Jenny Postle - LeuttonPostle - Knitwear Designer.

Sam Leutton and Jenny Postle

Today the BRILLIANT Jenny Postle came into Uni and gave us a BRILLIANT talk about her work.
Jenny is primarily a knitwear designer but she describes herself as more of a textile designer who specialises in knitwear as she doesn't use knit in very unconventional ways. LeuttonPostle is a label created by herself and Sam Leutton who she met whilst studying her BA. They have created many collections together and their can be purchased from H Lorenzo in L.A, Primitive in London and avenue32,com, and their label is sponsored by LORAX who feature in some of their more recent collections.

Postle studied a BA in textiles at Central Saint Martins and for her graduate show, she created a range of samples and three garments featuring the 'E-Wrap Knit technique.

She then, after completing her BA, she went straight onto to study an MA in Fashion; Specialising in Knitwear.

Jenny Postle MA

This collection was bought by leadin boutique, Browns Focus. From this, she gained much praise from international press.

Although she uses many different fabrics and yarns in one garment (featured on the garments pictured above), she explains that sometimes her collections are misconceived as being recycled or up-cycled and they are most definitely not, they are almost the opposite of this and she says that she is pretty much wasteful of all of the fabrics as she uses so much of them and there are so many scraps left over. She called it an "overdose of fabric".

 She then went on to show the first collection that she created with Sam Leutton after then decided to collaborate in 2011. This collection was shown in September of the same year.

S/S 12 (Shown September 2011)- Leutton.Postle

If you watch the video of the show, you may be able to notice some of the garments have A LOT going on at the front and a plain back - she says that she tell people that it was on purpose but really it is because she had put SOOOOO much work into the front and the back, she felt that the back didn't need as much attention.
"quote about front'
She also said that she never thought of the items in this collection commercially, just something she wanted to create. She doesn't want sexy, she wants ugly and weird, a bit monster-y. - She talks about an inspiration, Robbie Spencer- Stylist of Dazed and Confused who creates looks that she does work for and how she wants her pieces to look. She goes onto talk about how he uses 'quota' in a clever way in how he styles. If, say 20% of Chanel had to be featured in the magazine, he would, for instance, wrap a Chanel jacket around the models leg - it is adding texture to the shot but just because it isn't worn conventionality on someone's back, it is still there so the quota would have been met as they have still featured that piece in the magazine.

Styling by Robbie Spencer - Dazed and Confused.

She explained how she loved images like this wear the face is covered, she replicated this idea in a future show where she featured reverse appliqué masks.

A/W 12 Reverse appliqué mask

Fast forward to the A/W 12 show. A lot more ready to wear clothing was made. Jenny describes this as having a jacket looking liked a jacket and a skirt looking like a skirt, garments which are actually thought about commercially - "Balancing out the weirdness with utility". This collection featured a lot more textiles than knit. Everything was very layered and there was a huge element of illustration shown here.

 I personally really like the outfits in this collection. Especially the ones which had what looked like metallic foils embroidered into them.

The make up of these looks was created by Lucy Bridge who translated the idea from Postle of 'monster-y' onto the faces.

Spring/Summer '13 - A collection Postle describes as flatter. The fabrics were so much more 'flat' than previously collections, there were very few heavily woven fabrics or chunky reverse appliqué pieces. There were more block colours in this collection too, there seemed to be a theme running through of a vibrant cerise and a powdered, antique pink.
 I like how this collection features alot of sheer fabric, for example in the maxi length skirt shown, I creates a real feminine look which, although all collections so far have been for females, they don't have that 'delicate' element to them like this one. This collection, to me, feels pretty 60's-esque, with the classic semi-spread collars, the short angled sleeves, the playful, Babydoll-like shapes of the dresses and the bold pink lip.

In the A/W '13 collection LOREX became involved in the company. LeuttonPostle were going to be creating a fashion film as this was the 'next big thing' that the British Fashion Council were really pushing. So they created one inspired by Pans People, that very 80's look with the fuzzy screen, bright colours, crimped hair, and dancing around - a really fun look; which is what the brand wanted to go for, they wanted to show that they didn't take 'fashion' too seriously. The film was by Amy Gwatkin who now creates all of their other fashion films as well.

