Mod Balls Pattern
I always felt like I belonged to the wrong time. When I was a kid, there were countless things I wanted to be when I grew up, and one of the major ones was a hippie. Before stores were selling bell bottom jeans again (and before they were re-named flare legs), I had my grandma sew a triangle of fabric into the side seam at the bottom of my straight-leg jeans to create a bell bottom. And she even surprised and delighted me by adding a star-shaped patch of matching fabric to the leg. I remember girls at school asking me where they could buy a similar pair because flare legs were just about to be in fashion, and how smug I felt telling them that they couldn’t buy a similar pair. Mine were one of a kind. About a year later, all the stores were selling flare leg jeans, but I’d had them first because I’d known already at 8 years old my favorite rule of fashion—what’s old will always be new again. That’s the inspiration for the Mod Balls print in the first House of Caswell collection.
On a more literal level, the balls and lines in the pattern are meant to represent fruits and stems, because the whole Still Life collection is centered around a fruit theme. They could be grapes, cherries, apples, or any other round fruit that grows on a stem (which is just about all fruits, really). In one iteration of the print, which will be used in the cutout dress and the contrasting trim in the cargo outfit, the abstract fruits are present in multiple colors, and in other places within the collection it’s there in just a deep merlot color or a vibrant red on a blue background. No matter the color scheme, the print is meant to represent the fruit in the still life, but not literally. You might not know it if I didn’t tell you just now, and that’s fine.
But the main inspiration for the print is the past, and how I’ve always longed to be there in the most exciting moments. Not just a specific time in the past, but the way it keeps repeating itself through fashion. I originally had the idea for the print while researching mod fabric patterns from the 1960s. But it also reminds me of how, in the ‘90s, Prada did some incredible geometric prints in ugly-pretty colors. I want to pay tribute to all of these moments in time through my references in House of Caswell collections. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want history to repeat itself, but I love the way fashion does.
