Inside Celia Birtwell’s Vibrant New Collection And 60 Year Lecacy

As much a part of London in the Swinging Sixties as Carnaby Street and The Rolling Stones, textile designer Celia Birtwell, together with her husband, the celebrated designer Ossie Clark, fronted a new generation of talented creatives who helped shape the decade. Established class barriers were challenged by a youthful stampede of working-class kids who metaphorically lobbed a hand grenade into high society and watched the explosive results, causing ripples in every area of creativity, music, photography, fashion and the arts. The couple’s unique contribution to the youthquake of the 1960s, switching the narrative from short, sharp A-line miniskirts to something distinctly more romantic and feminine, ensured they both became an integral part of fashion history.

Now 80-plus, the diminutive Birtwell—who looks as cherubic as her decorative angel-faced fashion drawings—has never stopped working as a textile designer, producing her recognizable prints for both fashion and interiors. “I don’t want to do a lot, I want to do interesting bits and pieces,” she tells me, sipping tea from a large mug in her west London sitting room. The space is filled with superior artworks by her friends David Hockney, Peter Blake and Pauline Boty.

“However old you are. I think we all need to be driven; I am much better when I have a project. I might agonize over it, it might drive me mad because I want the best, but it keeps me alive. I love doing it.” Much in demand for her joyful fashion prints and clever sense of color, Birtwell’s talent has always been her ability to mix vibrant prints of different scales, freely weaving childlike splashy daisies with more geometric abstract squiggles in exuberant colorways. “I think making different proportions in the same dress makes it so much more fun,” she says.

For the past 20 years, creative collaborations with brands as varied as Valentino, Liberty, Top Shop and Uniqlo have introduced her prints to a new generation of fans, and recently she was approached to re-imagine a range from her archive for a new collection in collaboration with the Manchester based fashion company Joanie.

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“We wanted Celia, who was once described as ‘the face that launched a thousand prints’ because she is one of the most important textile designers of her generation. Her innovative, witty style is perfect for our limited-edition vintage-inspired range,” Lucy Gledhill, Joanie’s brand manager said.

The Celia Birtwell x Joanie collection consists of thirteen pieces—including fabulous silky blouses with oversized pussy cat bows and plunging V-neck dresses with ruffles and flared sleeves—all of which take their cues from a visionary Ossie Clark 1970s aesthetic. Birtwell worked closely with the company and approved each design. “The clothes are brilliant; whoever cut them really looked to Ossie’s pieces. They are great quality, great shapes; importantly, they all have discreet pockets, which are essential, and my grandchildren (aged between 19 and 24) all love them.”

With fashion’s ongoing commitment to the idea of sustainability and eco-friendly fabrics, it was non-negotiable that this collection be designed as seasonless and versatile, specifically intended to have long-lasting appeal and wearable for a multitude of occasions. Donna Karan, was one of the first high profile designers to embrace this business model with her Urban Zen lifestyle brand as far back as 2016, producing flexible jersey pieces that could be worn for all seasons, but the trend accelerated with the challenges that Covid-19 forced on retailers. Now many younger based fashion companies are following suit producing timeless collections that are ethically sourced, promoting fashions current shopping mantra ‘Buy Less, Buy Better’. (Check out Asket, With Nothing Underneath, and LA Relaxed)

Harriet Posner, Programme Director of Undergraduate Programmes at Vogue College of Fashion and the author of Marketing Fashion: Strategy, Branding and Promotion told me, “Joanie are just one of many at the forefront of this revolution to disrupt the cycle of mass-produced, trend-led consumerism in favor of well-made seasonless clothes. They are an interesting example of a forward-thinking fashion company who aim to underpin their business goals with sustainable and ethical practices. The BCorp certificate they hold provides customers with the reassurance that this brand is adopting sound values.”

If Birtwell’s quintessential prints have endured, creating her inimitable legacy, it is also her image as a muse to the artist David Hockney that has sealed her reputation as a seminal fashion figure. She is recognized as the subject (along with Ossie) of one of the most famous artworks in Tate Britain; the much-loved painting “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” (1970-71) which is still one of the museum’s best-selling postcards.

The two met in 1968 as part of the same crowd of London’s bright young things and a lifelong friendship developed, with Hockney immortalizing Birtwell on canvas innumerable times throughout the intervening years. “He’s done a lot of horrible ones,” she says, telling me that her favorite pictures are “all the French drawings he did in Paris in the 1970s; they are the prettiest ones.”

Birtwell also remembers a sign from the early days that Hockney had in his flat in Notting Hill. “Get Up and Work,” it said, a directive both octogenarians have adopted with great success for over fifty years, with little intention, it seems, of stopping any time soon.