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Youthfulness: it’s the unspoken, unwritten – but wholly omnipresent, nonetheless, even if it’s just a case of inference – addendum of just about every fashion collection. From those on the High Street – with their street-style influenced pieces, fused with the nonchalant cool commonly connoted with the nineties – made with today’s teens and twenty-somethings in mind, to those on the catwalk, where the models of the moment wearing them are those barely out of crested blazers, long socks and brogues.

As a consequence of fashion’s predilection for all things poppy, sprightly and pre-teen, most emerging designers are left with no option but to follow the status quo, crafting collections that, as visionary or vivid as they may be, at their quintessence are just the same as any other due to their teenage muses and youth-centric make-up.


The British design duo behind Teatum Jones, Catherine Teatum and Rob Jones, studied womenswear at Ravensbourne College and Central Saint Martin’s respectively, before meeting in Italy whilst working on menswear at John Richmond. Teatum and Jones then spent the intervening years between meeting and founding their eponymous label in 2010, honing their craft, researching and developing their ideas and designs, and “laugh[ing] [their] way through to become best friends”.


Their extensive knowledge of not only each other and their brand, but of trajectory of the brand and the quintessential Teatum Jones woman, is self-evident in each and every single one of their collections to-date – from their inky-navy and dusky-pink drenched
AW11 collection (inspired by the steely determination and valiance of WWI veterans, Elsie Knocker and Mairi Chisholm), to their shrewd amalgamation of sharp tailoring, flowing full-skirts and dresses, and soft-focus butterfly motifs in their AW13 collection (inspired by literary legend, and avid lepidopterist, Vladimir Nabokov).


But, neither collection is so saturated with what Teatum Jones is all about (and what neither fast-fashion conventions and high-fashion collections are not) than their latest – their Spring/Summer ’14 collection – “Jacquie and Mary Ellen”. For starters, it’s inspired by and named after their mothers – two strong, “hard-working”, pragmatic women with a can-do spirit “born out of necessity [and] selflessness”; and made for women – any woman, and every woman, young and old – who also embody such traits.

With such a remarkable painter’s pallette of colour – from daisy-chain yellow panels on “The Elizabeth Dress”, to the cornflower-blue checks of “The Celia Dress”; a unique and incisively fluid, feminine feel, augmenting a framework of elegant androgyny; and a haberdashery of memories of home engrained into the very fibre of the clothes (a marvelous motif of this collection are the “tea towel” checks), it just goes to show that going against the grain can result in some rather grand designs.

Tara Okeke
Images: Modus


For more information visit the Teatum Jones website or check out their lovely range for Liberty.