Coccinelle/Barbara Hulanicki collection for spring-summer 2010: it’s a prints world!

A print never seen before, straight out of the archives. And a new collection of ideas: city holiday, chic travel, a beach party. Coccinelle/Barbara Hulanicki is expanding its horizons for spring-summer 2010: the partnership between the fashion house from Parma and the icon designer of the Sixties and Seventies, better known as Biba, originally started out in 2008 as a mini-line but has now grown to become a complete collection made in Italy in a limited edition. A kaleidoscope of patterns and a gorgeously composed mix of lines, textures and colours. Barbara Hulanicki was used to dressing stars like Brigitte Bardot and Twiggy, Mick and Bianca Jagger, David Bowie and Cher in her famous London boutique on Kensington High Street, and is now having fun with flowers, scrolls and geometrical designs. She has altered her unmistakable Art Deco print and broken it down, miniaturising it for shopping bags and to trim the edges of cotton beach towels, buckles and tags. She’s also added a new, more romantic Wallflower pattern; a delicate, 100% Biba-style tapestry pattern used for drawstring bags, bowling bags and wide-brimmed cloche hats. They’re all designed with light and easy to wear materials, for bags that are relaxed and unlined yet have a sturdy structure. So, the nylon of the prints is trimmed with shiny naplak, the canvas with rope and linen ribbon, the loosely woven cotton looks almost like straw. But Coccinelle/Barbara Hulanicki also enjoys flirting with opposites: sophisticated suede with nappa calfskin details on the one hand, chosen for the little shoulder bags and soft day-and-night clutches. Then, high-tech but utterly tactile, razor-cut rubber with leather handles on the other, used for the new beach bags with coordinating purses. The colours are bright: The appeal of Biba is illuminated with heady contrasts and full, delicious colours. For the prints: white and sand, white and ultramarine blue, orange and melon, English rose and green, black and white, wisteria and white. The solid colours are an explosion of fluorescent shades: lavender, yellow, fuchsia and orange.