Coats from Left to Right, Top to Bottom; Beckett, du Maurier, de Beauvoir Long, de Beauvoir Short, Mitford, Woolf, Elizabeth I & Elizabeth II
The coat collection recalls the period of fine tailoring of the 1930s and 1940s before mass-production came to dominate clothing choice. The garments are constructed using a more traditional approach to tailoring and are made in the UK. This not only affects the look and feel of the coat but also the longevity of the coat.
The design influence of the current collection is mid-20th Century writers. The coats take their names from the works and photographs of writers. The initial
inspiration came from a Richard Avedon portrait of playwright, Samuel Beckett wearing a tweed jacket. Eloise Grey styled her Beckett style on a classic man’s tweed jacket making it fitted around the chest and shoulders with an elegant straight line. This theme lead to the feminine lines of Mitford, after elegant novelist Nancy Mitford. Then followed the sharper tailoring, in du Maurier and then, the classic ease of de Beauvoir after Simone de Beauvoir. The final coat following the writers theme is the lean silhouette of Woolf, after Virginia
Woolf. Elizabeth I & II broke the rule. This coat started out as J.P. Sartre but it evolved and didn’t seem to suit a writer. This design is a re-interpretation of the traditional Austrian Loden coat with the large pleat at the back hanging from the shoulder blade. It recalled photographs of the Royal Princesses of the 1930s. The pleated raised collar has something of the Elizabethan era ruffle. Hence Elizabeth I with the ruffled collar and Elizabeth II with the plain collar.
© Eloise Grey 2007-8