With Rosemount Fashion week starting in Sydney today I thought it was a good time to show you all a sneak preview of habbot’s Spring Summer collection. 

The shoe making will be getting underway in Italy quite soon – and shoes are available to purchase on-line or at our growing little bunch of store stockists in September.  (New stockist details will be added to the website closer to the SS11 release date). 

Here’s the official word on our Spring Summer 2011 collection

"Circular and organic orb shapes form the basis of this Spring Summer collection. This combines a notion of 70’s wallpaper/textile designs (such as those of Florence Broadhurst and marimekko) with the strikingly simple works coming from the latest Spring Summer collections of international designers such as Prada, Jil Sander and Jonathan Saunders.

The colour palette is bold, yet feminine and reminiscent of the colourful window displays of French Patisseries – hence the Famous French pastry chefs’ surnames used for each different style!"

(Each style comes in several other colours and are not all shown here). 

CAREME ~ lace up

HERME ~ ballet flat

TORREBLANCA ~ ballet flat

LENOTRE ~ gladiator sandal

WILLAUME ~ wedge sandal

TORRES ~ block heel sandal

TORREBLANCA ~ ballet flat

LENOTRE ~ gladiator sandal

FRIBERG ~ pump

Well, it’s been a large week for me folks. Bologna ‘Lineapelle’ feels like only yesterday … but this past seven days at the workrooms in Southern Italy has been excellent with lots of shoe making going on! (Many late nights – so alas very little brainpower for blogging).

I’m leaving for home on the weekend with a swag of samples to use for press and publicity for the coming Summer range, and the very first set of Winter 2012 prototypes.

I’ve included a ‘brogue’ story for Winter … so thought I’d include a few photos of how a brogue hole punch pattern is created, let’s just call it BROGUEING 101.  Even after seeing it many times I still get excited about the hand punching process. (I realize this might be just me!)

(I took these on my iphone – so apologies for the poor quality).

step 1: Hammering the punch stamp with great precision.

step 2: The ‘flower’ on the toe is made from another stamp carefully positioned on the toe pattern piece. 

The stamping is kept on track by making indentations along the border before the hammering begins. 

step 3: Stitching the leather pattern pieces together creates the ‘stitching’ which is very much part of the brogue pattern – and also keeps the leather pattern pieces together. (I’m stating the obvious here I realize!)

And voila - All hail the Brogue!

Footnote: whilst we’re on the topic of ‘brogues’ … I feel it is my duty to clear up a bit of confusion on the matter of the ‘brogue’ terminology. The term ‘brogue’ or ‘brogueing’ relates to a technique or treatment involving hole punching and stitching (as shown above). It is most commonly found on flat lace-up shoes however is not limited only to them (as my brogue Chelsea boot above demonstrates!) Many people (and I mean like everyone I know) call any type of lace-up a ‘brogue’ when in fact often they do not have any punching at all – and therefore, unfortunately – no brogue my friend!

If you are determined to give a lace-up a fancy name though, the 2 that I know of and believe are most commonly used relate to the way the laced section functions. A ‘derby’ lace-up has 2 pieces (like 2 ‘flaps’!!) sewn onto each side of the main ‘upper’ section that allow for much flexibility in terms of the width and instep of the wearer’s feet. An ‘oxford’ lace-up shoe refers to a style of lace-up that does not have these two side peices. It gives a very clean and sleek look – but a bit more work to step into for those with high arches!

This below style is not a brogue. (Although I hope you won’t hold that against it.) It is in fact an "oxford lace-up" and it’s part of the summer range (available in September).

 

 

OK, Ding Ding. Schools out!

FYI - I attempted some iphone videos of a few other processes this week …. Let’s just see how I go with the download. Stay tuned!

 

X

I’ve just finished up a successful, although quite intense few days at the Lineapelle fair in Bologna. Designers come from all over the world to attend this fair - from big name fashion houses, to upstarts like me!

The point of my visit is to discover the range of materials being presented by the tanneries/textile mills for the coming season* and then apply a small selection of them to my design sketches to form the Autumn Winter 2012 collection.

