Eloise Grey Ethical Fashion Business Blog

Memoirs Part 3 - Candia McWilliam

My next book of memoirs is the harrowingly beautiful, What To Look For In Winter, A Memoir in Blindness, by Candia McWilliam. It kept coming up as a recommendation on Amazon, not that I ever take notice, this time it seemed to haunt me each of the many times it appeared. A 'writer's book' about 'loss, blindness, depression' and so on was not what I needed at a time when I wasn't doing too good myself. Yet something drew me to order it.

Her prose is astonishingly beautiful, perceptive and brutally self-deprecating. She recounts her neglectful Scottish childhood with delight and charm yet piercing honesty about her state of mind. I too spent many summers in the Scottish Highlands and I felt the warmth of her experience on Colonsay (an island not far by water from my weavers on Mull). I loved her episode where she went to work at Vogue after coming down from Oxford. She just couldn't cope with the kind of person that she had to be in that office, despite considerable leeway given to her by today's cut-throat standards. She couldn't face it and seemingly stayed in bed until she came clean that she wasn't coming back. It showed remarkable self-awareness, though such awareness can't make it any easier. Most people would battle through and change to fit the environment, but the beauty of her is that she simply coudn't and that must have been a hard hand to be dealt.

Despite the misery and the ordeals she went through, her prose and honesty seem to shine through with such spirit that I felt lifted by this work.  Despite pain and suffering, the ability to see the humour and, dare I say, beauty in it, and move forwards is how you get through.

 

Memoirs Part 2 - Jeannette Winterson

So I have found myself drawn to memoirs and contemporary writers. As I was launching my business I found mid and early twentieth century writers conveniently approachable in that they have a category and historical context. I find myself somewhat at sea with contemporary writers. Maybe I shouldn't worry, but just follow my nose. What is it that makes you pick up a book and read it? I know that the first writer in this series of memoirs, Jeanette Winterson, has beckoned for some time. I read and loved Oranges are not the Only Fruit when it first came out and then had trouble with Sexing the Cherry, but regretfully so and wanted to return to her work some day, often reading features on her or reviews in the books section of the papers.

Finally, listening Winterson read extracts on Radio Four's Book of the Week prompted me to buy Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. The bit they didn't cover in the radio version, which particularly intrigued me, was the chapter on her depression, which I really wanted to read. You could view it as a gory confessional, which in many ways it was due to the astonishing cruelty of her adopted mother. However, she had that humour and detatchment that a writer gives you. Her language opens up the door to her world and experience it a way that feels as though you're one of her friends, but doesn't detract from the impact of the events.

I loved that she could see the humanity in her mother, despite everything, that she always yearned for closeness. I loved her working her way through the fiction section of the library starting from A and getting to Z. I loved reading about how she she got to Oxford her tutor told her she was the token working class girl and proceeded to ignore all the women who were left to fend for themselves, but they came together and worked it out for themselves.

I've always thought Winterson would look great in my Toklas jacket. Maybe I should write to her and suggest this. I shall keep you posted.

 

Memoirs Part 1 - Not Reading but Sewing

I read three outstanding memoirs last year, Jeanette Winterson, Candia McWilliam and Diana Athill, worthy of their own separate posts but part of a series. Naturally, I should share something of my own memories, as I don't have memoirs written, nor should I expect anyone to want to read them. Maybe a paragraph or two is enough. The writers, whose memoirs I've been reading, have all spoken with such love of their childhood reading lives that it made me think about my childhood and books.

As a lover of books it may be a surprise to hear that I had trouble reading - only getting into my book-reading stride in my early twenties, having properly started when I decided to improve myself at 16. I think reading wasn't a priority in my large family, nor was being read to if there had been time. It was a duty rather than a delight.  Hearing all this stuff about August babies makes me wonder if my starting school in the summer term and being a June baby meant I missed out on something critical. I was good at maths and my poor reading managed to disguise itself. I did, however, love English literature lessons when I got to O-level the teachers were inspiring. By good fortune our Head of English used to regularly arrange buses to the Royal Shakespeare company, then at the Barbican in its heyday and so my love of theatre was born.

