Dan Baldwin the Cover Star

As you will know Dan Baldwin is one of my favourite artists I have collaborated with him on exclusive Sara Berman pieces since AW10. Well, imagine my delight at seeing Dan as the cover star of Art of England this month (July 2011). Inside, Dan talks about his inspirations and new print editions with the CCA Galleries.

Take a look at the AW11 Sara Berman and Dan Baldwin silk scarves collection here. Wear your art around your neck.

 

Summer Winter Love

Hello, Bernie here! It has been a while since I’ve posted so thought I would update you all on the brilliance of AW11. Last time I had just finished the look books and after a few changes and drafts we all decided on the best layout and got them back to the office in a couple of days, very exciting stuff and they look gorgeous! 

Once they arrived we very quickly sent them out again – envelopes, press release and address stickers galore. Then the waiting game, trying to work out when they would arrive with the magazines and who would be starting the AW11 shoot call ins, it is very strange to be excited about Harris Tweed coats and leather gloves when its so sunny but that’s just the way the fashion year goes!

Anyway, everyone loved the look books, the AW11 shoots have started and our samples are all over the world being shot. With the tweeds, leathers, liberty dresses and variety of accessories whatever the shoot we have something to fit in! Of course SS11 is still going strong and has been so successful but it really is very pleasing when you have a whole collection of new beautiful things to work with.  We have some very nice features coming up in September and I will get them onto here for you all to see asap! 

Tunnel Of Love

Great time had by all at the British Heart Foundation Tunnel of Love party on Tuesday!

In a refreshing change to your average sit-down-and-donate dinner this was more of a surreal funfair with a hoopla, rubber duck ‘bobbing’, throw the toupee on the Humpty Dumpty and oddly a girl dressed as a latrine. 

The auction was a great success. Our wonderful Dan Baldwin donated a hand finished print of his wonderful Love in The Garden painting (which incidentally I own the original of!) and we donated a scarf to match. Yoo Moo frozen yogurts were enjoyed as we ran around wining fabulous fashion prizes and bidding for art, dresses and designer dinners. Rocking evening which raised nearly 100k to help mend broken hearts.

Rules Are Made To Be Broken...

With all the resolve of a jelly fish I have failed in my New Years resolution. A mere 53 days in to NYR #1 and I have to conceed defeat in the face of a beautiful pair of Georgina Goodman boots.

Behold the beauty of The Boots...

God I feel so much better! ...Who knew restraint was the mother of depression?


Also, did you notice Amiee and I in our Dan Baldwin scarves again! Read about how SB HQ has gone scarf crazy here.

An Interview With Dan

Morning all. Instead of reading my musings I wanted to post an interview with the wonderful artist Dan Balwin. We are working with Dan in an ongoing collaboration and I thought you might enjoying reading about him, his work and what he is up to. I personally feel very, very privelidged to be working with him as I am always blown away by his work. Actually we came together in the first place because he spied that I had used one of his images as inspiration for our Thumbelina collection (Sara Berman SS09) and got in touch to say he loved the context and that we clearly had loads in common. This triggered a whole conversation on our work and inspirations and we felt that a collaboration would be a really fun thing to do. So read on and for the uninitiated  you are in for a treat.... fall in love with his work.... This guy is magic.

Read Acclaim Mag Interview with Dan Baldwin here

A Little Perspective

We are finally there. The panic has subsided and we are now firmly entrenched in the selling season and it has been going great guns! I think partly that is down to things looking up for the economy in general but also - may i say it - to the strength of the collection. As a designer there is always the natural inclination to be terribly critical but this season I can honestly put my hands up and say we have done a great job.

This is it - Autumn/Winter '10

I realised when looking back that I started this blog in the middle of the SS10 selling season which made me consider how much things have changed in that time for us as designers and the process we have followed this season. When you design a collection there is always pressure to do more. To make the collections bigger, to target other markets and fulfil every need as expressed by your buyers. This is natural and as a business person of course the instinct is to grow. However we found ourselves in a situation where our brand had grown so extensive in its product offer that we were over burdened by these huge collections and we finding less and less time to enjoy the process of design. I guess that is always the problem when you have a creative and business person in the same body but it wasn’t working for us anymore.

