The power of RED

Red, a colour that has been persistently re-occurring in the latest Fashion catwalk seasons despite the super neutral pallet of “quite luxury”

Interestingly, Red evokes and has become synonymous with the greatest opposite emotions than any other colour, Love, Anger, Confidence, Dominance, Passion & Danger, Strength & violence.

As everything in Fashion and apparel is heavily impacted by lifestyle, social, economic & political realities, it’s been fascinating to see how this highly polarising colour has been embraced by so many design houses in their various ranges. (I mean even Rick Owens/Prince of Darkness showed Red & colour for his “Vision of joy”SS24)

A sign of the times, may be, with so much globally shared anxiety and uncertainty, the colour Red is about showing (and hopefully getting to feel) Self-assured, Confident, Capable, Strong even a little dangerous... (Sarah Burton’s McQueen was the best example of this in my opinion https://nowfashion.com/alexander-mcqueen-ready-to-wear-spring-summer-2024-paris/#f3881567-586035

It is exactly this global mood and feeling that starts to feed into how trend in this case the colour red has crept into most designers’ subconscious, it has been existing in my head for a while now & when we found the most beautiful cotton crepe fabric in the most striking rich red colour… it was love reconfirmed.

The colour and its relation to fashion & apparel has been so cleverly written about in this article https://www.nssmag.com/en/fashion/25747/a-history-of-red

For us the symbolism is just pure strength of will, passion and energy this colour can lend to our pieces.

Pieces we persistently, defiantly, passionately, lovingly continue to make.

Column Dress

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Woven Boxy Tee

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Handmade Things are an Experience

It’s been a minute , in a year that is excessively feeling like a whirlwind of exceedingly bad

news all round.

We’ve tried to steer clear of watching the news channels but this is hardly realistic (the curious mind persists)

We've been amazed at the effects this has had on us and have been waking up doing our daily’s with a heavy hearts and an unshakable weight on our shoulders. Even with latent positive, exciting journeys abound.

How people dress/style/ fashion/clothing, has always been acutely influenced by lifestyle cycles and we are currently living in what I will call the Shein-ing of everything. Our insatiable want for convenience at any cost has brought us to this. Fast, replaceable, easy to attain, unmemorable …things.

A hollowing out. Rendering everything flat.

Needless to say the creative compass has been scattered. So we have gone back to our grounding, making, crafting, learning, keeping our hands busy trying to lessen the load of the over burdened mind.

Opposing this flattening, has lured us into thinking about layers and dimension, but always in our wearable, easy elegance.

We started collecting a handful of images of woman,particularly examples of daily “dress” of 19th & early 20th century African women. The layered, folded & tucked shapes, creating dimension yet practical & easy.

So we’re dressing in layers going in to spring & summer.

We are excited to see & feel how this idea & influence unfolds.

We still believe that handmade things are an experience.

Not so basic BASICS

It’s been a minute, and what was intended to be frequent burst of opinion pieces on clothing details proved to be quite challenging to pull together that frequently.

There has also been a bit of a struggle from our end to feel fuelled during “current world mood and energy” which has been a tad heavy, chaotic and deeply serious.

All reflected of course in the clothing industry which is an acute mirror of society at any given time, a bit of a double-edged sword. A source of ever changing and ever giving inspiration but also in somber times can make the endeavour and industry feel quite frivolous and surface.

But a massive and sharp realisation for us has been that:

Nothing that brings you joy and raises your spirit (Me in a Fabric shop discovering beautiful textiles) can be deemed unimportant. It is exactly what we need to hold on to currently.

So… we have recoiled to making not so basic BASICS, and what are those for us:

Easy to wear, comfortable pieces, but with a point of difference, a point of joy, that can be layered with your “basic basics” over or under shirts and body gloves, for modesty or warmth with winter looming over here, or just worn as great stand-alone statements…a little bit of everyday joy.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/0b86e1_157255a3ae8d494e96511c71b2b6cefd/720p/mp4/file.mp4