Creative Process ~ Hille Raincoat

Blue Nude ~ Slow Fashion Brand - Anna Cutting Lining for Hille

 

Hille is our first-ever raincoat, a colourful companion to a rainy day.

Its outer, a water resistant technical gabardine shell, is done in a rich shade of Indian red. Despite its technical qualities, as a luxury fabric it drapes and has a sheen. The inner is a surprising display of collaborating artist James Watkins' colourful swirling forms in a smooth twill.

For the Chame collection, James painted original works on large-scale canvases. However for the pieces themselves, he photographed small sections of his artworks to use as prints in the collection, rather than use the entire canvas. In Hille's artwork, the closeup reveals the texture of the canvas on the coat.

In the artwork, dominant reds and greens are accented by blue and grey. Flashes of blue mimic a distant mountain range, with a field of long grasses beneath. A swirling form lies in the corner, an indefinable energy amongst the natural world.

 

Blue Nude ~ Slow Fashion Brand - Hille Raincoat Artwork by James Watkins

James Watkins' artwork for the Hille Raincoat.

 

Hille's outer consists of European-made waterproof technical gabardine in a rich shade of red. It's a beautiful, responsible, water resistant material that possesses a light sheen. Its fibres consist of 70% Seaquall and 30% recycled polyester. Seaquall is a high-quality 100% post-consumer recycled polyester yarn containing up-cycled marine plastic (10%), with the remaining 90% being post-consumer PET from land sources. The coat's lining is rPET recycled polyester twill, made from post-consumer plastic packaging products.

While we typically avoid using oil-derived fabrics in our collections, we decided to move ahead with responsible polyesters for Hille as they offer the most durable and suitable water resistance for a rain jacket. It should be noted polyester is a contributor to ocean microplastics - when washing your coat, we recommend using a Guppy Friend washing bag to capture the microparticles before they enter the water stream.

Our digital printing supplier is based near London, in the meadows of the Cotswolds. They print with only azo-free dyes.

 

Blue Nude ~ Slow Fashion Brand - Cutting the Hille Raincoat's Lining

Cutting the Hille's lining at our manufacturing studio in North London.

 

Each coat is manufactured at a North London based small-batch production studio. The studio specializes in high-end production, working with many emerging and established designers and brands in the city. It takes seven hours to cut and sew just one of our pieces.

You can purchase the Hille Raincoat here, in our new extended size range.

 

 Blue Nude ~ Slow Fashion Brand - Hille Raincoat

 

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