So unlike Winterson, McWilliams and Athill, I didn't while away my childhood reading, I spent it sewing, sometimes furiously. I spent many hours in the third floor haberdashery department of Army & Navy Stores in Guildford (now House of Fraser) selecting patterns that I would adapt and chosing fabric. I'd lay out my patterns on the floor of my bedroom and make make make. I got quick and could make things in a day or, a skirt, in an evening. In those days we did Needlework at school for a double period a week and I was seemed to excel. I even did O-level 'Needlework & Dress'. I spent hours shopping too: looking at clothes and generally I couldn't afford them so I had to make them. They weren't cheap in those days (the 80's). I knitted a little but, as my grandmother used to say, you were either a knitter or a sewer, and I was a sewer. She was a great knitter and incidentally, a great reader.

My reading started in earnest in my early twenties. I studied Italian and went to live in Italy and had fallen in love with literature. It was a curious experience pushing oneself to read in a foreign language: to read when you only undestand 50% of the vocabulary but I would still get the feel for the book, the narrative and the characters. Over time my vocabulary developed and I was a fluent reader. I think all this reading gave me a deep vocabulary - and a love of Italian writers such as: Daca Maraini, Guseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Alberto Moravia, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg and many others. At the same time, I was reading more and more in my own language, and enjoying the escape. Maybe as I was now in my itinerant 20s, and without a TV, reading took over from the sewing which required space, time and equipment.

It's always interesting to look at what a child does in those hours of boredom between 8 and 15 before hormones and socialising become the primary concern. I think it offers an insight into the future and what makes one feel satisfied. I was quite academic and so not at all encouraged to follow the fashion route, but in that way I did develop intellectually by doing an arts degree and for this I am very grateful. It led me to spend five years in Italy and this has had a big impact on my work, my approach to quality and 'finezza' as they say, fine-ness - which is so Italian in food, clothing, design. It took me ten more years to synthesise these things and start making again. This time designing my own work I could draw on all that experience: a visual experience from travel and art but also an internal and imaginative one which can only come from books. Maybe it's no surprise, then, that I find writers such an inspiration for my work.

 

SS12 Collection Ptolemy Mann Print Silk Dresses

I have sent two dresses off to an innovative gallery in Ruthin, North Wales. They play a small part of Ptolemy Mann's first solo retrospective. The cornerstone of my Spring Summer 2012 collection is three dresses and a blouse in GOTs certified organic silk satin onto which we printed Ptolemy's new collection of digital prints.

Here is the Nancy Gown in Broadstripe Ikat:

Photograph by Alun Callender, shoes by Beyond Skin.

And the Maud day dress in violet feather ikat:

Photograph by Alun Callender, shoes by Beyond Skin.

Ptolemy and I met on the Crafted mentoring programme in 2009. Ptolemy,  a weaver who graduated from the Royal College of Art, produces woven artwork in the ikat tradition. Whilst drawing on traditional techniques her work is firmly in the contemporary art space. Her work features the use of hand-dyed saturated colour and this has led her to a parallel career as a colour consultant. Strange, one might say, with my undyed tweeds and muted palette that I should work with someone so intensely colour-focused. But, I find myself drawn to colour and  technology.

Image courtesy of Ptolemy Mann. Handwoven Ikat.

Ptolemy produced a collection of digital prints from her work. She scanned her original handwoven work and then worked it up using digital techniques so it still has something of the handwoven flavour to it. Initially her work was commissioned for interiors. As well as her website she also write a blog, Significant Colour, which I do recommend. See below an example of the furnishing fabric with her artwork behind:

Image courtesy of Ptolemy Mann

When Ptolemy showed me her swatches I was enthralled - at first not sure how it would fit with my brand. But sometimes, things knock around as images in your visual mind and it comes together. There was something about the feather ikat that really drew me. I found it quite art deco, classic and incredibly chic and interesting. I was at Goodwood Revival and saw a lady wearing the most exquisite vintage dress of 1940s era and it had fine pleats down the centre back and the ideas started coming together. I felt the prints had a timeless quality to them and a movement that would require some kind of structure. The pleats give this movement and angularity, and concentrate the print in sections in an interesting way. Plus it has all those 1940s references I loved.

