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Serenity Collection: The Story (A Paisley Of London Guest Post)

The Dress Up

Serenity Collection: The Story (A Paisley Of London Guest Post)

We asked the designers at Paisley of London what gives them the building blocks for a new collection; here's how they do it!

The design process, for us, always begins with a brief. What do we want to create?

 

Creatives have differing ideas. In order to bring these ideas together to work towards a complete collection, we first need a direction. Thoughts and concepts, words and phrases, they all float about the room but only one suggestion really embeds itself in our minds;

This word seemed to describe everything we wanted radiating from this collection. The word serenity permeates composure, peace of mind, poise, and aplomb. Our imaginary jigsaw came together. We pictured angelic maturity on the silhouette of a young girl. We loved the juxtaposition of it all. Children will always be children, girls will always be girls, but we imagined our collection would transform girls into young ladies, with a presence of maturity shrouding them.

 

Thus, Serenity was born.

WHERE DID WE GET OUR INSPIRATION?

Now that we had the concept, we needed some further inspiration to unfold the fairy-tale further. We put our heads together to come up with Serenity-esque ideas; we hold a no criticism rule so that ideas can flow freely and uninterrupted by a mental gate.

 

This time, two considerations hold a lot of weight for all of us; The Secret Garden & The Flower Fairies.

 

The Secret Garden is a story about Mary Lennox who begins a spoilt, sour girl. She is sent to live in England, from India, at an isolated manor house. Mary discovers a secret garden, decrepit and overgrown. The garden becomes the catalyst for her transformation into a caring, well-natured girl. As the garden is nurtured it back to bloom and health, she grows with it. Here's a mood board we put together to visualise The Secret Garden:

The second inspiration was The Flower Fairies. These tiny fairies are a product of artist Cicely Mary Barker. They feature a sweet depiction of children who are born to seedlings. As these seedlings sprout, the fairies nurture and care for their flowers. As the flowers grow, so do the fairies.

These two inspirations struck a chord with everyone, except one member who felt uneasy looking at the Scentless Mayweed Fairy’s ferocious hat...  Regardless of this, the themes seemed to fit perfectly with Serenity.

 

The children in these stories lead peaceful, enchanting fantasy lives while growing and maturing. The imagery in the Secret Garden, and art by Cicely Mary Barker, gave us the direction we were looking for. We wanted a collection that wouldn’t look out of place if illustrated in “The Snowdrop Fairy”, or worn by Mary as she explored the depths of the Secret Garden.

ALL ABOUT THE DESIGN...

With inspiration firmly in our minds, we set about deciding on the features for the collection such as colours, fabrics, textures and all the other minute details which make a dress what it is.

 

We decided floral themes were a seamless fit for the Serenity collection. We wanted to accentuate the flowers and bring out a vintage undertone in the dresses. The dresses needed a summery charm to them, with beautiful fabrics and a suitable texture for little ladies.

 

Tulle and lace fitted these criteria for us and added a touch of daintiness of the collection. Light pastel colours and a light stone grey, along with staple ivory and white, brought the summer appeal. Finishing touches of hand-crafted beadwork and embroidery left us feeling quietly confident; onto the physical prototypes to see if our minds drawings look as good in real life as they do on paper.

THE FINAL SELECTION & COLLECTION

The designs were now in the finals steps of making our dreams reality. Our hand-made dresses were complete and before our very eyes, we could see whether our thoughts had translated to fabric. Were they fitting to the theme? Did they feel right?

 

With the dresses in hand, they fulfilled everything we wanted from them. They looked beautiful. The structure of each dress came out exactly as we had designed, a rarity, but one that was gladly welcomed.

We could see the dresses worn by girls amidst the tall walls of a hidden garden. We could see the dresses adorning the Flower Fairies, without a thread looking out of place. We could rest easy, you could even say we had a moment of Serenity.

 

We hope you love the new collection as much as we do; immerse yourself in the secret garden and discover the entire range!