The inspiration behind One for Sorrow, Two for Joy...

"I have a magpie mind. I like anything that glitters." - Lord Thomson of Fleet

Konets Sankt-Peterburga / The End of St. Petersburg (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1927) (via)

When I set out to design the first she and reverie capsule collection, I wanted to make it represent the essentials of our aesthetic: whimsical prints, vintage-inspired details, ultra-feminine proportions, a heady sense of escapism, and pink, our signature color.

One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is our capsule collection for Autumn & Winter 2012, debuting this week. The collection is inspired by a a sweet melancholia: crisp early-winter mornings, windy fields of wheat, glass glitter and vintage velvet ribbon, and the Black-billed Magpie.

The first time I saw magpies was when I was living in Colorado. They swooped around the park by my house, making nasal chirps at each other and running about with their tails up. Something about them stuck with me.

Magpies aren't the most graceful of birds--compared to the elegance of the crane or swan, their movements are a little awkward and abrupt--but I love their long tails and the flashes of white that catch your eye when they take flight. Their curiousity is especially beguiling; they have a penchant for shiny objects and are said to carefully curate the best ones with which to build their nests.

That concept of curated gathering is what I love the most about the idea of the magpie, because it's precisely how so many of us live our lives and develop our personal aesthetics in today's interconnected world--we collect our favorite images, concepts, and ideas from outside sources and make them our own, applying to them our own ideas of beauty and using them to tell our own stories.

The idea of collecting trinkets inspired many details in our AW12 collection, and the birds themselves are a key element in our signature silk print for this season.

The lore surrounding them is beautiful, as well. Magpies were seen as a sort of fortune-teller--according to the classic nursery rhyme, the number of magpies determines luck--and it's from there that the name of our Autumn & Winter 2012 capsule collection comes...

one for sorrow, two for joy

three for a girl, four for a boy

five for silver, six for gold

seven for a secret never to be told.