Collections – Charlotte and Jane.
GD – Your made to measure service is one of your unique selling points – what can a potential customer expect when she arrives at your studio? Do you have many customers coming in with their own ideas?
C&J – Yes, we do have customers arriving in with their own ideas and we listen to them as this gives us an indication of their personality, the feeling they would like with their outfit, the colors and fabrics they like, the styles they like and this can be helpful for us. We need the dress we make for each client to really fit with their personality. Often though people are trapped in a comfort zone, which may not actually suit them, and it is always exciting to guide people into what we know would look wonderful on them, style, color, fabric and length wise and see their elation as they discover a different aspect to themselves.
We really spend time with each client, trying on styles and selecting the style that is ideal for them in every way. We look at many different color and fabric options and with the client, choose the one that will suit them and their occasion the best. We measure for the perfect length and fit and we give styling tips for the accessorizing of the dress. We are genuinely fascinated by the journey we go on with each client and it is always exciting for us as every dress we make is absolutely unique.
GD – You source locally – could you tell us what ( fabrics, dyes etc) and from whom? I know you have sourced tweeds from Magee of Donegal – as did Sybil Connolly and Irene Gilbert in the past.
C&J – Magee of Donegal supply us with may tweeds and a gorgeous range of silk tweeds. In fact the winning dress at the Punchestown races on the Thursday, was one of our styles made up in a Magee’s silk tweed and Bairbre Power, fashion editor of the Irish Independent, particularly commentated on how the stunning fabric had really caught her eye. The quality of the fabrics we use really is one of those aspects to our dresses which makes them stand out. We only use natural fibers and top quality fabrics. All of our wools are woven in Irish mills. Wexford Woolen Mills provides us with beautiful silk/wool tweeds and Kerry Woolen mills dyes all our block colors for us. It is a delight to be using Irish fabrics and working with these family run mills. Our silks we now source personally from fair trade factories in India – we try to be as ethical in as possible at every stage of our business.
Behind the scenes – Charlotte and Jane.
GD – Your gorgeous 1920’s inspired Elizabeth dress was featured by Social and Personal as a ‘we lust for’ dress. Wit the imminent release of The Great Gatsby – you’ll surely be getting plenty of orders for this style. Can we see Charlotte & Jane evoking more often the 1920s and 1930’s eras on future collections ?
C&J – Yes, indeed we can! We adore the 20’s too and will certainly have a range of 20’s styles to add to our growing collection. We have a few bones to pick with the 20’s though! The 20’s dress conflicts with the 40’s and 50’s quite strongly. The 20’s was all about flat chested, board like, boyish silhouettes, structureless garments….. and really we love curves, celebrating femininity and structure! We love seams and darts! We also find all the embellishing of the 20’s unnecessary for our styles as the beauty of our fabrics need no embellishing really and we prefer simplicity and understated elegance. There are some who suit the 20’s styles, but most women do not and in many ways, it’s a good thing!
GD – Your latest collection is really beautiful – my faves being the Anastasia, Arabella and Lucy Dress ( a real swing frock). Without giving away trade secrets – for our fashion student readers, could you describe the lines, cuts, fabrics and dyes we are seeing in this collection?
C&J – Ah, interesting that your favorites are all full skirted dresses. This season sees the introduction of full skirted dresses to our Charlotte and Jane range and we are very excited about it. We wanted our 50’s tea dresses to have that wonderful full skirt, but with an unusual take, a Charlotte and Jane twist and so we made patterns with unusual folding in the skirts. Many of the top halves of our styles, can be teamed with the full skirt of these new styles – the possibilities are endless as any style can be made in any of our fabrics and colors, to any length etc! It is so exciting! What we love about our new full skirted patterns, is that they move so beautifully and the folds in the skirt behave in such interesting ways with movement. These dresses need to be danced in!
The fabrics are part of our new hand-printed collection from India while the kinds of silks incorporate the dupion, matka and tussar . They are as fine and beautiful as you can want from a silk and hang beautifully !
GD – Finally – what’s in the pipeline for Charlotte & Jane?
C&J – Anything is possible at this stage. We take it day by day, follow our hearts, believe in ourselves, and tailor our business to suit our needs and desires. We are going from strength to strength and if we look back on the journey of the past four years, it is quite remarkable. We would love to do a collaboration with Magees – the “Charlotte and Jane for Magees” range and develop a line of styles specific to their fabrics to be sold across the world. A design collaboration between us could be very exciting, especially in the American market….Watch this space!
Visit Charlotte and Jane, and also on Facebook and see them in Letterkenny on May 18th and 19th for Charlotte and Jane’s Traveling Design Studio
