Camp Cove Swim

Today's Brand New Art We Heart comes from the fabulous Australian swimwear label Camp Cove Swim. We talk to owner/designer/all round superstar Katherine Hampton about her work, Beyonce and bums and take a peek their gorgeous SS15 lookbook.

Hi Katherine! Tell us about your label Camp Cove Swim. G'day! Camp Cove Swim is an Australian designed, made and printed swimwear label. We design unique, retro-inspired prints in classic, flattering swimwear cuts. Our prints are all designed by us and we work with a local machinist who lives a couple of hours south of Sydney (she is the sweetest lady in the whole wide world). We use recycled fabrics in the lining of our printed suits and our black styles are 100% made of recycled fabrics (which is something we are pretty proud of). We launched our first collection in 2013 and still have two styles from that collection that we still manufacture today (those being the 'katie' high bottoms and 'riri' full piece). We like bums and girls with a positive frame of mind, good intentions and confidence to express who they are.

When did you first decide to start designing swimwear I've grown up around water all my life. Whether it was the beach or the pool it was an all year round thing in my family. I could usually visualise the kind of suit I wanted to wear and whilst studying at high school and fashion school I would use any spare time to whip up a pair for myself. As I got older, whilst working for a fashion accessory company in Sydney, I kept a close eye on the swim market and still felt like there was something missing. Something that I could bring to the table. Since I was about 16 I wanted to run my own fashion label but I wanted to make sure that the driving force behind it was a gap in the market or something new that nobody else was doing. Not just because it was a goal I wanted to achieve. It still blows me away when I think about that the dream I had at 16 is now a reality.

Camp Cove has a definite sixties/seventies aesthetic, what inspires and influences you when choosing your shapes and prints? Vintage shopping/hoarding has been a long-standing love affair for me. My girlfriends and I used to go op-shopping after class at fashion school. A recent business trip to the states turned out to also be a vintage shopping tour of NY and LA. When I began designing in high school it was the 50's that I really took me so I have slowly made my way through the decades to the late 60's/70's. I like the story behind fashion of the past, it was a much slower process and clothing was really cherished and appreciated, worn over and over, repaired and mended. In the 50's, 60's and 70's there was a more subtle approach to sexy. It was a low cleavage with a knee length skirt or a wholesome t-shirt worn with a pair of hot pants. I like that idea, give them something but not too much. Our bottoms are quite cheeky, but tied back with the retro prints and cuts, the trend is softened with femininity.

There are a lot of aspects I need to consider when choosing shapes and prints. Because we are an online store we need to select cuts that are versatile across a number of sizes and figure types. With prints, colour is important to match on skin tones to make sure we don't make you guys look naked with say a beige that's a little too close to someones skin tone or a neon colour that doesn't stand the test of time. Also print placement is a big one. We don't want any weird perfect flower alignment over nipple business happening do we? Or maybe we do?

Tell us a bit about the design/production process, whats your favourite part of this? It's a strangely organic process. Because I'm working on shipping, photo shoots, customer emails, finance stuff all at once all year round, the designing comes quite sporadically. Now thinking about it, that process works well for me as I'm pretty good at procrastinating. So this way I'm always working on something. If the design side of my brain isn't flowing I'll switch to packing orders. I usually have pretty firm ideas on what sort of prints and cuts I want to put together before I even put concepts to paper. I remember at design school the teachers would always make you sketch down say 20 different versions of the item you were designing, and I would always just make up 19 of them to complete the assignment but always stuck with the original concept. I think about designing all the time without realising it, so the concepts tend to form before I even put anything down on paper.

Before starting Camp Cove Swim, I had very limited skills in photoshoot/illustrator etc. When designing the very first 'tile' print back in 2013, I spent three weeks getting up super early and sleeping late to watch youtube videos teaching myself how to make a repeat print from scratch. I became obsessed. I think I almost cried when it was finally all matching up and sampled on fabric. Every time I design a print now I think about how far I have come since the beginning and have a little 'proud mum' moment with myself. Wow that sounds weird. My partner, Lucas, is an amazing illustrator as well. I am so lucky to have his creative brain to bounce ideas off and he has done a number of illustrations for both the 'Australian Retro Floral', 'Beachcomber' and the 'daisy' print from our first collection.

My legend of a mum sews the first samples of all our new designs and prints which we use for our campaign photoshoot and webstore images. She usually manages to whip them up a day or two before the shoot (again there's my procrastinating skills shining through). These are then used as a reference for our main machinist when putting the garments together. We have our prints printed here in Sydney which are sent straight to our machinist down south who cuts and puts all the suits together for us. Such a cool process and we are lucky to have a really nice bunch of local talents who help it all come together.

If you could see anyone wearing your swimwear who would it be? BEYONCE without a doubt. I am such a Beyonce nerd. My friends and I have a lame/epic Facebook group that we share Beyonce links and news in because all our other friends got so sick of us talking about her all the time. I follow all all the fan girl instagram accounts that tell you where you can buy all her outfits. My ultimate life goal is for Camp Cove to be on the weird fan girl fashion Beyonce Instagram. Aim high people.

Any exciting plans for Camp Cove in the future? We are doing a lot of planning at the moment, working on expanding the brand internationally and working on new collaborations with some really talented creatives. Sneaky stuff that we can't tell you about yet. Stay tuned!

Watch the lookbook video here. Don't forget to check out Camp Coves Blog and Instgram too!