The Maud dress in the violet feather ikat print, which enthralled me:

I dedicated this collection to Roger Fry's Omega Workshops. A creation of the Bloomsbury Group, Fry aimed to blur the distinction between fine and decorative work. Working with an artist's prints fit with this approach and, of course, it nurtures my affection for things Bloomsbury.

The third print I selected was violet bamboo ikat. A much subtler, print, which is in some ways my favourite. But, in all honesty, hard to have favourites. They work together and have different personalities. I like the discrete nature of this but with the flashes of red.

Photograph by Alun Callender, shoes by Beyond Skin.

Here in close up:

These dresses will be available made to order from Spring 2012.

Ptolemy Mann, The Architecture of Cloth, Colour and Space at Ruthin Craft Centre, Park Road, Ruthin,
Denbighshire, LL15 1BB 19th November, 2011 - 15th January, 2012

The exhibition will then tour the country over the next year.

For more on Ptolemy please visit her website or her blog, Significant Colour, or come to the show.

 

YSL and Morocco

Sometimes you need a key to access other people's work, to feel you have come to your own understanding of that work. I felt this about visiting Granville and really getting a feel for Christian Dior, who was born in this Normandy town. Visiting Morocco and, in particular, Les Jardins Majorelle in Marrakesh gave me an entry into Yves Saint Laurent and his context.

In some respects it's simply a formal Islamic-style garden, with an extensive collection of flora, for those who recognise such things. However, after getting my bearings I was overwhelmed and surprised by the colour. The blue in particular:

The electric blue with serene acquamarine:

The intensity of colours was quite astonishing. The yellow here at first grated but before long it came into an energetic focus and delighted me in a way I simply experienced without really understanding why:

Maybe it was a contrast of the dusky pink of Marrakesh that had been my backdrop for four days. After working with Ptolemy Mann on my Spring/Summer collection I realise that I respond to the affect of tonal contrast - so putting the bright next to the muted.

The connection with Yves Saint Laurent came when he used to visit this place, eventually buying a house next door, buying the gardens and restoring them to their former grandeur. YSL had been brought up in neighbouring French Algeria, so naturally, this was his context. I saw that all this boho, hippy, fashion-as-travel-experience came originally from him. Obviously he wasn't the only one but he was the first to draw in such a real way on the exotic and bring it into our clothing. I look to fashion practice; the 'research trip', the images, the colours and think that we owe this to YSL more than anyone.

It seems to me that it's now been overdone and with the ease of travel how much more of the world can we take in and send down the catwalk? Do we need to pillage these cultures anyway? There was something very connected between YSL and his north African legacy but I don't know how much it truly works when John Galliano, for example, drew on the Masai tribesmen for his first Dior couture collection in 1997. it was beautiful and amazing but now I realise how it missed something for me; it didn't resonate at that deep personal level. I think that is where the magic is.

So what do we seek to inform our design now if travel is a tired research concept of the 20th century? I think it was probably Miuccia Prada who heralded a new internalised, more intellectual and conceptual approach to fashion. Maybe it's about expressing something about an internal process, rather than responding to the external or visual.

 

The New Welsh Twills

Travelling in Wales nearly three years ago I kept coming across old weaving mills and then discovered that this area, The Teifi Valley had been a major weaving area in the 19th century. The river had offered power to the mills and water for cleaning the fleece. And, of course, hillside for sheep to graze. I discovered Curlew Weavers on a later visit and a year on, I have two new tweeds:

The weaver, Roger Poulton produces organic certified tweeds and sources native breed yarn from local farms. In the end the organic wasn't available but we produced these two heavy brushed twills from native breed yarn, undyed and all sourced from within 100 miles of the mill. The harsh winter inspired me to produce something really warm and thick. In fact, it's surprisingly lightweight and soft.

 The pale is Jacobs and Shetland yarn:

And the dark twill is Hebridean and Shetland:

Tracey Neuls For Dinner

I couldn't resist sharing a few photos I found on my phone of my visit to the Tracey Neuls shop a few months ago. You may know from my previous post about Tracey Neuls that I have a very soft spot for her work and raved about her artfully curated shop. Her SS11 collection is themed around dinner:

I love her work for it's creativity, humour and all round Britishness. I might see if I can borrow some shoes for my SS12 shoot as they would complement perfectly. Here, another image from outside:

The shoes are most delicious and the shop a work of art. She also sometimes works with veg-tanned leather. The shop is at 29 Marylebone Lane, London W1U 2NQ.