The recession allowed us to take a step back and see how much the design process meant to us in a very puritanical way and how much we wanted to go back to our roots. I think that for the first time in the history of our business it wasn’t about growth but about enjoying what we have built. 

This is me on what was a good design day. Very happy!

The success of our bag business showed us how valuable it could be to focus in on our strengths and how much we enjoyed the detail of design. So for AW10 we decide to indulge ourselves and really concentrate on the things that we loved designing as opposed to trying to tick all the boxes. Please understand that this is a pretty brave move. For years our buyers have been coming to us to see two full collections (Sara Berman and Berman Black) per season – each one a comprehensive, fully merchandised offer. In cutting back and presenting a basically egotistical offer of our favourite parts of a collection we risked alienating those buyers. Thankfully it seems to have paid off. The buyers who have seen the collection so far have been ecstatic! That sounds like a crazy word to use but when you have women dancing around the showroom throwing the clothes on themselves and doubling their orders it looks like a pretty enthusiastic reaction!

This season our collection is all about British. Our knitwear is made in a factory that actually makes for the Royal Guards. We have sourced real Donegal yarn-which is the only yarn still spun in the UK and is of such a beautiful quality it makes you proud that we can still make yarn like this. Our Harris Tweed coats are not only made of a yarn spun in the weavers own homes, but the coats and jackets themselves are made in the best factories still operating in the UK. Our silk dresses are also made in the UK and the whole vibe of the collection is British through and through. Think Dodi Smith's ‘I capture The Castle’ meets George Macdonald Fraser’s ‘Flashman’ with a dash of rock and roll thrown in.

Amiee channeling rock 'n' roll

We have also done a collaboration with British artist Dan Baldwin and are using one of his incredible paintings as a print for dresses and the lining of a couple of our Harris Tweed coats. Imagine opening up your coat to show one of Dan’s amazing paintings! The wonderful thing about this is that I have been a fan of Dan’s work for years (you can actually see one of his paintings in our AW09 mood board) and we came together over many shared ideas and inspirations. Terribly pure, honestly non commercial and a wonderful example for us we can indulge our love of art with our commitment to design. We want our customers to buy from us knowing that they are not buying just another mass produced item of clothing but actually a piece which contains a little soul.

The whole process has been an indulgent pleasure from start to finish. The funny thing is that although the collection has ended up being much bigger than we intended, we realised that we have gone back to the roots of what Sara Berman is all about. We found the pictures of my graduate collection from St Martins and realised that it was all leather, knitwear and tweed! Just goes to show that you will always do best that which you love most.

I Am The Mess-Meister

With five days to go until we start showing the AW10 collection, I thought you might like a very brief update on where things are at in the SB studio.

Frankly things are a little stressful. We haven’t seen one single solitary Harris Tweed finished piece yet. Of the 25 Harris Tweed samples which we need to have ready in five days, we have not got one.

Only 18 of our 30 bags samples are here in the studio. Six are on their way to the wrong address in London thanks to DHL Italiana stupido. Four are on their way from India and may or may not clear customs before Christmas. The remaining two are, in theory, going to be here the day before yesterday. Great.

The studio is covered in tweed, threads, bits of pattern and little gold lions waiting to be sewn onto sweaters-which are everywhere.The place is a bombsite and in the middle of all of it Amiee decides we need a new table. It arrived unannounced at 9am and as it turns out she may have misjudged the size of our studio and now we have a table which is the size of the whole showroom. Please understand that this is not a Good Thing when that showroom needs to be filled with samples not table. Feast your eyes on the monstrous thing below:

My house is also in a state of total disarray as I continue my archiving process. There is nowhere in my life where I am not surrounded by a daft amount of mess. I am the mess-meister.

The Italian silk CAD for our Dan Baldwin collaboration arrived yesterday. Only a month late.  Now they have to print it, send it and we have to make up the dresses and coats -all in five days. FIVE DAYS!

And to top it all off, I left my Val lightning stripe hat in a taxi last night.

And people wonder why designers are highly strung, emotionally fragile and teetering on the brink of a severe personality disorder.