Sometimes, everyone needs to get back to basics.  And what better time to re-evaluate, strip back, renew your perspective and frankly, just jiggle things up a bit, than your birthday.  Sara Berman is turning over its first decade, and to celebrate we want to re-focus our attentions on the three blocks from which the last ten years have been built: knitwear, leather and Harris Tweed.

Ok, so it is summer and tweed isn’t exactly appropriate, even in our changeable climes.  Although our summer collection, as beautiful as it is, remains tweed-free, there are exciting Harris Tweed developments in the pipeline and all will be revealed soon.  Leather, on the other hand, is taking centre stage.  Cut in soft, supple skins that are long and slim in the arms, close on the body and sharp, and soldierly around the neck they dance along to the beat of their heavy, bobbled studs.  Think of a very stylish Harley Davidson driver and introduce him to a fantasy Harajuku girl – their daughter would live in these jackets.  Being the kooky, stylish girl that she is, Harley Harajuku wears hers over flippy, spriggy tea dresses and indecently tiny shorts.

Because there literally cannot be too much leather this season, we’ve also gone to town on handbags.  Big, slouchy, sling them over your shoulder numbers that look classic in black, quiet and moody in warm mushroom, and stand up on your chair and sing aloud, in our royal blue and enamel white.  Whatever the color, these bags are made for wearing.  And enjoying.  Like our jackets, they have been Cleopatra-ed and come with lots of bubbly, heavy gold ornamentation.  As an interesting experiment, we also played with zips.  Functional necessities they might be, but zips, with their unique repeated teeth are a clever way to give an attractively thorny edge to our classic undulating frills.  In complete contrast, our solid clutch bags look as if they’ve bypassed motorcycles altogether and are really only concerned with being dipped in ancient, reflective mother of pearl.  To us, they are pure evening extravagance.

Working in the same color palette of clean white, kohl, peacock and mushroom, we’ve produced plenty of summer heavy knits [NB this is only an oxymoron for people not aware of passing fashion trends].  This unity across accessories and clothing is part of our ingenious revamped Sara Berman blueprint.  The classicists among us will gravitate towards the simple, cutaway cardigans – long and short – while those with a more please-notice-me kind of disposition will no doubt want the icon short sleeve cashmere tees.  A flamingo on your chest or a bow at the neck is an easy way to bring some happiness, what the heck, some pure joy, to our wardrobes.  We might have turned a corner here at Sara Berman HQ but we’re sure as hell going to keep on laughing as we take our next important steps.

Sara Berman. Flying the flag for Great British Design.