Winnifred’s

Winnifred’s needed staff ‘uniforms’ that were anything but uniform, and so Megan Nunn reached out to her good friends Shylo Engelbrecht & Lydia Pearson.

 

For us, the description Megan gave us about the growers and the small wine bars she loved visiting in France and Champagne really resonated because there was this mix of casual and formal and confidence and character, and tradition and individuality as well

We’re both Francophiles and we were both excited to be working on something where the aesthetic was aligned with something we both love.

 

 

When she first came and talked to us about, you were talking about the growers and the vineyards and it was so French, we kept thinking about the French waiters and how they always wore tuxedo shirts and black pants – and so that was out first point of departure, but we knew that it needed to be modern as well. And so we came up with the idea for the girls first, because we had just decided that we were going to make dresses out of Tuxedo shirts, and so we thought that would just be so perfect for the women to wear. We loved the history of the Tuxedo shirt and this detailing of the bib, and how formal it is on first appearance. But then we add the pockets and the other pieces of shirting and then the other layers to make the skirt – it makes it into something entirely different, quite fresh and modern.

And then as a riff on that, we thought for the men, they could wear a Tuxedo shirt and some Denim trousers, not jeans, trousers, but in denim. And then a friend of ours lent us this pair of vintage Italian sailor’s trousers and they are so fantastic, they’ve such great detailing on them. The jeans will be very tough. We want to make them out of really dark denim, so they look quite new and smart, but they’re still denim. They’re not really jeans, they’re an interesting riff on trousers. We’ll make sure there are pockets where there need to be pockets.

 

 

This is also our first collaboration in the cottage with Erin Lightfoot, who is a jewellery designer, and they make everything in-house. And we’re going to work together to make something completely bespoke for Winnifred’s, which would be this beautiful handmade ceramic broach, with the Winnifred’s W in the centre, and this would be worn here at the top of the collar of the shirt – in place of a tie – or for the boys, on the side.

 

 

It’s like a mixture of very formal and very modern, at the same time. Because it’s all cotton, it’s really heavy duty and it can be washed and bleached. You can really wash it in the same way as table linen. It’s not too fine or fragile. It also has nothing that will wear.

It’s the fusion of the old and new. So it’s where the Tuxedo shirt becomes a dress with the pockets that are made out of tuxedo shirting. And the longevity. Everything is really hard wearing, long-lasting fabrics, the denim the cotton shirting…

But I don’t think that’s the first thing you’ll think of when you look at the uniforms. I think the first thing you’ll think, hopefully, is ‘ooh, I like that one!’