The ever-colourful and playfully crafted designs of Melbourne based label Leonard St. have returned for the label’s spring collection. Striking prints complimented with more simplistic shapes and clean lines combine to create designer Amanda McCarthy‘s unique aesthetic.
We asked Amanda a few questions about her newest collection for an insight into her design processes and what keeps her inspired season after season.
Onya is also lucky enough to have an exclusive Leonard St. piece to giveaway, see entry details below for your chance to win.
What would you say was your biggest inspiration for the collection?
This collection is inspired by colour and shape. These are always the points of interest for me that keep me designing and striving for the best pieces I can produce. It’s reminiscent of shapes that have 80s and 90s undertones, but are brought into fresh shapes with the use of fabric and colour. The Ringwald camisole and Molly Dress have the classic 90s spaghetti strap, which I love. I have tried to diversify more by offering a broader selection across casual and dressy pieces. We have some much more dressy styles than I have done before.
The spring collection has quite a vast colour pallet as well as some monochromatic pieces, is colour the most important part of your design process?
I do love colour and print. I start with the prints and from there I get my block colour palette too. Sometimes it’s not the colours in the prints but the colours that will work back with them. I have done a very calming stone grey this season that is a great antithesis for the brighter print pieces. I like to design simple piece as vehicle for the print, clean lines and silhouettes. And then for monochrome pieces they can have more structure and more interesting pattern cutting techniques.
If you had to choose one stand out piece, what would it be?
For this season, I really love the orange floral print, its very strong. I first designed this print in black, white and grey as a very soothing cool print. I had a play with colour and added some of my favourite tones: purple, yellow and grey. I then played with the orange background and it really came alive. It felt like a really risky print, people would either love it or hate it, and they are loving it! I also love the leather skirt I’ve done with angled exposed zip pockets and a front split. It’s super flattering, sits on the waist and is really slimming, so that is a definite favourite for the season. It sits perfectly between vintage and now which I really like in my designs.
It’s hard to chose a favourite piece; I love the Molly dress, simple elegant and easy to wear. I love the Hart pant, they are quite high waisted in a light cotton twill spandex and feature a side seam moved forward to the edge of the leg so it create an illusion of a super slim leg.
The Leonard St. spring collection is available online and in stores. For contact details and store locations, visit leonardstreet.com.au.
Just as the weather is warming up, Onya Magazine has the exclusive Leonard St. top, pictured above, to giveaway. For your chance to win, please email info@onyamagazine.com with the subject line ‘Leonard St.’ and let us know what your ultimate spring accessory is. Please also include your full name, clothing size and postal address. Entries close at 5pm Thursday 23rd October, 2014. The winner will be drawn at random and notified via email.
