A penchant for personal exterior design through fashion often precedes a later appreciation for interior design through decoration. Once you work out how to define your identity through clothes, shaping a sympathetic identity for the space around you naturally follows. At Colville, Lucinda Chambers and Molly Molloy have developed their eclectic range of rugs (shaggy), vases (beady), blankets (dreamy), and other lovely items in conjunction with their development of the fashion line. Watching their models move around the Westminster space during this presentation, it struck you that the vases could be used as bags and the Colombian woven, Italian-finished bags used as vases (for dried flowers). Or that the vibrant Spanish rug would make as lovely a shawl as the shaggy faux-fur would make a handsome fireside floor throw.
The partner creative directors endearingly named their design directors—Danny did the prints, while Matteo masterminded the in-house shoes and two collaborations—as they chatted through their colorful and ease-filled universe. One of those collaborations was to reincarnate misprinted Diadora sneakers (they’d been mistakenly labeled “Glod” not Gold) by dipping them in a gloopy double layer of bright resin. Along with the wide-stitched slides and loafers and leather-gaitered boots and shoes these were the podiums for a series of Salone di Mobile-worthy human furnishings. The rounded-shoulder and pleated-arm house jacket, named the Club, was one of a series of established perennials that were given a seasonal tweak either via fresh print design (cheers Danny) or minor variations in some of the many pleasingly functionally abstract details that adorn Colville designs without ever obstructing function.
Chambers and Molloy first flourished as a partnership in Milan at old Marni, before joining forces to create Colville and pursue their work from the UK. It was maybe this backstory—or maybe the new Jelly bag that looked like it was made to tote tubes of gouache—but this collection strongly reminded me of the work and vibe of another Italian-influenced female British artist. Through the non-conformist elemental gusto of their experiments in color and form (that always worked to serve the specifically womanly spirit they were striving to essentialize) this Colville collection seemed to contain an adjacency to the establishment-overlooked (of course) work of the Alberto Burri-mentored yet vigorously individual St. Ives artist Sandra Blow. More concisely—this also looked like a lovely collection to live within, around, or alongside.
