Behind the Scenes & the creation of the Bestowed 16th Collection

The 16th Bestowed collection started to be planned back in November last year when we were making the previous collection. As we were cutting those organic cotton garments I utilised any spare space in the marker, finding pattern pieces of other styles that I could pre cut. To be useful I had to decide on styles that I would use in the next collection and ones that would look good being patched. So the collection started with a new version of the Patched Perla top and a patched version of the one sized Joey dress. I chose these two styles because they are ones I wear over and over, styles I am drawn to and love their comfort as well as look.

Both the Joey dress (pictured above) and Patched Perla top are also favourite styles for my daughter in law Alice who is only 5'2 tall. We often wear the same garments and laugh at how incredibly different they look on us, as I am 5'10, that's a 20cm difference. So a tunic that just covers my bum is a above knee dress on Alice. However we can both wear the same styles, just differently.

(below, Amanda and Heather in the Josie tank Dress over Lara 7/8 leggings)

So this collection is all about showing you our family favourite styles and how they look on two totally different people. They are of course revamped, reinvented & re-coloured. I know that there are many people who are awaiting this collection because we have had lots of requests for sold out styles & new colour options.

The photo shoot brief was, creating 'mismatched twins'. Dressed in the same garments and sneakers but both very different/opposite. Celebrating what we have in common while being ourselves.

Creating collections and dreaming up ways to present it to you is my most enjoyed part of what I do. This shoot ended up even better than how I imagined. When Amanda and Heather interacted together the magic happened. It was a fun and playful shoot, thanks to all the team on the day.

We are now busy trying to get the garments made! Our production has been challenging this year (as I shared in the previous journal story) so we are plodding along creating 'slow fashion' and problem solving the best we can. We are unable to make things as quickly as we used to and each style is being made in more limited quantity too. We have been making our garments locally since 2003 and have had many up's and down's, so I am sure these challenges will be overcome too. I wish I could just design beautiful garments and they then miraculously appear, but that's not how local production goes!