The Images We Keep Returning To
In my recent journal, I Wanted to Be a Hippie When I Grew Up: A lifelong fascination with fashion history, and the freedom of dressing across time, I wrote about my early and enduring attraction to mid-century visual language. Even as a child, I felt drawn to it. I loved the space-age optimism of the 1960s, a poodle or a vinyl record printed on a skirt, and disco balls and platform shoes. I loved bell bottom jeans more than almost anything. And I especially loved the symbolic language that lived inside that era, like peace signs, flower power imagery, and smiley faces.
These were not just images I admired, they were images I repeated.
I doodled them constantly, incorporating them into early fashion sketches, often as T-shirt graphics. I collected small objects that carried them, like little trinkets, accessories, and pieces of clothing that allowed me to hold onto that visual world in some small way.
Looking back, I think I was already building a personal language through these symbols. I just did not yet have the framework to understand it.
Hugo, The First Time
For my eighth birthday, my family gave me a balloon with a yellow smiley face on it. My sister Stacie named him Hugo. As in, “You go with Hugo to Yugoslavia.”
It was one of those meaningless phrases that exists only in the moment, slightly absurd and completely memorable. It made us all laugh, and I always remembered that silly expression and that balloon. Hugo was no longer just decoration. He became part of the day, part of the memory, part of the feeling of being that age and loving something simple and bright.
My birthday passed and the balloon deflated, and eventually it was lost to time, as most childhood items are. But I always remembered that balloon and how Stacie named it Hugo. It wasn’t lost forever, it was just waiting to be seen again.
Recognition
Years later, when Charlie and I were building Berried Alive and creating our own DIY music videos, he came up with an idea for the video for Catalina Beach.
He would walk forward holding a black balloon, and it would feel as though the balloon itself was leading him.
To create that effect, I walked ahead of him, filming backwards over my shoulder using a GlideCam so the camera would remain steady. The balloon was attached to an invisible string that connected back to me, so that from the camera’s perspective, it looked as though the balloon was pulling him forward.
It was a simple idea in theory, but it required a surprising amount of coordination. We spent weeks practicing the movement, learning how to walk in sync to maintain the illusion.
We bought a practice balloon, and since it did not matter what it looked like, I chose a smiley face. And without thinking about it too much, I told Charlie that his name was Hugo.
The Balloon That Stayed
We were told by the person at Party City that the balloon would deflate by the end of the weekend.
It did not.
We lived with Hugo in our tiny apartment for six weeks. The living room and bedroom were the same space, so he was always there, hovering somewhere in the background of our daily life. He became part of the environment, a presence that was always there while we worked, while we rested, while we were simply existing.
By the time he finally did deflate, he no longer felt disposable. We hung him on the wall.
There was no larger intention, it just felt wrong to throw him away. He had already become something else to us, something that extended beyond his original purpose. Hugo became our personal mascot.
So he stayed, smiling down at us as we continued working.
From Object to Image
A few years later, Charlie wrote a song called Hugo. We used the image of the balloon as the single artwork, this time creating a full music video with a proper production behind it. It marked a shift for us, a moment where things began to expand beyond the limitations we had worked within before.
From there, Hugo continued to evolve.
We created a full clothing collection around the artwork. A bomber jacket, a T-shirt, joggers, a crewneck sweatshirt, and a T-shirt dress. Each piece carried the image into a new context, allowing it to move beyond the wall and into the world.
Behind the balloon, I layered a paisley print I had originally designed as the border for a Berried Alive bandana. I loved it enough to expand it into a full print, and it became part of the visual language surrounding Hugo, and a few other collections.
I later reinterpreted that same print for House of Caswell, replacing the Strawberry Crossbones with HOC diamond logos. It will appear again in a future collection, continuing its own evolution across different bodies of work.
Nothing about Hugo remained fixed. He kept changing form.
Paris
When Charlie and I planned a trip to Paris, we knew we wanted to photograph the Hugo collection there. The setting felt aligned with the way the story had unfolded. A place layered with its own history, its own visual language, its own relationship to art and time.
We shot throughout our vintage-inspired hotel, along the river, near the Louvre, in the gardens, and along the Champs-Élysées. It was a clear fall day, the kind of light that makes everything feel both immediate and already remembered.
A Symbol That Expands
Over time, Hugo became part of Berried Alive’s visual language.
I included him in the Strawberry Serenity artwork, layering him into a broader network of references within the band’s world. The artist Tony Trip featured a Hugo balloon and smiley face motifs throughout the 3D animated music video he created for Strawberry Serenity. Charlie has a tattoo of a cat carrying a Hugo balloon on his forearm. My sister Stacie has a Hugo tattoo. Some fans have chosen to carry him with them as well.
What began as something personal gradually expanded outward. It became shared.
And there is something meaningful in that shift, in watching a symbol move beyond its origin and take on new life in the hands of others.
A few years ago, for my birthday, Charlie threw a party with my whole family there. My sister Stacie helped decorate, and knowing how much I still loved smiley faces, she placed smiley face stress balls across all the tables as party favors. I wrote “Serenity Now” on the back of mine, a small Seinfeld reference, and I still keep it on the shelf above my desk, resting on top of my petrified orange (which is a story for another time). It’s not the same Hugo, but it carries the same kind of feeling. Something small, simple, and perpetually happy.
The Hugo balloon hangs on our wall to this day, above the desk where I sit when Charlie and I ship out our Berried Alive merch orders together, smiling down on us like a happy sunshine as we work. He’s become more than a brand mascot, he’s a loyal friend.
Remixing the Past Into the Present
I do not think of this as nostalgia in the traditional sense. I am not interested in recreating the past as a fixed image. I am interested in how its symbols can be carried forward and reinterpreted. In the same way a DJ remixes older music into something new, I take the visual language that has stayed with me and translate it into a contemporary context.
That might mean pairing mid-century inspired prints with 90s and early 2000s cargo silhouettes, as seen in the Veronica Cargo Top and the Carly Ensemble. Or it might mean placing a groovy monogram into a structured mock neck with a circular zipper pull, as with the Sophia Mock Neck Top. Or composing a still life painting into streetwear garments in unexpected fabrications, like the Gabriela Satin Hoodie.
The goal is not to belong to a single era, it is to allow different eras to exist together.
An Invitation
Hugo is a small story, but it holds something larger within it.
A symbol that began in childhood, disappeared, returned, and continued to evolve across music, art, and clothing. A reminder that the images we are drawn to early often stay with us, waiting to be rediscovered in new forms.
This idea lives at the core of Still Life, a collection that began as a single pastel painting and expanded into a limited, numbered wardrobe, where each piece carries forward the idea of clothing as both image and archive.
If this way of thinking resonates with you, I invite you to join the Collector’s List, where I share new journal entries, collection releases, and the evolving ideas behind House of Caswell.
Because some images do not leave us, they simply wait to be seen again.
