PHONE HOME...

I'm getting my autumn wardrobe together and I've identified a severe lack of skirts. Happily, the Family Affairs autumn/winter 12 collection is up online now and the Frankie skirt might just have to be mine. I also wish that the tiger headband had gone into production, but alas I think it is stylist's own in this case, so I will have to steal it from her somehow instead. Continuing the Family Affairs / LIB collaboration, I again wrote the press notes for the collection, below. 

The Fall/Winter 12 collection Phone Home is the most comprehensive yet from Family Affairs: with knitwear, hand knitted socks and our first ever bag, the perfectly round Alcudia (made of goat nappa leather).

All the pieces in Phone Home are modern with a sense of nostalgia – you feel at home in them wherever you end up being. The feeling of the collection is both mad and cozy: a grown up school look: it may be girly but it’s not dressing like a little girl.

As an adult you can now see, understand and appreciate the strangeness of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; the darkness of suburbia as represented in the film E.T. But having been a young child growing up in that era, the saturated colours and animal prints used in Phone Home are comforting and nostalgic: the horse print Tennenbaum dress, lion print Moonstruck dress, alpine striped knit Budapest leggings, the red and green striped wool of the Gabriel sweater, the mustard faux suede Yorinde dress, rust knitted Serrano dress, the green chenille Frenchie sweater, the indigo skirt in blue faux suede.

The cozy hand knitted striped mustard and black Trudi socks are named after the designer’s adopted grandmother, who used to knit her socks every birthday and Christmas, which are still much treasured. Shapes are cozy and/or sexy to allow both extremes to exist in one look. Along with the ribbed cable knits and nostalgic prints are items like the rust knit Serrano dress and the navy cashmere wool Bandito skirt – a slim high waisted pencil skirt. The floor-sweeping Stargazer dress in midnight blue washed silk and the long faux suede paneled Indigo skirt add some languid glamour. There are short tunic shapes to be worn with the knitted ribbed or striped leggings and a key item is the very flirty short, paneled navy Frankie skirt.

Each piece is reminiscent of the way when you were a child you’d have special favorite things to wear, that you might keep in a secret drawer or suitcase and would wear over and over again. No one but you knew how important those things were to you, or why you were so attached to certain items, but they made you feel safe and protected.

{Photos from Family Affairs lookbook, text by me, Claire Oldman - please credit and link here if you re-post.}