The inspiration behind our new autumn/winter collection

by Sophie Worthington, ilovegorgeous co-founder

Every time we sit down to design a new collection, Lucy and I come to the table with a hotchpotch of loose ideas and inspirations that will eventually work their way into the collection and become the basis for our themes and colours. We never use trend forecasting, we prefer to just go with the flow of what we are feeling and what we fancy, the things we like doing, seeing, designing and ultimately what we would love to see your gorgeous girls wearing as well as our own…

We started work on autumn/winter 2012 in June 2011. The sun was shining and our last winter collection had been quite muted and subdued. We were loving colour and so we took our first major inspiration from the sights, sounds and colours of the Amazon Rainforest with lovely butterfly and bird prints realized in bright, vibrant colours – hot pink, emerald green, petrol blue and a softly contrasting mothy cream butterfly print.

As well as nature, we’ll often dive into the world of fiction and fantasy for ideas and for this collection it was Alice in Wonderland and the Queen of Hearts. The Queen of Hearts Dress combines a loosely interpreted Alice in Wonderland style dress in a geometric heart print.

Florals are a recurring theme in our collections and we find them in all sorts of wonderful places. This season it was a piece of vintage wallpaper found on Portobello Market and a much-loved Disney film. The tiny flowers that carpet the woodland floor in Bambi were brought to mind when we were creating the Bambi print for pieces including the Pippi and Winter Daisy. We were so taken by this idea that we asked our lovely stylist, Mary, to create a woodland scene for our winter shoot – which she did beautifully, carpeting the floor with twigs and pine and tiny red and white spotted mushrooms and even going so far as to procure an owl, some flying ducks and our very own Bambi. 

Memories always influence our design. The Rae and Julia dress (named after Lucy’s parents) was inspired by a 1970’s dress that Lucy recalls her mother wearing (her mother, Julia, is pictured on the left). The Ken Market Dress is based on our memories of working in Kensington Market as jobbing students in the early 80’s and the kaftan style dresses that were so popular back then. The Sid Jumper, Nancy Skirt and Chelsea Dress were all inspired by the gorgeous and glamorous Debbie Harry and NYC in the early 1980’s. The Oscar Dress came about because we wanted to design a proper red carpet dress and the 4.46 Dress was so named because that is exactly the time that it was when we finished working on the dress and needed to give it a name…

We like to think that every collection we work on is eclectic, diverse and interesting. We love what we do, we love the new collection and we hope that you will love it to…