There are florals, and then there are florals that refuse to behave themselves.
Our new Cloudflower print belongs firmly to the latter camp. Taking it's inspiration from the Bloomsbury Set, it is painterly rather than pretty-pretty, graphic without feeling geometric and nostalgic without looking remotely like costume, it has been designed for women who prefer their vintage inspiration with personality.
Cloudflower takes its inspiration from the wonderfully unconventional artistic world of the Bloomsbury Set and translates that creative spirit into a fluid, feminine print made for the modern wardrobe. Naturally, we have given it a little 1930s glamour along the way.
Long before the phrase lifestyle became part of the fashion lexicon, the Bloomsbury Set understood something rather more interesting: that art did not have to remain politely on the wall. It could spill onto the furniture, dance across ceramics, cover a lampshade, decorate a door and eventually transform an entire house.
The circle of artists, writers and intellectuals that became known as the Bloomsbury Set emerged in early 20th-century London around figures including Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry and Clive Bell. Their approach to art was entwined with their approach to life, intellectually curious, unconventional and strikingly modern.
"intellectually curious, unconventional and strikingly modern" |
That spirit found perhaps its most intoxicating expression at Charleston, the Sussex farmhouse where Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant moved in 1916. Over decades, the house became a collaborative canvas. Walls, doors, fireplaces, furniture and everyday objects were painted and decorated until Charleston became not simply the backdrop to Bloomsbury life but an extraordinary creative work in its own right.
More than a century later, its particular alchemy of colour, pattern, freedom and beautiful imperfection continues to influence fashion and interiors.
And it is here that the story of our new Cloudflower print begins.
Vanessa Bell, was a painter at the forefront of British modernism, she was also a prolific designer, applying her ideas to textiles, carpets, embroidery, ceramics, furniture and interiors. In 1913 she became closely involved with Roger Fry and Duncan Grant in the Omega Workshops, an experimental design enterprise that sought to bring the radical energy of contemporary art into ordinary domestic life. A chair could be art. So could a rug. So could the cup from which you drank your morning coffee.
Artists working for Omega produced furniture, fabrics, clothing, ceramics and decorative objects, often using abstract shapes, unexpected combinations of colour and deliberately expressive brushwork. Individual pieces were generally marked with the Greek letter Omega rather than the artist's signature, reinforcing the collaborative nature of the enterprise.
"For women who believe what they wear can be a little work of art" |
Among the pieces connected with this creative world is the c.1914 plate attributed to Vanessa Bell pictured below.
There is something immediately captivating about it. A boldly outlined blue vase anchors the composition, from which a wonderfully unruly arrangement of green stems and crimson flowers appears to spring. But it is the larger golden blooms that caught our eye. They are not flowers in the conventional botanical sense. Instead, Bell reduces them to loose, irregular concentric circles, one hand-painted contour sitting inside another. They wobble. They vary. They possess none of the mechanical perfection that a computer-generated motif might produce. And therein lies their charm. The flower has become an idea of a flower. That simple device became the starting point for Cloudflower.
Rather than recreate the original design, we took its spirit of abstraction and explored what might happen if those concentric blooms were allowed to multiply, overlap and drift across fabric. Each flower is constructed from a succession of irregular outlines. Some are small and tightly coiled; others open into larger, cloud-like forms. They overlap and interrupt one another, creating a sense of movement across the fabric. There is no rigid symmetry. That was important.
The beauty of Bloomsbury decorative art is that lines do not always march obediently in formation. Colour can escape its expected boundaries. Pattern feels painted rather than manufactured. Cloudflower embraces that same philosophy. The result is an abstract floral print that feels simultaneously vintage and modern, with enough nostalgia to appeal to lovers of Bloomsbury style and vintage-inspired fashion, but without ever slipping into costume.
Vanessa Bell and her contemporaries refused to treat creativity as something precious that should be kept at a distance. At Charleston, art became part of domestic life. At Omega, it found its way onto textiles, furniture and ceramics, capturing that enduring quality beautifully: generations later, designers and artists continue to return to the house because its creative energy still feels startlingly alive. Cloudflower continues that conversation in our own small way. The concentric flower that once appeared on a painted plate becomes a repeating motif. The motif becomes fabric. And the fabric becomes something to wear.
Not an archival reproduction, but a new interpretation shaped by our own love of vintage fashion, 1930s and mid-century silhouettes, beautiful textiles and the lost art of dressing up. Because perhaps the best tribute to Bloomsbury isn't to preserve its aesthetic under glass. It is to allow it to live again. To take it to dinner. To wear it to a wedding.To dance in it.
Meet our Cloudflower print on the Mabel Jumpsuit and Iris Dress, two very different silhouettes united by one rather special print.
For women who believe what they wear can be a little work of art, consider this your invitation to join the Bloomsbury set.
Frances Partridge, Quentin and Julian Bell, Duncan Grant, Clive Bell and Beatrice Mayor standing besides a kneeling Roger Fry and Raymond Mortimer sitting down.