Ethical Fashion · India
Chai
Atelier
Creative Director + Designer · 2017
After I sold Illbury + Goose, I ended up in Jaipur designing clothes for myself. It turned into a 30-piece ethically manufactured resort wear capsule — my first pattern design, and I directed the shoot. It taught me fabrics, manufacturing, and a different side of sustainability, and it’s the clearest early example of what my work keeps returning to: impact built in, not added on. I’m considering bringing it back.
Working directly with local artisans and manufacturers, I designed every piece myself — pattern, silhouette, and fabric — building a resort wear capsule that felt native to the place it was made, not exported from somewhere else.
Thirty pieces built around a print language I drew myself — tropical botanicals in teal and ivory, a terracotta stripe, and a black ground that let the pattern sit forward. Robes, jumpsuits, matching sets, swim. Resort wear made to be worn far from a resort.
I directed the shoot myself — the first time I owned both ends of a project. Styled interiors, real light through real windows, plants, colour gels. Designing the garment and then deciding how it would be seen taught me more about creative direction than any brief I’d been handed.
