Courtesy of Charlotte Simone
Where do you get most of your inspiration from?
I’ve got two big canvas boards that I sit and look at. I’m a very visual person, I like to look and touch and feel things, so I keep them very close to me by my desk. The design process spans over nine months and I will be collecting anything from charms to fabrications. I take lots of inspiration from street style, from how real people put things together. I’ve got some random girls on my board; I take pictures of people crossing the road sometimes of the way that they’re carrying themselves or their bag. I’ve got these random girls photos on my board—they look like my friends, but they’re not, I just love how they’re wearing their coat. Right now, I’ve got quotes, a note from my dad, scraps of different fabrications—it’s really anything and everything in that timeframe that I’m seeing that is making me feel something and then I’ll start sketching different silhouettes or shapes. I’m always drawn to classic or vintage movies, anything with Audrey Hepburn, like Funny Face, or Breakfast at Tiffany’s and in terms of music, we play the Cranberries a lot in the office. That was a big mood the last two drops. There will be a bit of Eric Clapton and Celine Dion, too. But I feel like on all my mood boards, the woman is always the heroine. She’s always the hero. She doesn’t need saving. She’s got that main character energy.
What are some unlikely places you’ve sourced fabrics from?
We found this fabric at a Paris fabric fair, and the factory was actually selling fabric for plush toys. That was the bulk of their business, and I saw the fabric and I was like, this would make an amazing coat. It was like this kind of like a faux pony skin, caramel tiger print—really amazing, super standout, really expensive, and didn’t really make commercial sense, but I was like, that’s fine. It’ll be expensive, but I know that 80 people will buy this expensive coat. Sometimes things like that happen when we’re in the exploratory stage where we’ll just see something and I’ll just know that it’s really special and we have to include it. And I guess that’s part of the exciting process of our new drop model and how it allows for that.