Webbed in London’s kaleidoscopic fashion grid is a burgeoning biology, a semaphore for the city’s still-forming industry ID: color. Mary Katrantzou exploded onto the circuit a few years back with her fine-tuned prints, bowed and pixilated like so many tiny iPad screens. Christopher Kane sent pulse-waves ’round the world with his acidic-pastel graduate collection in 2006, progressing along the way to a full-spectrum phantasmagoria for Resort 2012. And everyone’s favorite hype-machines, Meadham Kirchhoff, are in no way quiet about their riot – these kids live and breathe the term “eye-candy.” Yet a fresh, glittering swell is about to crash upon the CMYK shores of Britain’s design industry, bringing with it a venerable tide of the new-new, poised for global attention. Sam Leutton and Jenny Postle (of their surname-eponymous line Leutton Postle) could very well be riding its crest.
“We have quite equal skills but we assume different positions, as we don’t really work in the same way,” Postle told ARTINFO in a recent interview. “I have to float around and dip in and out of things to come up with something.” It’s an apt insight, considering the airy contemplativeness of her and Leutton’s fledgling knitwear label. Spindled strands in Pantone-rich dyes are the duo’s jump-off — Postle opened the Central Saint Martins Master’s Fall/Winter 2011 show with a series of tufted, Navajo-tech meets predacious scarecrow looks, from which the brand’s aesthetic was born.
Shortly after her graduate show Postle paired with Leutton, a fellow Saint Martins undergrad alum who had been cutting her teeth in knitwear innovation in China before moving back to the U.K. It’s been a harmonious partnership ever since, culminating (thus far) in a Spring/Summer 2013 presentation rife with threads, beads, and an only-out-of-London cool factor all but impossible to locate elsewhere.
It formed out of “traditional patch-working techniques, appliqués, collages, and the decorative works of the Ndebele tribe,” said Leutton of the mix-and-matched, sportily bohemian collection. “We were aiming for a kind of ’70s disco-acid and youthful feel.” Combining and harmonizing crochets, quilting, tousled wrap skirts, and slouch, these girls blow granny chic out of the water.
When asked about her and Leutton’s consistent sources of inspiration, Postle bluntly replied, “Eurovision, friends, and Memphis.” Friendship is a keen talking point here, as amicability takes on its own sort of phenomenon amongst London’s young and talented design set. Most of them know each other, most of them can be found in Dalston or Hackney at any given hour, and most of them attended Central Saint Martins. That such a precocious group could all essentially come from the same place is a testament to the Master program’s director, Louise Wilson, who is famous for teaching her students to edit and re-edit and re-re-edit until the faintest skeletons of their original ideas are left. “We think about her quite a lot," said Postle. “She is the wisest person I have ever met so it would be impossible not to.” The educational bloodline shows through in Leutton Postle’s output: it vetoes and tames what could easily veer into arts-and-crafts territory — it makes the zany look considered.
At this point, what remains to be seen is the brand’s flight path. They’ve been buoyed by the London-based sponsorship platform Vauxhall Fashion Scout over the past two seasons, yet they remain relatively tiny on the larger scale of things (they’ve only got a handful of stockists, namely Brown’s and Avenue 32, plus three new stores in Asia for Spring/Summer 2013). They’ve hinted at menswear and they’ve considered expansion, yet as Postle said, “We wouldn’t do anything unless we knew we could do it amazingly.”
For now it would appear that they are likely to keep things small and neat — happy to groove out their colorful little niche in the rising tide. And as for finding riches at the end of their rainbow, these girls needn’t worry. They’re striking gold along the way.
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