With so many exhibitors making so many different types of leather (to be used for different types of shoes), in a million different colours, it’s really quite a puzzle to sort through the huge amount of delights on offer. The challenge is to settle on a bunch of materials that give the collection the right ‘look’, whilst also being technically suitable.

I do arrive with some preconceived ideas of the direction I want the new collection to take to ensure it always has its own ‘habbot’ feel - rather than one that is dictated by ‘industry’ trend forecasts. But the lovely (yet slightly frustrating) thing about the ‘Italian way’ is that the tanneries take great pride in their own colour palette forecasts and won’t just make up anything you ask for … so it’s a case of hunting around each of the exhibition halls (all 40,665 square metres of them) to find exactly what I’m after.

But really, creating this ‘unique feel’ is the most exciting part of designing a range from scratch (and kind of the whole point actually) – and therefore makes it worth every nurofen!

 

I gave myself 3 days (compared to only 2 last time) in order to stroll (rather than jog) around the 9 exhibition halls in a more relaxed manner. The idea behind this was to allow the creative side of my brain time to arrive at material choices that the other more ‘commercially’ oriented side would also agree with, without losing too many marbles along the way. (The notion of giving myself time to stop each night for dinner whilst in the birthplace of ‘bolognaise’ was a significant motivator here too!)

In a nutshell, the first day was invigorating, the second confusing**, but by the end of day three I’m happy to say that I have a good idea of what materials I’ll use for the next Autumn/Winter 2012 collection.

You can expect some hand dip-dyed leathers for the ‘brogue shoot/boot story’, bright suedes for the ‘corset’ group, and contrast textile/suede combinations for the ‘toggle’ capsule! (Sounds good I hope – stay tuned for some images as the shoes come to life over the next 6-8 weeks – yes it really takes that long!)

More news from me soon as I head down south to spend all of next week working with Luigi & Peppe (my shoe makers).

 Annie

*If anyone’s interested, the strong trends for leathers were; all forms of reptile embossed leather (python, croc, snake), soft and big textured leathers (i.e. elephant look), printed or laser cut ‘pony’ hair, bright suedes and still a lot of vintage/washed looking leather. For textiles/fabrics the key areas were;  shiny/glittery finishes, quilted synthetics, laser print florals, and woven geometic patterns & tartans.

**As is often the case with my creative process – I start off calm – get a bit frazzled – eventually the jumbled ideas start to separate – the creamy ones rise to the top – the anxious feeling subsides and calmness prevails! 

Here’s a sneaky shot of the cutest shoe pick of the fair for me!  (Surprise, Surprise - it’s an oxford lace-up!)

 

Solo Dining - BEFORE and AFTER.


Just getting my dining priorities sorted! Tomorrow I'll get down to some serious shoe business at the Linea Pelle Leather fair here in bologna.

Excuse me as I write this post from my hotel room in Bologna where I've just arrived for the world's supremo leather and textiles fair, Lineapelle. Its 5:45pm but feels like about 3am as an interesting form of jet-lag is beginning to take hold ... but I just couldn't leave it for another day because .... our most recent stockist, House of Balaklava is making a big fuss about our arrival, and including us in their rotating designer program. So, this week marks the start of ‘habbot month at House of Balaklava’ and I’m excited!

 

House of Balaklava is located at 167 Carlisle Street, East St Kilda and offers a truly magnificent selection of accessories for men and women. ( www.houseofbalaklava.com.au, ph: 9525 6036.)

 .... or in their own words ...

“House of Balaklava is an Accessories Store, catering to both Men and Women, with a focus on the product of local design talent. We are on a mission to adorn all of Melbourne in the most beautiful and individual accessories available.  Our product has to be well made, it has to be cool, it has to be different!”

The brilliant Jacqui, Lisa and Leanne have been VM’ing up a frenzy in store, so I hope some of you will have time to visit during April. They’re also running a competition to win a pair of habbot shoes for customers that make an in-store purchase  before April 28^th.

