The Process of Design

Buying a new outfit is exciting. It’s the beginning of a journey for the both of you. The endorphin rush when you first try it on, to the nostalgia of packing it away, along with all of the mud stains and compliments along the way.

What many people don’t realise, is that before they wear their beautiful new garment for the first time, it has already been on an amazing journey. A journey through many minds and sometimes places, to become the perfect item to wear on that day.

The process of design, is such a beautiful and wonderful thing. It is all around us, from the packaging that our food comes in to the furniture that we sit on, the houses that we live in and the cars that we drive. Every item goes through months or even years of development in an effort to bring you the most perfect version of itself.

It all starts with the lessons learnt from last season and how it performed in the market. The next season cannot begin until we, as designers know exactly what our customers loved, hated, thought was ok and what could have been improved. We love to listen to feedback and we couple this with deep study of our sales analysis in order to fully understand what worked and what didn’t. All to make next season’s collection more beautiful than last.

We then research. We research, research and in between researching, we might do a bit of research. We look at the season trends in silhouette shapes, print designs, trims, fabrics and colour palette. It’s a process that can take months, with many rabbit holes to get lost in. And creativity loves a good rabbit hole. How else do you know what the next best trend will be unless you embrace every fad or cultural gem. We exhaust every opinion and ultimately develop our own.
Once we have our direction, we storyboard our collection. This creates a vision for the season and a critical focal point to come back to when we wonder to far down the mire of bohemian butterflies and blinking lights.

When the vision is finalised, we ensure that it marries back to the lessons that we learnt from last season. This may be a tweak to something that worked well or something completely new, fresh from a rabbit hole. We then meet with print designers and work on bringing our storyboard to life, using the perfect illustrations for our fabric. This is when that little bubble that has been simmering in our stomach during our research and storyboarding really starts to rumble. From here we tweak. We tweak colour pallets, illustration scale and any possible details that complete the piece.

Meanwhile, whilst the prints are being perfected, we work on our silhouette blocks to create the perfect shape and fit for the season. This can be a long process, and pattern cutting is a skill that many people under estimate. You can tweak an arm hole measurement, or drop a neckline by as little as 5mm and it alters the whole fit of the garment. Once the shapes are finalised, we work on the best fabric qualities to ensure the fit and drape of the garment is perfect. Plain samples are made over and over again, until we have the perfect end result.

This stage involves a lot of work with our suppliers, to find the perfect shape, colour, size and fabric trims to finish off these beautiful pieces.

When all these components are finalised, we pull it all together, designing and making our final vision. This again, is a whole additional level of design. Samples are made, then tweaked, then tweaked again. A dress can look amazing in a certain print, but terrible in another. The lining colour must match perfectly, the contrast colours of the top stitching and button fastening must match or contrast to the colour scheme. The variables are endless and all just marry to the vision that is represented on our storyboard.

When we are happy with the end result, final samples are made and fitted to ensure they feel comfortable and look the part. We do wearer trials, to ensure they have the durability and fit we expect. We do wash tests, to make sure the quality is up to our standards.



Once we are completely happy, we begin bulk production. During this phase, we photograph the items for the website and marketing material, we write product descriptions that aim to convey how we feel about the product, the journey that it has been on and why.

Each step is completed to a strict timeline that we call a critical time path and it is impossible to skip a step without repercussions. We fight against delays, oversight and underestimation and we come out black and blue.

Then we launch.

Its like brining a blind date to your daughter’s birthday party. But the blind date you’ve been dying to meet and the birthday party has taken months to prepare. You hope they feel the same way that you do, you hope that they can see your effort, but most of all, you hope that your daughter has the day that she deserves.
Your guts ride a tidal yoyo between doubt and celebration throughout the season, but you learn at every peak and trough. All in preparation for next season.

And the cycle begins again.


It’s an evolutionary journey that would be impossible without passion. Passion to create a product that fulfils a need, for the customers that we love.

As our summer range has all been launched, the first of many for us, we look forward to the longer journey ahead. We look forward to learning from you and in doing so, evolving as a brand that gets better with every season.