CONNECTIONS THE MAY FLOWERS IISSUE MAY 2016

More documents

Recommendations

Info

My Connections Magazine CONNECTIONS May 2016 created by the designer Emilia Wickstead, which launches this week. Both the London brand House of Hackney and the Bath-based designer Joe Richards have used the botanical prints of William Morris in their current collections. Floral midi skirt, £550, Emilia Wickstead at Matches Fashion Wickstead’s main collection for spring included similar prints, on light-as-afeather silk gazar. “I always like to make a collection very twee but also very modern,” says the designer. Wickstead is someone very much on the side of women and whose clothes are worn by the Duchess of Cambridge, Samantha Cameron and many an elegant red carpet regular. If she approves of a 'twee’ and chintzy floral we are in no position to argue. As she says: “I design for women of all ages, myself [she’s in her 30s], my mother, a woman in her twenties.” Meanwhile, Gucci is rolling out rose and hydrangea smothered shoes, bags, dresses and sweatshirts in quantities not seen since the Women’s Institute last had a used-curtains sale. Another hip brand of the moment, Vetements, is selling oversized floral dresses in what Natalie Kingham, buying director of matchesfashion.com, calls “a 1980s wallpaper” print. Blue Floral Jacquard Dress, £120, Laura Ashley; Floral bird empire midi dress, £45.99, Warehouse For anyone alive in the 1970s these patterns will have been more familiar as curtains and cushions. We had both, oh la-di-dah. Surprising, isn’t it? But do not mock the chintz. It got a bad press in the late 20th century for its middle-class aspirations, but it has a more rock 'n' roll history than you might think. In the 17th and 18th centuries chintz was the subject of both protest and punishment. Any stylish lady strolling a London square in a dyed floral cotton number was at risk of being fined a whopping £10 - and I don’t mean by the Fashion Police. In the 1700s it really was illegal to wear chintz in England, thanks to a raft of legislation that was designed to protect English linen, wool and silk 8
My Connections Magazine CONNECTIONS May 2016 weavers who were unable to produce the by-now popular fabric. When merchants started importing them in the 17th century, the surge in popularity alarmed the linen, wool and silk weavers of England who didn’t have access to cotton nor the fast dyes to make the exotic, hand painted textiles. With everyone who was anyone suddenly simply mad about chintz it threatened the ruin of the European textile market. Gucci leather trimmed printed canvas shoulder bag, £600, Net-a-Porter; Mule sandals, £45.99, Zara Imported from India, chintz had been used initially as a furnishing fabric. But when the upper classes handed down their older textiles to their household servants these exotic patterns started being used as clothes linings and then garments. “In an interesting move this was then adopted by the higher classes who also saw the attraction in wearing these fast bright colours on clothes,” says Divia Patel, curator of The Fabric of India, last year’s exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. “The furnishing fabrics required large flowers, but when people started wearing them the merchants went back to India saying that a European audience might prefer, say, a cream background to a red and smaller sprays of flowers to the larger, so you started getting smaller patterns and a different look to the fabrics.” Black sleeveless floral dress, £590, Emilia Wickstead at Matches Fashion Such was the risk to the domestic textile industry that in the late 17th century five thousand weavers protested outside the Houses of Parliament. In 1701 imports of Indian dyed or printed cottons were banned and in 1720 Parliament enacted a law that forbade 'the Use and Warings in Apparel of imported chintz, and also its use or Wear in or about any Bed, Chair, Cushion or other Household furniture.” The ban remained in place for fifty years, by which time European manufacturers had worked out how to do it themselves. 9
Page 1 and 2: CONNECTIONS Inside: Fashion Stateme
Page 3 and 4: My Connections Magazine CONNECTIONS
Page 9: My Connections Magazine CONNECTIONS
Page 31 and 32: EXTRA! EXTRA! EXTRA! BIMONTHLY….S

CONNECTIONS THE MAY FLOWERS IISSUE MAY 2016

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?