Films from top to bottom: Out of Africa (1985), Roma (2018), Dries (2017), I Am Love (2009), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), How to Steal a Million (1966), Moonlight (2016), It's Complicated (2009), The Truffle Hunters (2020), Past Lives (2023)
It's a quiet morning in Sausalito, the trees bathed in golden light and crisp air alive with birdsong and tickled by the softest sigh of a sea breeze. After two sodden weeks on the East Coast I am happily home and writing to you from my dining table — a surface so littered with swatches, tangled measuring tape, strewn samples and a sea of sketchbook scribbles that I can hardly see the wood beneath. A tablescape quite emblematic of my mind these days. In the ebb and flow, rise and fall of energy in the process of making, this moment is certainly heightened. There is work being done in the studio (cue the dining desk), there are new patterns in development, new samples in review and new fabrics being sourced. A small batch of new pieces are being cut from some of the most sublime silk, wool, cashmere and cotton fabrics I've been able to work with and sewn into garments at this very moment. Garments I cannot wait to share with you.
In these pronounced moments of world-building and story telling it can feel near impossible to take pause and find distance from the work, but as with everything a bit of time and space can help return to the ideas at hand with a deeper, more nuanced perspective and understanding. I find time in nature and with art to be crucial to keeping my imagination ignited and thinking open and clear. A walk might settle my mind and organize my thoughts or a dried petal on the path might spur me in an entirely new direction. Time with art might give clarity around a feeling I had been chasing or shake up my thinking entirely.
Film has always played an important role in my life and remains one of the most constant and bountiful sources of inspiration and direction in my creative process today. As a child I first fell in love with clothes through Audrey Hepburn's storied wardrobe designed by Hubert de Givenchy in How to Steal a Million (1966). At eleven my dream of someday telling stories through garments that imbue a similar sense of sculpture and vitality was solidified after spending a summer working for a costume designer on a film set in Dresden, Germany. Over the years I have developed a sacred shortlist of films that time after time continue to unfold before me bringing new discovery, delight and direction to my work and life. I wanted to share a few of these with you – the faces, places and stories I have dreamt about and return to often that both fill me with joy and shake me with heartbreak, all of which are full of immense and captivating beauty.
With gratitude,
Amelia