Finding some hidden gems

One of the great things about updating your website is that you get to sort through some of your old work and find some hidden gems! I’m terrible when it comes to buying clothes that carry prints that I have designed, by the time it’s in stores I’m working on something new and that is much more exciting! One of the things I enjoyed about designing the prints for Uttam Boutique was that I’d be doing totally different things from one day to the next, one day it would be a photographic print and the next I’d have the watercolours out.

I found this print today, it’s made from antique botanical illustrations. Once I’d found a relevant piece of art I’d have to painstakingly cut and piece it all together in photoshop.

Spring Summer 16

My Uttam Girls SS16 Collection has finally started to hit the stores, Can’t wait to pop into the House of Fraser Oxford Street store to have a look at the concession. The manager there makes such an effort to merchandise it beautifully.

After the seaside theme worked so well last summer, it was on the cards to do another. The trend prediction services were trumpeting mermaids as being a key graphic emblem for SS16, but having done a mermaid theme not so long ago, I new I needed a different angle. I stumbled across a fantastic photo on pinterest of a little girl with a donkey and realised that was the way to take my seaside story.

I wanted it to have a watercolour feel, which I knew would be a challenge for the factories in india. There was a lot of backwards and forwards to get the effect I wanted. At red seal sample they looked great, sadly for some reason they brightened some of the print colours in production, so the subtlety was lost.

Seaside Donkey Story SS16
Seaside Donkey Story SS16

Here’s how the story ended up looking…

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