LFW Diary AW11: Felicity Brown

A designer whom I’d heard great things about last season through Fashion East’s talent platform; Felicity Brown is certainly ‘one to watch’. Her inaugural collection for SS11 featured a plethora of hand-dyed silks and ruffled dresses, inspired by Japanese origami, Bedouin women, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s paintings of showy girls in disheveled, provoking dresses, as well as her own study of flowers – creating an overtly feminine collection with layering at its core.

Repeating her signature design aesthetic for AW11, the NEWGEN sponsored designer really caught my eye during LFW, incorporating what looked to be subtle tribal prints to great effect. First spotted during her Royal College of Art graduate show – from which the collection was selected to be exhibited at Sotheby’s of London - Brown went on to design for Alberta Ferretti, Loewe, Mulberry and Lanvin before setting up her own label based in Brick Lane. Highly influenced by tribal designs from around the world, Brown told Vogue.com: “I like looking at tribal costumes from all over the world and the way tribes mark themselves. I find that much more fascinating than minimal tailoring. I made each individual piece that forms each dress separately. At the last minute I smashed it all together and that was it.”