Our favourite thing each season is to discover which of our designs you choose for your children - truly, it is the thing that keeps us going and enjoying this creative journey.  We design timeless, traditional children’s clothing to be worn & loved and pride ourselves on being a sustainable & ethical small business. We design our clothes here in the UK and if you have time to read on, we would love to share with you a glimpse into our creative process.

We work over a year ahead on our collections, and the very first stages of designing a season are arguably the most exciting! In the early stages we have little idea of exactly which way we will head, or how the finished collection will end up looking - we start with a fresh sheet of paper, and a clear head, always.

We spend time gathering together the colours that we love and these become the seeds of inspiration and the starting point for every new season’s designs. Creating the perfect colour palette is essential to us. We spend ages flicking through our big Pantone swatch books, whilst sipping coffee in our favourite cafe in Worcester. Because our clothing is always inspired by nature and everything old fashioned, faded and vintage we tend to lean towards neutral and muted tones. One thing that we've learnt over the years is that colour inspiration can come from anywhere, it could be from an autumnal leaf found on a walk, a pebble on a windswept beach, an old torn piece of wallpaper or an old leather bound book and its illustrations. Our eyes are always open and waiting for the next moment of inspiration.

Recently, we spent a lovely Sunday morning walking around our local flea market in Malvern and came across a stall selling piles and piles of French wallpaper illustrations from the 1830’s, we could have spent all morning looking through those sheets and choosing from them. We picked out maybe five of our favourite sheets and brought them home with us (truthfully we wanted to buy them all but sadly our budget wouldn’t stretch!). These hand-drawn and painted illustrations are so delicate and beautiful and so inspiring, we just wonder who painted them all of those years ago. It is little finds like this that inspire us and help us create something that we love, that is special, different from everything else, and bespoke to Little Cotton Clothes.  

In recent months I (Imogen) have been slowly teaching myself to design floral motifs and repeats using Illustrator, I love the freedom of being able to make our florals look exactly how we want them to look. I can tweak the scales, colours and spacing until they are just perfect for our clothing. I can spend days perfecting just one floral and enjoy the creative process so much. To see that floral design printed on our beautiful organic cotton, cut and sewn into a pretty little dress and then being enjoyed by you and your children is just the icing on the cake.   

We hope you have enjoyed discovering a little more about what inspires us and some of the processes involved in designing your children's clothing.

With love,

Leonie and Imogen

xxx