Orphism Collection
Young V&A Sustainable Marketplace, Winter 2024–2025
Children already see the world the way Orphism asked adults to try to: in pure colour, in shape before symbol, in delight before judgement. This capsule collection started with that instinct: that a child's instincts, bold and bright and unafraid, could be worn on the outside, and worn exquisitely rather than as costume.
Over the winter, two looks stood in succession at the centre of the Young V&A's Sustainable Marketplace, each built entirely from reused fabric and cast-off materials, each cut and finished to haute couture standard.
The First
A jewel-blue circle dress, its bodice embroidered with a burst of cadmium-yellow abstraction, paired with an asymmetric halo hat hand-sewn from old T-shirts and ribbon scraps: a small, wearable riot of shape and colour. Bell-like sleeves bloomed at the wrist, colour moving rhythmically down the arm toward hands already delighting in the act of making.
The Second
A T-shirt hand-draped from a palette of textile scraps, worn as a living piece of abstract art rather than a garment with a fixed size, made to fit and delight anyone from two to eight, its colour and shape drawing the eye around and around the body. Underneath, resurfaced shoes: cut away, repainted, rethreaded with heavy Japanese royal-blue rope and fastened with a yellow geometric hexagon toggle.
Every piece sprang from the same underlying idea, from a colourful branch of cubism: Orphism's use of pure, harmonious colour to move a viewer emotionally, the way music moves a room. Scaled down to fit a child and rebuilt entirely from what would otherwise have gone to landfill. I wanted children to embody from the outside the way they already feel on the inside.
These two looks represented the rest of the collection that was on sale at the museum’s marketplace that winter. By the time the season closed, every piece had found a child: to be worn and loved, each one carrying a little of that same unafraid brightness back out into the world.
