I am incredibly excited to announce the new arrival of the 2020 Alice Caroline Exclusive ‘Butterfly Garden Collection’, featuring a beautiful selection of Liberty prints re-worked in delicate colourways. Comprising 15 stunning Liberty Tana Lawn prints in beautiful new colours, but most excitingly of all, it includes a new print: Betsy Butterfly (in three new colours), which is a twist on the classic Betsy with a new drawn butterfly added carefully into the design. The Exclusive Butterfly Garden collection is like a flower garden in full summer bloom.
The inspiration for the Butterfly Garden Collection comes from a variety of different influences. When I’m designing colour combinations I’m constantly searching for inspiration everywhere I go. The colour inspiration initially came from a box of vintage ribbons given to me as a child by my great great aunt Olive, gifted to me as she knew I loved ribbons. Then, when I was in London, I saw a window display in a shop on Regent Street featuring ceramics and eucalyptus leaves. I also went to a trade show in Paris earlier this year where I found a gorgeous sweet and chocolate shop where the marshmallows and macaroons were soft, pretty colours. All of these combined formed the basis of the colour palette of pale putty pink, celadon green, dusky violet, vintage dusky rose and mustardy absinthe for this new collection. The overall look of the collection forms an imagined time and place, and these delicate colours lead me to a world of imagining a box of ribbons found in an attic in 1920’s Paris.
I love using a new colour palette to create a beautiful and fresh collection. Next in the process is selecting the fabric designs – which is difficult when there are so many gorgeous ones to choose from. We chose both our customers favourites as well as our own personal favourites too. Laura (Creative Designer at Alice Caroline) and I re-coloured the chosen designs in our new colour palette which we then gave to the Liberty design studio to work with. The Liberty studio worked with my brief to create this gorgeous new collection. I’m so pleased with this collection – it’s the first large Alice Caroline Exclusive collection since my 2018 collection based around a rainbow of colours. The collection uses colours I’ve been dreaming of for a long time and so it’s wonderful to see the hard work come to fruition.
Butterfly Garden Collection – the fabrics:
Betsy Butterfly in 3 colourways: “Betsy is one of my favourite prints and I love butterflies so I thought the two combined would be gorgeous. I worked with the Liberty studio designer to include a butterfly. I drew the type of butterfly I wanted to be included and the designer simplified it so that it would blend with the print. This has rarely been done on any Liberty print and so I feel really honoured to have been able to work with the design team in this way.” The three colourways are Dusky Rose, Lilac and Blossom.
Felicite Teal: This has a strong teal colour tone with delicate pink roses which look just like a David Austin rose I love called Cecile Brunner which is a climbing rose with tiny sized flowers. I have one climbing a wall in my garden.
Felicite Lilac: This is a light and fresh pretty print. This colourway is lilac with a hint of peach.
Mini Edenham: This is a really lovely print at a cute mini scale. I’ve used purples which are rare in the current Liberty selection and absinthe greeny yellow.
Anna’s Garden Teal: This reminds me of an English garden in full summer bloom. I wanted to create a teal with a dusky rose and absinthe green.
Capel: One of my favourite Liberty prints, we inverted the colour balance here, Capel usually has light flowers on a darker background for this collection we swapped them round to feature a lighter background and darker blooms. The colours from Capel Blossom come directly from the box of ribbons and the other colourway is Dandelion.
Danjo Dandelion: There are very few yellow and green colour ways in Liberty collections and I love the Danjo print. Weeds can be flowers too – I leave them in my garden and eat the leaves in salads!
Emily Mint: We have printed this at an unusual scale which is slightly smaller than the normal print. This is a real mix of pretty meadow garden flowers.
Wiltshire: I really love this print and have given it a really fresh look by colouring in the background. The three colourways of Wiltshire in this collection are Mulberry, Blueberry and Blossom.
Strawberry Thief: This print often comes in really strong colourways but I wanted to design a completely fresh fabric in delicate colours to tie in with the whole collection. This pale pink version is really pretty and I especially love its delicate tones.
The collection is available to pre-order now