 “habbot month at House of Balaklava” will only run for the month of April. I’d love your support to make it a tremendous success for the lovely ladies – so please help us spread the word and/or ‘like’ the note on our facebook page. (click here)

Habbot studios enjoyed a little bit of the ‘L’oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival’ action last week by dressing the feet of the ‘Cable Melbourne’ models at the Ready to Wear Trunk show.

 

Thanks to Cable for asking us to be involved. www.cablemelbourne.com

Hosier Lane ankle boot

Trunk boot

Rue Bebelon lace-up

The lovely Georgie Sutton - designer of Cable Melbourne - backstage

Hello my friends … it has indeed been quite a while since I posted a decent blog entry (8 long weeks in fact). Unfortunately I am without a good excuse other than I’ve been crazily busy and keep putting the blog writing off until another day for fear of writing something completely mad at 3am in the morning. This obviously means that I’m not a great ‘blogger under pressure’ …. But hopefully I can still apply for the good ‘shoe girl’ under pressure title - And I guess that’s really what this is all about isn’t it? Shoes.

So, if you can accept that rather round-about ‘apology’ for my absenteeism … I thought I’d skip you quickly through the last 2 months via a pictorial montage (minus the music).

Everyone happy? Good – let’s carry on then shall we.

PART 1: Website evolution

Early Feb we upgraded the website to one that included lots more information about the brand, and also an on-line shopping section.

Shopping on-line for shoes is a tricky business so I was really focused on putting lots of helpful information about the shoes and their sizing onto the site. I invented a ‘size check’ method using ‘footprint’ diagrams of each different style that will hopefully help people estimate their size (in length and width), and included the standard zoom functions, product descriptions and multi-view images. As a final recourse the return and exchange shipping is free so hopefully all of this will give people the confidence to buy on-line! Or at least check out the styles in detail before contacting a store stockist.

footprint 'size check'

A few more exciting press features this week for habbot studios - so just wanted to share the joy!

WHO magazine and GRAZIA both featured the black & white Degraves street in their fashion spreads.

And Sarah Willcocks from 'STYLE MELBOURNE' blog wrote a rather amazing article. Read it at
http://stylemelbourne.com/2011/02/shiny-new-shoes-habbot/


GRAZIA




WHO magazine



STYLE MELBOURNE blog

Last week was a very exciting week for us(me) at habbot studios ..... because we got our first bit of press coverage!

 

It came in the form of two articles in the City Weekly and another in Rag Trader (a retail industry mag).  Although I resemble my old music teacher in the photo (which is not exactly a good thing), I think both articles are really quite magnificent so I’m pretty pleased about them getting included.

 

There are some other potential features in a few other popular publications that may appear over the next few months.... but I don’t want to say any more than that as the world of press is a very funny one indeed and you never quite know what’s going to happen until the very last minute so I don’t want to jinx myself by speaking too soon!  (But trust me if they happen you’ll know about it because I’ll be proudly posting them here.)

 

... Also, I’m scheduled to be talking on JOY fm this Friday about habbot which is 50% exciting, and 50% terrifying. I will be practising not swearing between now and then – because I’m told that swearing on radio is NOT cool!

City weekly - Jan 26 2011


Rag Trader - Jan 28 2011

Time is racing by and I haven’t stopped to include a little post about my trip to Italy pre-Christmas. So, in order to get one in before Easter arrives, I’ve just put together a ‘collage’ of sorts of photos I took at the workrooms.

 

There’s a few in here of my Autumn Winter shoes in varying stages of production … and another lot of the first sightings of Spring summer 2011 prototypes.

 

Unfortunately my lovely shoe makers had been so passionately preparing for their Christmas knees-up that they had only managed to make the very initial prototypes (in rather plain brown/black leathers) and weren’t up to the second stage where the beautiful summer colours come into play. So I’ve included some photos of the my summer colour leather hides in the hope that you can get the general gist of things to come. I’ll include some better pictures of these proper coloured versions when the next samples arrive in a few weeks time.

Autumn Winter images ....



Spring Summer images ....