Wandwoods, the latest addition to the Vancouver fashion scene, looks like it emerged from the pages of a Jane Austen novel.
The flowing linen skirts and muted colour palates are at home surrounded by wildflowers and rolling hills with the promise of an idyllic and untroubled life where your biggest problem is choosing between the handsome duke or the even more handsome lord.
Indeed, the debut three-piece capsule from Wandwoods is named the ‘Austen’ collection; designing it helped founder Natalia Pavanelli find peace and happiness again. And the innocent romance of each piece is only buoyed by the zero-waste small quantity mentality that helped create it.
After 11 years in the fashion industry dressing up in other people’s designs and moulding herself to the style of each brand she worked for, self-confessed fast fashion addict Pavanelli says she was constantly stressed and suffering from depression when she discovered cottagecore. That the aesthetic and lifestyle helped to wake her up and set her on a new path that she is following with her whole heart.
“I had no name for it at the time,” she says of the cottagecore movement.
Seeing creators like Wendy Hansen of the Instagram account @aquietwild helped Pavanelli identify a vintage dress-centric style that she had always been drawn to but didn’t have the vocabulary to identify and wasn’t fully given the opportunity to explore in her previous fashion jobs. It also introduced her to the world of sustainability.
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