Welcome to our behind-the-scenes journey into the creation of our newest wedding collection, Ceremony: Love Beyond Death. Inspired by 60s horror and psychedelia posters, this collection is a celebration of love, nature, and the magic that lies in the bond between two souls and, you know, general trippy stuff. Join us as we share the inspiration, design process, and preparations for the photoshoot and launch of our glorious collection of psychedelic accessories made from leather.
1. Drawing Inspiration from Symbolism:
First and foremost when it came to tackling this collection, was our desire to create something different to the usual offerings for weddings. We believe that marriage should be a deeply personal experience for couples, and we strive to help them express themselves as much as possible on their big day. This collection was created for those who prefer a darker and grittier aesthetic. But where did this aesthetic come from?
Originally, this collection came from ideas we had circling around large-scale patches and biker cuts. We both grew up in an era and sub-culture where leather, for us, was synonymous with bikers and rockers and it only felt right to work on a collection that came from those roots.
Whilst many biker cuts and rock and roll designs utilise very familiar font styles, we, of course, wanted to do something different. Inspired by battle vests at festivals and our love for early 70s font types used by bands like Black Sabbath, we found ourselves gravitating toward the ethereal strangeness of psychedelic-inspired horror. We took inspiration from movie posters like Suspiria and Dracula to music posters from Melvins and the 13th Floor Elevators as well as absorbed ourselves into the general feel for this era's vibe.
We then decided to dive into the world of symbolism - marriage ceremonies across the world are so steeped in different cultural traditions and folklore, and this is the stuff we love to sink our teeth into.
Symbolism has always been one of our muses, from superstitious old wives' tales to long-lived folklore. For the Ceremony collection, we sought to capture the ethereal essence of British folklore and mix it with 1960s psychedelia. A lot of darkness sits behind the traditions of British weddings - and we couldn’t help but dive into the macabre.
Whether you research into the reasons why veils became tradition (to protect brides from evil spirits of course) or why we feel the need to have an entourage of bridesmaids and groomsmen (to act as decoys against malevolent spirits and to fight your right to your bride respectively), there's a veritable feast of interesting elements that became part of weddings today - and that's not even including the vows.
2. The Design Process
The design process is by far the most time-consuming part of this creative journey, especially when it comes to product design. The first step was to define the types of products we wanted to include in our collection, this involved meticulous planning and brainstorming sessions to determine the direction we wanted to take. We delved deep into mythological lore and symbolism and we conducted extensive research to gather inspiration. From there, we carefully selected which ideas we wanted to explore further, leaving behind numerous concepts that didn't quite make the cut. This collection was easily the biggest we have released thus far, and if we hadn't been sensible it could have been twice the size!
Despite the constraints we placed on ourselves when designing our selection of psychedelic accessories, we managed to compile a list of key elements that we wanted to incorporate into our illustrations. These elements represented two parts of our core focus - life and death. We wanted visual symbols for both, resulting in flora, skulls and of course mushrooms - a symbol of life flourishing from death.
Additionally, we identified the shapes and forms that we wanted to experiment with to tie together our illustrative themes with the rock n' roll biker cut aesthetic. This involved shields, banners and hearts.
Putting Constraints on design to further our creativity.
After refining our chosen illustrations and pattern pieces for the new pieces, it was time to test out the engraving of these designs. When designing for engraving we ensure that there is a consistency in the weight of the drawn line. Often with digital designs, where you can zoom in to the piece infinitely, I can get a little carried away with detail. This detail would get lost on the scale we were working with for this collection - so I restrained myself further by using thick brushes to draw up our final designs.
3. Crafting Colourful Psychedelic Accessories with Leather
Colour was always a very important element for this collection - looking back over our plethora of inspirational imagery there was a mix of stark 2 tone colour in the horror movie posters and an explosion of bright and glorious colour experimentation in the psychedelic.
As you can imagine, when faced with a material like leather which is often synonymous with browns and blacks - we wanted to get as much colour across as possible. This involved hand dyeing a lot of our leathers and incorporating a fair amount of hand painting. Our colour palette involved green and orange - two of our favourite colours. We balanced these with burgundy and a neutral camel.
4. Preparing for the Photoshoot: Capturing the Magic
With our pieces finalised, we had one major task left to do - stitching those patches onto jackets and waistcoats for the photoshoot. We spent weeks searching for velvet blazers and waistcoats that would fit our colour scheme and aesthetic - we just loved the idea of these 70s velvet jackets getting adorned with these leather patches that you would usually see on a denim jacket. The contrast in texture is definitely luxurious and pleasing to the eye!
With our jackets and waistcoats in hand, it was time for us to stitch these patches on - final decisions on placements and which colour patches should sit on which jacket saw us through many coffees.
Keeping our vision for the photoshoot of our psychedelic accessories
With hours of stitching in front of movies at home, we finally were getting so close to being ready for the shoot!
Whilst stitching up our pieces, we were still thinking narratively about the collection and how to portray our pieces in the photography. We adored the idea of having this bright celebration of colour and psychedelic accessories photographed on our local moors. Our local landscape is always an inspiration to us, and, it is genuinely part of everything we do. It likely sounds weird that a landscape can hold so much meaning to people - but for us Yorkshire folk it is part of our life-blood. Something which has so creatively and succinctly been demonstrated by the book written by Benjamin Myers and the subsequent prequel series by Shane Meadows' Gallow's Pole. In the final stages of putting this collection together, we couldn't help but be in awe with the synchronicity of Gallow's Pole being on the telly - with psychedelic whisperings and music by Goat filmed with a gritty backdrop of Yorkshire life circa 18th century. We felt justified for our weird pairings!
Glad rags gathered together, new t-shirts delivered, we were ready to take to the moors with Shutter-Go-Click and some valuable friends who had offered their afternoon to get cold on the wind swept moors of Marsden in some interesting finery.
With this in mind, we gathered props that often feature in our flat lay and product photos - animal skulls often found in the barren cloughs of the moors, flowers, vintage maps and binoculars. We loved the idea of this strange wedding party getting lost on the packhorse trails - these paths often trod by our ancestors bringing supplies to and from remote places with nought but clogs on their feet.
5. The Launch of the Ceremony - Psychedelic Accessories are go!
Finally, the moment arrived when we could unveil the Ceremony collection to the world. It was so lovely to see so many people share these awesome photographs and the results of our hard work. Orders for the new back patches, corsage pockets and clutches rolled in, and made it all worthwhile.
When you work on something that feels so intrinsically you, it can be terrifying to show the world. What if everyone hates it? Is it just too different and jarring for Hord as a brand? Luckily, all those worries ebbed away at launch!
CONCLUSION - NOT JUST FOR WEDDINGS
What started out as a collection with weddings in mind soon started to evolve. We weren't just making personalised back patches that said "Just Married" or "Bride", this was us combining some of our favourite eras that are really important to us. We wanted to make pieces that stood apart from the above - as such we ended up with a collection that is loved outside of weddings and tradition. We have people wearing their shoe charms for all occasions. We have people stitching these patches to their jackets because they love and understand them as pieces of art. We don't just want to create pieces for one day, we want to create pieces that can be cherished for years to come - and if these psychedelic accessories speak to you, you are in the right place.
