WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION.... Illustrated Gallivant by Nan Richards: Burberry 2014: Bloomsbury Girls (Inspired by Artists Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant)

7/13/14

Burberry 2014: Bloomsbury Girls (Inspired by Artists Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant)

Burberry put on a campaign called The Bloomsbury Girls drawing inspiration directly from the Bloomsbury group of artists of the early 1900's. The appeal (to me) of this style is in it's unpretentiousness, joyfulness and loose confidence.

From Encyclopedia Britannica: "Bloomsbury group, name given to a coterie of English writers, philosophers, and artists who frequently met between about 1907 and 1930 at the houses of Clive and Vanessa Bell and of Vanessa’s brother and sister Adrian and Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf) in the Bloomsbury district of London, the area around the British Museum. They discussed aesthetic and philosophical questions in a spirit of agnosticism and were strongly influenced by G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica(1903) and by A.N. Whitehead’s and Bertrand Russell’s Principia Mathematica (1910–13), in the light of which they searched for definitions of the good, the true, and the beautiful and questioned accepted ideas with a “comprehensive irreverence” for all kinds of sham."

Artists Vanessa Bell (Virginia's sister) and Duncan Grant, living their funky bohemian lifestyle (they painted those big flowers and patterns inside, on the walls and doors!)

Duncan Grant "Queen Mary" fabric at Charleston House

Laura Ashley was instrumental in helping restore the house.

From the Laura Ashley website:

"Over 25 years ago, Laura Ashley played a key part in the restoration of Charleston Farmhouse by reproducing the fabrics originally designed in the 1930's by leading Bloomsbury artists, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Following this successful project, Laura Ashley was granted the rights to carefully re-colour these popular designs and introduce them into the 1987 Laura Ashley Home Furnishings collection."