seventyfive’s first collection is, Tacet. Tacet is a capsule womenswear collection for the climate of the Summer and the Fall, although it is designed to be wearable all year round. Each piece in Tacet is designed to have its own special details, some will be seen, others felt, they are not ostentatious or for others, they’re for you. This also means that Tacet should be easy to mix and match, within the collection, with other seventyfive garments and, hopefully, outside of the collection too. This is particularly true if you’re pairing Tacet with natural fabrics.
What was the inspiration behind Tacet? Tacet began with a photo.
The photo in the top right is my maternal grandmother, from North East China (Dongbei). It was taken during her adolescence in the 1940s and 50s. It was a time of turmoil and flux. From there, to find further inspiration we looked backwards. On the left is a family portrait of my great grandfather, taken towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. In addition to my family’s own memories, I’ve been using archival imagery from the Qing Dynasty and the Repulican period for inspiration.
I also looked forwards, through my grandmother's journey, exploring how she grew older into the 1980s, as the tight control over culture and aesthetics loosened. My mother follows; she moved from Dongbei to Guangdong, via Xi’an, and then to Canada. As she moved around the world becoming a transnational Chinese, she dealt with converging aesthetic influences; they shine through in these garments.
With this family history in mind, the garments are rounded, with more fluid lines inspired by the late Qing and Republican photographs I found. I make use of jade, in larger stones and for buttons; I’m wearing a jade necklace given to me by my mother as I write this. Jade is a material that is passed down, it is multi-generational and inherited, just as I hope these garments can be.
Wearing jade changes it, the rough edges become smooth, new patterns emerge and the colour changes, this is the natural evolution of the materials around us, and seventyfive garments are meant to evolve too. In keeping with this, the majority of the collection is hand dyed by myself, each hand dyed garment is unique in colour and tone, this will change overtime as well.
These garments do not represent a single moment in time, they represent the passage of time, they will grow and change along with you.
The garments that makeup Tacet have been handmade in North London. They should be comfortable, wearable and durable. The majority of the pieces are hand dyed at number seventyfive, using carefully sourced organic materials, predominantly cotton and raw silk.
The Tacet lookbook is viewable here. To further understand the aesthetic influences behind Tacet, have a look at the Tacet mood-board.
-seventyfive