Although they were pleased with this film and it got good response, they felt like it put them into a certain catagory of we love fashion but we are different and kooky and fun. They tried to be really different but really they had put themselves into the 'other category' and so they weren't really different at all. So they set about to improve and change this for the next collection.

They did this in the S/S/ '14 collection. LORAX was included again but this time in a more matte and delicate state so that it was very subtle. Amy Gwatkin made another film for them and they tried to do something really DIFFERENT and INNOVATIVE. The film was inspired by the work by photographer Martin Parr who photographed typical English-ness. Not the stereotypical english tweed and pipe look, but they rough and raw images of Britain. The collection of images that was especially an inspiration in this film for them was 'Style Of The Times: A Portrait Of The Nations Tastes' - images taken in peoples homes of mundane aspects of the peoples lives and narrated them with humorous captions, perfectly describing each image.

'We wanted a cottagey stately home kind of feel.' 1991

I think we are lucky to have informed taste - with my position as a fine arts valuer. 1991.

'Underneath it all she really is a lovely girl'. 1992.

The film involved the same concept of a girl in her very boring home talking about very mundane topics whilst wearing fabulous outfits, you cant quite believe that he personality and her house is so dull because of the way she looks.

The film was excellently received by worldwide press and was listed as one of the TOP 10 fashion films world wide against all other designers and design houses, including all of the major ones.
This goes to show that when you use and do something different with what you have you can become successful, you don't have to spend millions.

Fast forwarding again to the most recent collection from LeuttonPostle. A/W '14.

This collection, as you can see, is very monochrome, a different step for LP as to what they have created previously with so many colour combinations. The texture is also refined using mohair and Lorex. The garments are said to look printed but in actuality they are all knitted, this idea was created to give knitwear a very youthful and fun feel and take the image of a stereotypical knit jumper out of your head.
Again, another fashion film was created for this collection with a similar theme as the last film as it was so successful. This film features sisters who live in Blackpool and work at Blackpool pleasure beach. Again, like the last film, the girls look amazing but there surroundings and what they talk about are so mundane, it's a brilliant contrast.

Most recently, LeuttonPostle have worked with the cider brand Kopparberg, in Kopparberg, Central Sweden.

They were commissioned to take the idea of the traditional Swedish knit jumper, and modernise it (like the had done with their last collection). This would be used in the campaign for Kopparberg's new winter Spiced Apple Cider.
They de-constructed the typical Swedish knit and put it back together again, here is the result...

This was the first time that the company have featured a male in their collections, this is because Kopparberg wanted this to be a uni-sex campaign.
Kopparberg x LeuttonPostle

She then finished off by talking to us about how we can really get into the industry and how we can gain more experience. The best way to start is to intern. She told us that she doesn't really know anyone in fashion, especially in styling, who didn't intern. It's just what you do, "it's rough but it's the way to do it".
A really good Tumblr blog to look at on this is http://wheniwasanintern.tumblr.com/
As an intern you can work your way up to become an assistant and so on. It is really a STAMINA job.
This was all really helpful information as obviously I will have to intern in the very near future and it is great to get some tips on how to go about it and what it is really like.

She also gave us a lot of other pieces of advice after asking her questions about different aspects of her work.
One of the things she advised us on is to look at art, most of her inspiration comes from that, she also looks at fashion but not to be inspired by, to see what is relevent. In this career "YOU ALWAYS NEED TO BE RELEVENT" if you don't keep up to date with what is going on then the things do won't be successful because they won't be relevent anymore.



She talked about her main inspiration for her designs, The Memphis Group, an Italian design and architecture company founded by Ettore Sottass in 1981. She told us of a time that she as at an art gallery and she was overwhelmed by how busy it was, she couldn't hardly see anything because everyone was in the way and suddenly she turned around and saw this piece (pictured), and she just burst out crying. She had been so inspired by this group and to see there work in person was so overwhelming.
She said, "Find the thing, the designer, the movement, the painter, the sculpture that changes you".


leuttonpostle.com


I created a short post about a visit from Charlotte Jacklin, Creator and Editor of Betty Magazine, on my other blog HERE

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