Fashion Collaboration with King Louie

In 2016, while visiting Europe to promote our Brise Soleil range, I first came across Dutch fashion brand King Louie in a shop in Paris, and fell in love with their feminine vintage styling. All their prints and cuts just felt like exactly the vintage clothes I was always hoping to find, but never did.

Little did I know that just a few weeks later, I’d be in Amsterdam doing an event, and one of the founders of King Louie would be there. A short while after returning to Cape Town, I got a mail from Ann Berlips, proposing a fashion collaboration between our brands, using our Pincushion, Aperture and Gridly prints.

Ain’t life a kick? Just look how well it all turned out.

I love how they’ve used my prints (that baseball jacket!), but the best thing about this collaboration is that King Louie is exactly the kind of fashion brand I’d always dreamed of collaborating with.

Like Skinny laMinx, it’s a brand that grew out of the founders’ enthusiasm for all things vintage, and began in 1981, selling vintage clothing in Amsterdam markets. 37 years later, Ann Berlips and George Cramer (who had met at high school) are still integrally involved in the business. This is what they say about their work:

“We have always been passionate about developing clothing that makes people happy: vintage-inspired clothing, with bright colours and a good fit. We are committed to provide a maximum service for our customers and that’s what we and our team get up for every day!”

That sounds just like us! Click here to read a conversation between me and Ann on our collaboration.

Another thing I admire about this owner-run brand is their commitment to solidly ethical principles of organic textiles and fair trade practices. King Louie aims to contribute to a better world, accepting responsibility for the people making their clothes, and will only work with manufacturers  who guarantee adequate working conditions.

King Louie is a member of Fair Wear Foundation, committed to improving working conditions in the clothing industry, with strict inspections on any non-compliance with child labour and excessive working hours requirements, and on the working environment being healthy and safe. Today, 10% of their clothing is deemed to be fully sustainable, and is awarded Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certification, and they’ve also just started using recycled polyester, manufactured from recycled PET bottles!

We sadly don’t have any of the collaboration garments in our shop, but they can be found online at King Louie, and in stores across Europe too.