Lazy Oaf Meets Fred

>> This post is so saturated with colour, joy and all things that are required to celebrate the coming of a weekend, that I was almost tempted to make some of the pics monochrome just to calm it down a bit.  That would be a poor injustice to accessories/props/rainbow whizkid Fred Butler though who has once again painstakingly created a visual feast for the eyes and this time it's to celebrate her jewellery collaboration with Lazy Oaf.  She could have sat back, bunged her jewellery on some perspex boxes and be done with it.  Instead, she has created these paper birds that fly through the windows adorned with the collection…

It's the first time Fred Butler has made her jewellery on an accessible price point level and if you're at all familiar with Lazy Oaf (my go-to place in London for random gifts…), you'll know accessible ACTUALLY means accessible.  Lazy, by name and nature though, the collaboration is not yet up on their website, even though it was supposed to go up today, but I'm guessing the necklaces and hairclip will be around the ¬£15-¬£30 mark.  The acrylic/perspex pieces hark back to previous Fred Butler collections, losing none of the visual appeal of her work…  

Here's Fred wearing a Lazy Oaf cat-print top together with fashion and costume designer KIrsty McKenzie…

…who both have a love cats on their backs…

The evening also gave me the opportunity to discover Kate Franklin of Pomp de Franc's wonderful cake artistry!  The cupcake continues to linger on at fashion events but at least Pomp de Franc's ones have ambitious oomph both in visual appeal and in taste (they have gooey fruit centres!)

Pomp de Franc also created this pearlescent candy-coloured battenburg cake, inspired by Fred Butler's mainlne A/W 11 collection 'Incadescent Meta-Morph-Incessant' – some of my favourite words stuffed into one phrase… I'm also digging 'resplendent' as a word at the moment which is exactly what this cake is…

Can't put it any better than the way Fred says it so…

"I‚Äôve stripped back use of layering materials and concentrated on the purity of paper and paper folding. Shapes and silhouettes employ a new technique developed in my ongoing exploration into origami.  On a recent trip back to my favourite haunts of China Town NYC, I realised that origami is an infinite craft of possibilities with no limits.  My new collection is an experiment in pushing these boundaries utilizing both the top and bottom conflicting surfaces of structures for contrast in texture.

Here are images of patchwork paper, playing around with painting via collage instead of actual paint. I‚Äôve transposed my hobby and routes of designing paper-cut art into my accessories.  Accumulating origami squares is the best source for collecting rare colour and I initially fell in love with the craft by default, looking at instruction manuals when I bought the packs of paper.  I wanted to celebrate this history to my story and run with the idea."

(Photographer: Elisha Smith-Leverock , Stylist: Kim Howells)