Kate Sylvester's inspiration for the collection this dress featured in came through a chance encounter in 2018 with Frances Hodgkins' textile designs in Te Papa Tongarewa's collections. These designs informed not only the reimagined prints which feature heavily, but also serve as an answer to the prompt ‘What would Frances wear now?’.

This particular dress takes cues from the drop waists and loose silhouettes of the Art Deco period that the original textile designs hail from. The use of square scarf shapes not only echoes trends in creative pattern-making popular in the 1920s (Madeleine Vionnet is one of many examples of this), but also serve as a nod to Frances Hodgkins' personal eclectic style. 

To read more about this collection, visit this Fashion Quarterly article.