Ready to give Canadian designer’s line a chance
TORONTO — Fashion designer Kelly Pettit started with a simple question in crafting a clothing line inspired by John Lennon: Can she imagine the legendary singer-songwriter wearing it?
She most definitely does, Pettit says, as she readies to premiere her vision at Toronto Men’s Fashion Week on Saturday, noting her yearslong development process was driv- en by a deep reverence for Lennon’s artistry.
“I always say (there’s) God, Santa Claus and then there’s John Lennon,” Pettit says from Las Vegas, where she was offering a preview to U.S. buyers at a trade show with her company Caulfeild Apparel Group.
Drawing cues from Lennon’s solo years, Pettit calls the throwback collection “vintage with a little modern twist.”
It includes T-shirts featuring Lennon’s sketches, dress shirts imprinted with more art and handwritten lyrics (including those for Imagine and Beautiful Boy), and leather outerwear, casual blazers, sports shirts, casual pants, Henleys and polos.
It draws heavily on Lennon’s minimalist jeans-and-T-shirt style, while steering clear of more dated garb that could be seen as passe instead of nostalgic.
“It would be great to introduce the high waist but I just don’t think the mass market is ready for that right now,” says Pettit, who is targeting everyone from the 25-year-old vintage fan to the 60-year-old Beatles devotee.
But imagining whether Lennon himself would wear the clothes is key to honouring the legend’s enduring art, songs and personal style, and ultimately, ensuring the success of the line, she says, revealing that his widow, Yoko Ono, “wasn’t approving” of the previous licence-holder’s approach.
Pettit says Ono was impressed with Caulfeild’s handling of the English Laundry brand in Canada and so talks began two years ago to take over an exclusive licence for North America and the United Kingdom.
Lennon’s widow insisted on vetting everything from sketches to fabrics to samples to the press release, all in an effort “to keep the integrity,” says Pettit.
“She’s vetoed a couple of screen prints that we’d done from his artwork that we changed the coloration of — it was too much pink or too much yellow, she wasn’t too happy with some of that.
“We had a print on a woven shirt that was a leaf and ... she said, ‘It looks like marijuana. It’s not something we’d like to go forward with.’ And I was like, ‘No problem.’ ”