March is a very good month for celebrating women – thanks to the double whammy of International Women’s Day and Mothering Sunday. The Well Worn is a proud all-female company: from founder Emma to Coco the dog! and we’re supported by a host of wonderful women – including you. (Thank you!) We’re small but mighty, changing the way we shop, one sustainable, slow fashion piece at a time.
And it ought to be a good month for ushering in Spring, but given the unseasonal chill, we’re keeping cosy with a waistcoat or cardigan, opting for that classic – jeans and nice top, and layering dresses over – and under - knits.
Even so, we look forward to summer dress season. It’s coming, and we have some fabulous new dresses coming your way. But for now – whilst we wait for Spring - some March inspiration.
With love from,
Emma and the Well Worn Team x
Mending and Patching Workshop
Patchwork is our destiny! From an early passion for Holly Hobbie - surely you’ve noticed the parallels between her attire and our mixed print Rosalie dress? (Although bonnets are not part of our repertoire. Not yet anyway.) Via my first ever job in a quilting shop, to scouring ebay and markets for vintage quilts to turn into jackets and waistcoats. We use patches for our Reworked Denim collection, hand-stitching each patch using Sashiko thread – so they are perfectly imperfect, and ready for their next life. Fuel your patchwork passion with a mooch around the V&A’s collection of quilts, or come and try it yourself! I’m running a mending and patching denim workshop at my Winchester studio and would love to see you there.
Sat 1st April 2-5pm
The Vintage Shop of Second Chances – Libby Page
What’s better than one strong female character? Three of them. A yellow dress in the window of a vintage shop in Frome is the thread which links Lou, Donna and Maggy across the generations in Libby Page’s delightful, heart-warming new novel. By way of research, Page had the pleasurable task of immersing herself in the V&A archive, film footage and 1950s magazines. Right up our street.
Local sustainable hero: Stem & Green
Nothing says Spring quite like green shoots poking up through the earth – and with this in mind, we’ll be planting seeds from local flower farm, Stem & Green. Their farm is tucked into a quiet corner of the beautiful Itchen Valley – just outside Winchester (where you’ll find our studio). They grow beautiful, seasonal English flowers – it’s a proper English country garden. High street flowers have one of the largest carbon footprints per £1 spent – as they’re grown with chemicals and heat and flown in from abroad): Stem & Green was founder James Greig’s ethical, sustainable answer. And if you can’t wait for your seeds to grow, then seasonal fresh flowers are available to order now.
Big, bold and brilliant – Women Artists and Global Abstraction at the Whitechapel Gallery
A vibrant, exciting exhibition of 81 overlooked female Abstract Expressionists, featuring many works which have never before been displayed in the UK. Pollock who? “It is often said that the Abstract Expressionist movement began in the USA, but this exhibition’s geographic breadth demonstrates that artists from all over the world were exploring similar themes of materiality, freedom of expression, perception and gesture, endowing gestural abstraction with their own specific cultural contexts – from the rise of fascism in parts of South America and East Asia to the influence of Communism in Eastern Europe and China”.