When it comes to designing your clothes, we’re always on the lookout for things to inspire us. Sometimes we go and find what we’re looking for, and sometimes things just come to us. The Burlington Dress, which is completely unique to our store in Burlington, USA, was discovered in such an unexpected way, we just had to share the story with you…
The Burlington Dress: How we discovered the print
March 23, 2018
The discovery
The store was built in the 1820s but was most recently used as a pop-up shop, so all the building’s original features were hidden behind a modern shop fit. Knowing the age of the building, we were keen to restore some of the original features, so we got our team to cut a hole directly through the new cladding to see what was behind it.
When they did, they discovered some beautiful examples of vintage wallpaper that had been hidden behind four or five layers of brickwork! None of the team could quite believe their eyes, especially as it had aged so beautifully.
Once we laid eyes on them, we knew they would make a beautiful print in our women’s range, so asked for a sample of the wallpaper to be sent back to the UK. Our print designer Laura was then tasked with trying to recreate it on a garment, which is where the fun really began…
Making the fabric work
Laura’s real challenge was making the print work on fabric rather than paper (which is not easy!). She scanned in the print and worked on re-drawing some of the design so that they kept the essence of the original print.
We think the original wallpaper may have been block printed which gives a real depth of colour, so to replicate that effect Laura had to use 11 different colours. We usually only use around 8 colours on a print, so it really is quite special.
Bringing the print to life
With the print design finally in place, Laura handed the artwork over to our dress buyer (also called Laura) so she could think about the best dress style for the print. As the print is so versatile, we chose a dress shape that was versatile too, to really bring the print to life and show off the beautiful colours. And as this dress is a limited edition, unique to the Burlington store, our suppliers kindly screen printed each panel of the dress by hand. With 11 different colours in the print, so much time and care went into each garment, and this process really has made the dress truly special.
The dress is now available in our Burlington store and is sitting right at the front alongside a beautiful hand-drawn illustration created by Laura, our print designer. If you’re ever in the area or just popping across the pond, do come check it out.
The Simone Dress
While the Burlington dress isn’t available online, we put so much love into our other Simone dresses we think they’re worth a closer look. She’s been a massive hit with you guys for a while now — and in a range of colors and prints (plus loads more coming out soon too), Simone’s definitely going to be around a little longer. Each dress comes in a fabric blend of cotton and modal, which is super soft with a little bit of stretch for a flattering fit. And it has pockets!
And there are so many more dresses to discover too! Why not browse the full collection and find more favorites here?