inspiration: Bill Cunningham

Part of our weekly Saturday morning ritual includes logging onto the New York Times website to watch Bill Cunningham's weekly On The Street video post.


Mr. Cunningham is a New York institution, a fashion journalist who documents fashion trends and photographs society events for the Times. He's also a genuinely nice guy. Todd and Tsia seem to run into him on a regular basis and always have pleasant conversations with him. He rides around the city on his bicycle, photographing anyone who catches his eye. He's got the best job ever, I think.

He also has a great eye for details and the way people put together their outfits.

Mr. Cunningham documents trends as he sees them. It's fun to see fashion through his eyes, and I'm often inspired by the people who show up on his weekly posts.

blueberries for S

I found a bunch of tiny metal buckets at a gardening store last year and knew exactly what to do with them. I brought them, with a few pints of blueberries and the book Blueberries for Sal, to Tsia's school for snack time.

If you're not familiar with the story, little Sal and her mother go up Blueberry Hill to pick blueberries to can for the winter. Sal's mother picks blueberries and puts them into her large bucket, and Sal likes the sound the blueberries make when she drops them into her own little bucket: kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk. But Sal really prefers to eat the berries.

While I read the story out loud to S and her classmates, they dropped blueberries into their buckets just like Sal. They liked the kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk sound the berries made but, just like Sal, they preferred to eat them.

After a while of picking, Sal gets tired and sits down to eat all the berries she can reach from her spot.

Meanwhile in the story, Little Bear and his mother are coming up the other side of
Blueberry Hill, eating all the berries they can store up for winter. Little Bear gets tired and sits down to eat blueberries while his mother continues along.

But when Sal and Little Bear hurry to catch up with their mothers, things get all mixed up. Little Sal finds Little Bear's mum, and Little Bear finds little Sal's mum. Everyone is surprised, and both mums go hurrying off to find their own offspring. I love the expression on the Little Bear's mom's face in this illustration.

In the end, everyone is reunited, get all the berries they need, and return home down their respective sides of the mountain for a happy ending. Here are Sal and her mother, canning blueberries for the winter.

And at the end of our story, everyone had eaten all their blueberries and had a good time in the process.

inspiration: sartorialist

My schedule for the rest of the summer is going to be somewhat more relaxed, thank goodness! The fall Oliver + S patterns are headed to the printer on Monday, and then I'll have a little time to start preparing some other projects without looming deadlines. I'll be putting together some design ideas, sketching, assembling tear sheets, building some much-needed bulletin boards for the studio, sewing school uniforms for S, and maybe even relaxing a bit. Nice!

So while I'm sorting through masses of inspirational materials that have accumulated in the studio, in my sketchbooks, and on my laptop I thought it might be fun to share some of the things that have been inspiring me. I'll make a little series of posts out of it.

First up, the Sartorialist. I've been following Scott Schuman almost since the start of his blog, and I find endless inspiration in his work. Scott photographs style wherever he finds it, and he has a wonderful eye for detail and silhouette. I look at his blog frequently for inspiration in my own wardrobe as well as for design ideas.


This is a recent Sartorialist photo I keep coming back to. I love the layering of the long jacket over the dress, especially with the sleeves pushed up and with those gorgeous heels. The whole ensemble looks simultaneously effortless and chic. And while I'm not usually attracted to red in my own wardrobe, it's inspired me to re-think the color again as an accent. (I also love her hair, which is something I've been thinking about more as I struggle to grow out my super-short cut for something a little different. But I lost all the curl in my hair after Tsia was born and probably couldn't carry this off, unfortunately.)

This is an older Sartorialist photo that inspires me for its mood. I love the look these two dancers have assembled, but even more than that I love how focused and happy they appear. Her scarf and necklaces combined with sneakers are such a unique and playful but sophisticated look, and his dark hat, braces, bow-tie and shoes are a wonderful counterpoint to their summer whites. They look so glamorous.

I think this is what people mean when they refer to a woman as a gamine or an ingenue. She's so cute, and her close-fitting cropped jacket is a perfect contrast to her pleated high-waisted pants. What a great silhouette!

While sometimes I love everything about a look in these photos, other times I'm inspired by the way something is worn or by the colors or textures. One element might appeal or stand out to me. Like that red dress in the first photo, Scott's photos might cause me to think about a color differently or to combine two elements I wouldn't have thought to combine.

Scott himself gave a great presentation about his work that I encourage you to watch over at Art Babble if you're interested in the process of designing. I think he does an excellent job of explaining how his photographs are used by a many designers as inspiration. What he says certainly applies to me.

we especially need the ice part right now

Every summer Tsia picks out a new pair of Salt Water Sandals. In years past we've gone for yellow, but this year it's all about pink. Oh, is it ever about pink. In fact, her new pink sandals sparked a trend at school, and at least three classmates bought the exact same shoes before the end of school. (The flood of pink sandals caused some confusion, too, and on at least one occasion sandals were accidentally swapped and little girls went home wearing the wrong size.)


Anyway, Tsia also recently outgrew nearly all her clothes, and I had promised a dress from Heather Ross's unicorn fabric so the newly empty wardrobe happened to coincide with her beloved pink sandals and Heather's orange unicorn fabric. I knew I wanted to make an Ice Cream Dress from the fabric but was struggling with my color options: If I coordinated a solid color trim to the unicorn print I would need to use brown or yellow, and they both felt too 1970's with the orange. The dress also wouldn't have matched the sandals very well. And if it wasn't pink it might not get worn, unicorns or not. So we left the fabric's color palette entirely and chose a solid pink cotton that matches the sandals precisely. I love how it looks.


I finished the dress over the weekend, and it's overdue for a washing after having been worn many days in a row. Which seems to mean that the dress is a success.

All these hot colors felt right with our recent record-breaking hot weather, too, but thankfully it's starting to cool off a bit.

By the way, there's an Ice Cream Social being held over at Badskirt and one flew over later this month, if you're inclined to join in. I can hardly wait to see what everyone makes!