On a trip to visit her family in Ireland, Catherine Teatum’s father insisted that she and fellow Teatum Jones creative director Rob Jones pay a visit to Foxford Woolen Mills in County Mayo. Its backstory inspired their fall collection: Agnes Morrogh-Bernard, an English nun who went to Ireland in 1892, was shocked by the poverty she encountered and set up the mill to provide jobs and make blankets to offer some warmth to the suffering locals.
Those blankets, and the way people would wear them as coats, inspired some beautiful wrap detailing around the shoulders of precision-cut tailored jackets. Edwardian silhouettes came through in narrow midiskirts, and the lean proportions of wool coats that had intricate geometric patterns heat printed on them.
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The duo’s flair for fabric development is one reason that they were awarded this year’s International Woolmark Prize. Their skill was evident in a cream wool with big checks marked out in black mohair, carved into a lovely dress that sat off the shoulders and fell below the knee. Ditto for a navy coat with geometric shapes printed on wool – inspired by embroidery found on rural blankets and blown up by 500 percent – interspersed with wide blue mohair stripes.