brand feature: the animals observatory
for the next few weeks we will be featuring different brands on our blog to give you more insight into the companies, the designers, and the missions behind each one. our goal with brand interviews is to create a more personal engagement and familiarity between our customers (you) and the amazing labels that we carry.
we are so excited to announce the fall/winter 2017 launch of the animal's observatory, now available in our stores and online! this brand was highly anticipated, and certainly did not disappoint. from the brilliant former creative director of bobo choses, (another favorite brand of ours) laia aguilar, comes a playful and cool collection with hand-drawn prints and a gorgeous muted color palette. each piece is cleverly named after a different animal, to pay homage to the brand's name. we were fortunate enough to catch up with her amidst this exciting launch to ask her a few questions about her inspiration for tao and what it's like to be a parent, and a designer.
q: we love your manifesto. how did you come up with those 10 essential rules to live by?
a: they are rules i feel that children would happily endorse. and i'm still a child, in the best sense of the term.
q: as parents, how do you incorporate your personal experience with having kids into the decisions you make for the brand?
a: constantly! i am a designer because i became a mother. that's the reason i created my first clothing brand, bobo choses. i wanted to dress my son in my own designs and i have done that over the course of 12 collections at bobo and now at the animals observatory.
q: some of your collections can be considered unisex. is it important to you to create clothing that can be worn by both boys and girls?
a: yes, very important. sometimes there is a distinction made through colours, and that seems absurd to me. the distinction, when there is one, has to come from the overall garment project: the design, the fabric, the universe of the piece of clothing. it's not about whether it is blue or pink. i'm a big supporter of unisex pieces and as the mother of a boy and a girl it is something i really appreciate.
q: what is your favorite piece from the recent collection?
a: it's difficult to single one out because i devise the collections as a whole. each piece has some kind of correlation, a musicality (be it the colour, the illustrations, the design...) with the rest of the collection. that's why my favourite part of the whole process is when i can start putting the outfits together for the photo shoots. that's when everything that i have been imagining, drawing and developing crystallises and the music is revealed. it's wonderful.
q: trend vs. personal style, what do you follow when creating your clothing?
a: personal style, always. i feel comfortable when i'm free and vice versa, just like children.