Ancient Marbles in Liverpool

Inspired by Edmund de Waal's masterful work, The Hare With Amber Eyes, I found myself wanting to explore a collection that had been in my grandmother's family. As I had a visit scheduled to her north of Liverpool, I thought I'd try and find an hour to visit the Walker Art Gallery. My favourite piece was this beautiful pot: (I'm sure a more gracious term exists)

The Walker hosts the 'modern' collection, which dates from the Renaissance onwards, including this piece. Mostly, the work is figurative, but this pot inspired me the most. I loved the simplicity and movement of the figures which mirrored the flowing lines of the base and lid.

The rest of the collection, which is of original Greek and Roman marbles, is apparently in the Museum of Liverpool. I shall have to visit this next time. But for the simple fact of my grandmother being born a girl, this collection went to distant cousins and eventually to the town of Liverpool, close to Ince Blundell. It doesn't compare to the tragedy recounted in de Waal's book, but I reflect on this with sadness. I am glad, though, that it is more or less in tact and is in public hands, even if not much of it is on display. I admire this rather parochial but ambitious collector and distant ancestor, Henry Blundell, who built a scaled-down replica of the Pantheon in Rome, to house his spectacular collection:

Maybe he should have created an Act of Parliament, like Sir John Soane, to ensure his house and collection would remain in tact. A curious, though not surprising, use of Parliament in the 19th century.

Giving Life To Ethical Fashion - Lucy Siegle's Book 'To Die For'

Lucy Siegle is the most prominent journalist in the UK exposing the dark underbelly of the fashion industry. So it was with much anticipation that I read her recently published book, To Die For. Lucy is the ethical colunmist for The Observer.

A passioned, yet rigourously researched study of the whole industry from high street to luxury conglomerates, Lucy uncovers foul practice far and wide. Not much was a surprise to me (obviously preaching to the converted) but knowing the detail and travelling the journey was affecting in the way it should be. Depressingly, I have to say that it made me feel rather like giving up what I do. The oceanic forces seemed to be going the other way from the structure of globalised fashion to the way consumers are buying and following trends. I found particularly interesting, though appalling, her study of fashion trends (micro-trends/cheapskating etc), the relationship to celebrity culture and seismic change that has taken place in wardrobe growth.

She charts the environmental impact of the fashion industry from the consumer perspective to the global corporates but the real thrust of this opus is the ethical analysis: what's fair and just. For a comprehensive view of textiles from a sustainable perspective I also recommend Kate Fletcher's Sustainable Textile Journeys.

I like the way she brings it back to our own wardrobes time and time again, making it relevant. Her conclusion, or so it seemed to me, was to spend a little more, buy for the long term (special pieces) rather than being a trend slave, ask the right questions when out shopping about where your clothes are produced and by whom, and consider environmental impact of the garment through its whole life cycle.

It made me think about style and how developing your own style is a good way of future-proofing yourself against trends. If you develop your own style you have a confidence to wear colours in your own way, try silhouettes, play with texture, combine different looks without having to be a slave to trend. Develop a love of clothes that's based on who you are and what delights you rather than taking the lead from mags and celebs. This might be what we can give others: help them detatch themselves from that so-called  'democratising' force of cheap clothing and unleash their own creativity.

In Praise of Farnham Saddlers - Bespoke Dog Collars

You may suspect me of being a horse-riding type, being from rural Surrey. I developed a chip on my shoulder about horses at a young age. I went to the type of school where lots of girls had ponies. However, I was sent to that school because it was hoped that the nuns would be a worthy investment in my after-life. I got over my horsey non-affiliation when I heard that a nice lady called Karen made dog collars and leads at Farnham Sadlers on West Street. It's a lovely old-fashioned shop that sells leather wear: handbags, suitcases, belts, wallets, riding clothes, posh wellies that sort of thing.

So imagine my joy when I heard that I could chose the leather, width, fittings and so on. Also, they were delighted to meet Juno and kindly shut the door so their shop dog and Juno could have some fun. Here is Karen and the dogs in a calmer state after 100 laps of the central display:

Also, when Ms J ate through her lead in the pub one night, they repaired it for nothing. What service.