Last month in Miami, Swim Fashion Week took place and luckily for you (and us) we had fashion photographer Andi Nicole of Andi Imaging at the Seafolly show taking a few snaps! After the show was over Andi also found time to head backstage and interview Seafolly designer Genelle Walkom about the latest collection, here's what she had to say...
Andi: I want to tell you I do love your line.
Genelle: Oh thank you so much.
A: I love how you incorporate all the fun styles and the patterns and I was just wondering if there’s a particular piece, like whether it’s a top or a bottom or a kaftan that you prefer to design, or enjoy more designing?
G: I think definitely maillots (one pieces).
A: The one pieces?
G: Yeah especially at the moment because they’re really something that’s the happening piece, swimsuits are the hot choice for swimwear at the moment rather than separates.
A: Yeah I noticed that.
G: Yeah it’s all about one pieces and as you can see on Shannon, it’s much more fun, like there’s more to sort of do. More to design.
A: More of a canvas.
G: Yeah yeah. To work with basically.
A: It’s like the 80’s leotard kinda coming back right?
G: Exactly. And the whole re-emerging of the bodysuit as well it’s sort of morphing into bodysuits versus surf suits or something like that.
A: And the high waist.
G: Exactly yeah.
A: What is the inspiration behind this season's collection?
G: I think what we tried to do was create a collection that would be about the ultimate Australian beach holiday and then we broke it down into different moments for the holiday and linked the trends back to those moments so that you had a whole capsule of swimwear. This would be the range that you would take on an ultimate Seafolly Australian holiday. Especially when coming to Miami Beach, we wanted to showcase Australian swimwear and tell Americans or anyone around the world why Australian swimwear is so special, why it’s different.
A: Of all the seasons past and present, which is your favourite collection so far?
G: Oh it has to be this one. Yeah. It’s been really well received here and it’s just, to me it sort of harks back to the 8o’s anyway so we’ve sorta pulled from the archives different concepts and different colour ideas and brought them back to life. So it’s been lots of fun.
A: So it’s like a celebration of all the previous seasons?
G: Exactly yeah.
A: Do you have favourite item in this particular collection?
G: Well that’s why I got Shannon to wear the bright high neck cap sleeve one piece (see top image in this post) because that was one of the key questions that we thought we would be asked. So I put my favourite one onto Shannon as she really wears it well. I just really love that one piece.
A: So you knew I was gonna ask you that?
G: Yeah yeah.
A: What does the brand mean to you?
G: Oh it means everything to me. I’ve been doing it for 30 years now so I’m passionate about swimwear, it’s my life basically.
A: What can we see in the future, what’s next?
G: Coming up, we’re sort of seeing again those really pretty florals, Toile de Jouy type of print so it’s a very minimal French-inspired design on textured fabrics. Our rib fabrication has been really really popular so we’ll continue with that, we’re gonna add a stripe into the rib. Our customers seem to have loved the rib fabrics so we want to bring those in again. And I guess we like to continually build on the things that work for us, the key styles and designs that people expect from Seafolly.
All image credits to Andi Nicole of Andi Imaging.