Floral Garden, a hero print from the Juliette Hogan SS2020 collection is a collaboration between Juliette Hogan and local NZ artist Carmel Van Der Hoeven. After falling in love with Carmel’s large scale floral artworks, we arranged for Carmel to visit us in our Morningside showroom to show her the early moodboard for our summer collection. From here, we commissioned Carmel to create a 1600x1600mm work utilising the palette of our upcoming collection. The large piece was personally delivered by Carmel a few months later, travelling in a trailer from Carmel’s studio in Pirongia to our Auckland workroom where it has been brightening our days ever since.

From here, our in-house print designer, Louise Cuckow, photographed the work and then in digital format began to play with the repeat, scale and colour tone. The final result is a smaller scale print with an almost vintage feel and available on a Viscose Silk and in our popular Cotton Knit Micky T.

Two pieces of Carmel’s artwork are on display in our Auckland & Wellington stores (from early September) until the end of September. Any purchase from the new Juliette Hogan SS2020 collection will give you chance to win a painting, while the other will be available for purchase directly from the artist - do let us know if you’d like us to put you in touch directly with Carmel!

We wanted to ask Carmel a few questions about her career, what inspires her and our collaboration together.

JULIETTE / We understand you are quite the multi talented artist. We would love to know a little bit of background about your artistic career to date and where you find inspiration?

CARMEL / I have always been creative but never considered it could be a career choice until i had my second child about 7 years ago. I was feeling pretty lost to be honest so I started drawing animals for baby rooms and that got picked up and stocked by endemic world. After that I began my love hate relationship with ceramics, it took me a few years to realise that making ceramics actually really stressed me out so i returned to painting, a medium i had not worked with for over 10 years. Inspiration tends to come from my surroundings, i started off painting domestic scenes as i was in the home with little kids and the bush which our house backed onto. Then my very talented sister decided to create a flower growing farm, this opened up a whole new world really and i used the concept of gardens to better understand and communicate thoughts i had about life.

JULIETTE /  At Juliette Hogan, our fabric prints are our most highly anticipated pieces each season, and for me the most important piece of the collection to get right, and then everything seems to fall in place around them.  We first spied your stunning large scale floral artworks at a gallery in East Auckland, and instantly imagined how beautifully they would translate to fabric. Is this your first textile collaboration / something you had ever imagined for your designs?

CARMEL / Yes it is my first textile collaboration! I had never considered turning my art into anything else, there had been passing comments by friends mentioning fabric or wallpaper but i had not given it serious thought. When i was approached with the brief by Juliette I got to do some daydreaming and it was very exciting.

JULIETTE /  Did you enjoy the process? Any differences to how you approached this project compared to a usual commission?

CARMEL / It was a fantastic experience, I had yet to create that style of work on that scale so it presented a wonderful challenge. The mood board gave me colour combinations I had never considered using before which definitely expanded my approach compared to other commissions. I knew some part of the painting was going to be used as a textile so i tried to incorporate many elements and floral diversity, while still making it a stand alone work.

JULIETTE /  Your favourite piece in the Floral Garden story?

CARMEL /  The Carmel Dress!

JULIETTE /  Any upcoming exhibitions we can let our customers know about?

CARMEL / My first solo Australian exhibition is in November 2020 and i will be having another NZ solo exhibition mid 2021

JULIETTE /  Anything you’d like to add?

 CARMEL / It was an incredibly experience to be part of NZ fashion and to see my artwork become such a lovely textile design. I would like to thank Juliette and her team for giving me this wonderful opportunity and i can’t wait to see people dressed in the floral garden story print this summer!

JULIETTE /  Thank you so much Carmel. It has been so wonderful to work with you, and hope we get the chance to again.