SS15 Inspiration

Wandering round East London last July looking for a vintage dealer, I wondered what could possibly inspire me in this industrial wasteland. What’s the likelihood of a storage lock up in no-mans-land providing me with some juju for my spring/summer 15 collection? These types of visits can go either way: either I go away wondering how I might have otherwise more productively spent the afternoon, or there’s too many snippets of inspiration it’s hard to know where to start designing.

On this occasion my assistant and I perused the cold concrete lock-up, coming across a vintage scarf with crude Mexican iconography. Was the print too childish for our customers? Colours a bit too, um, ‘brown’? Back in the blaring sun in the car park, our dealer emptied out the contents of his van and piece by piece came a flurry of great pieces to inpire; 30’s cropped spotty shirt, giant textured hand knits, 50’s dresses with interesting pockets and, also from the 30’s, an American frilled midi dress with a very modern wave print that seemed to be part stripe, part two-tone graphic.

With a little tweaking, the wave print has formed the basis for this year’s collection of wearable summer pieces, in perfect summer blue and white. Pair up Lowie’s high waist wave print peg-leg trousers with matching cropped jacket for modern suit appeal or wear the wave print flared skirt with one of our chunky hand knit organic cotton cardigans. Our new organic cotton tea dress for summer 15 also takes inspiration from the wave, with cute intuitive intarsia back knit pattern and contrast belt tie.

Bronwyn x