purse like items and makeshift pockets that were worn or hung under their dresses making them difficult to access until they added slits into the sides of their voluminous skirts at the time. The pockets were often attached through strings or small belts and the size of these pockets varied. The women used these makeshift pockets for anything from storing trinkets to gin and sometimes even cakes! However, many pockets were stolen – in the 18th and 19th centuries, thieves known as ‘pickpockets’ removed men’s wallets and cut the strings of women’s pockets and there are many court cases documented over this period with detailed discussion on the said ‘pockets’ stolen.
Fashion historian Barbara Burman wrote a whole book on pockets called Pockets of History: The Secret Life of an Everyday Object, and she touched on the pocket situation for women commenting “The frustrations and limitations of women’s access to money and ownership of property were neatly mirrored in the restricted scope of their pockets”. According to the Victoria and Albert Museum, in the mid- to late-1800s, women started to rebel with dress patterns adding instructions for sewing pockets into skirts advertising it is being an independent woman. Women also started to take their pocket rights back in the early 1900s when they started wearing pants and with both World Wars came a boom of utilitarian clothing for women who were now working in many of the previously male service and labouring roles so there was a requirement for more ‘practical’ clothing including functional pockets.

Obviously today the majority of women’s clothing carry a pocket so most coats, jackets, trousers, jeans etc however pockets are often left out of a garment for design purposes. For example, if the dress is bodycon or the jeans are so skinny a pocket will be unflattering. This I totally understand, no one wants a pocket that is going to add any bulk to your hip area so the construction, position and size of said pockets is very important. We have really considered this in the design and construction of our dresses even down to the fact you also don’t want to be able to see the pocket bag. They need to be discreet to work properly in a dress but are so worth having in terms of finishing you whole look.

The age old debate to pocket or not to pocket lives on but in a very different form to 400 years ago and more in terms of a personal or design preference, you know my opinion now however I would love to hear your view on this so please do get in touch and let us know what you think and if you like to have a pocket, hate a pocket or if it had never really been something you had considered before.