Our new Autumn Winter Lowie collection has started to arrive in store and will be appearing more and more over the next few weeks. 

Our new collection is inspired by Eastern European traditional costume, embroidery and textiles, cheekily referencing The Sound of Music.  

Our Folk Embroidered midi skirt is made from hand-woven cotton khadi fabric and hand detailed with traditional ric-rac ribbon and embroidery. Although it is new for AW19 it isn't...really.

We have all heard of the ridiculous and shocking ways in which some brands 'get rid' of stock that hasn't sold. Unlike good sustainable fashion brands, Nike famously slashed brand new trainers and items of clothing, H&M incinerated 19 tonnes of unworn clothes and the most famous Burberry who hit the headlines for burning $38 million worth of unsold stock. 

As a small and responsible brand this is something we would never want to do, and that's the way it should be. Last year we produced some black skirts for our AW18 collection. They were beautifully made from 100% hand woven khadi cotton in Jaipur, India and had a lovely subtle waistband with a black and gold trim. Unfortunately these skirts didn't sell well for us. We could have heavily discounted these pieces but they are of high quality and we don't like our quality pieces to be undervalued.

Kamlesh embroidering on the ric-rac

For our AW19 collection, we designed a similar skirt with ric-rac embroidery with a new longer, updated length. We realised that instead of manufacturing a new skirt we could use our unsold stock and 'upcycle' them. After conversations with our supplier we ran through the changes we needed to make: adding an extra panel of the same fabric for the length and handing over to skilled craftswomen to add the ric-rac and embroidery detailing.

We are so proud to announce our 'upcycled' skirt and I hope you will agree this is not the cliche or amateur connotations you might have of upcycling.  This is a luxury piece which has been carefully considered, well designed and with great skill transformed;  a piece to keep for life.  

Asha mid embroidering