Last year, Kit Willow made two major changes: She relocated all her production back home to Australia, and she moved with her family to Melbourne, leaving her head office behind in Sydney. So while she was already dealing with adjustments to her process, she never thought she would actually have to design a collection over Zoom.
“I’m very hands on: we do fittings on the body, so I just didn’t think it would be possible,” she explained. Getting toiles from Sydney to Melbourne was logistically tricky, so she set about fitting this collection on herself because “no one else would do it.” This collection became “imagination without borders,” she said, noting that it didn’t really start out that way. “I didn’t even know that we would survive.”
As lockdown dragged on, the designer sensed a shift in what her base wanted. “It didn’t feel right or modern to do evening,” she noted. Instead, she aimed for what she calls “high-frequency, multi-purpose chic” in casual, easy-care fabrics. “The missing piece of the puzzle is regeneration,” she added, so she does as much as possible with what’s already out there: deadstock, upcycled fabrics, and old denim, unpicked and repurposed.
Amid the flexing came the loss of Willow’s beautiful, stylish grandmother, Noel Lane, whose love for fashion, and Paris, was still intact at the age of 103. Willow set about processing her grief by sorting through her scarf collection—75 years in the making—selecting favorites, and extrapolating those into prints. It got her thinking more about the circle of life, circular living, and the fashion cycles, culminating here in the first pieces from her new Noel Lane Heritage series.
The ’70s era spots, in particular, are key. Four scarves came together in a pastiche on a dress that neatly channels a retro vibe. She also focused on black and white organic prints and circular cuts; those as well as a ruffled russet-colored dress are in jersey upcycled from marine litter and knitted with solar power. Elsewhere, she superimposed circle cuts on an off-the-shoulder dress in crushed organic cotton voile.
As a cheeky counterpoint to all the softness and draping, the designer came up with a slim bondage-inspired harness, also made of upcycled marine litter, and introduced it online only. That move helped save the business; the designer reports that online sales have been up 300% over last year every month since March. Going forward, she said she’ll be incorporating more regenerative farming practices, and more direct-to-consumer pieces.
