Images: Design Soda

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Today on the blog we are taking a sneak peak at the insanely beautiful new pattern collection by Lizzie for Smug which is launching over the coming weeks. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this to you before, but I will reiterate it now as a confession at the start of this piece, I am the hugest girl fan of Lizzie Evans! An Islington-born surface pattern designer and stylist, Lizzie is the founder of super-cool lifestyle store Smug which opened on Camden Passage in Islington in 2009. Smug is an eclectic and beautiful emporium which sells everything from utterly seductive homewares and stationary to independent magazines and delicious cakes, if you haven’t visited yet and you live in the city you really must. The store prides itself on being a homely and unitimidating space for design inspiration, and is probably my favourite in London. Design-wise Lizzie completely has the Midas touch for selecting the most perfect and collaborating with the most exciting, from the beautiful brands she hunts out and curates in her shop to the collaborations with British designers available exclusively through Smug. Lizzie’s eye for great design is daring and never anything other than covetable (I am forever making wish lists from her site). So when I heard that after 8 years of leading the way with design in Islington (and championing the area through her role at the helm of Islington Design District) she was going to be launching her own collection of self-designed items this winter, I was genuinely pretty excited.

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Image: Design Soda

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Part of the collection was launched (to much anticipation) in preview form during London Design Festival in September, but the complete collection is being launched for sale over the next few weeks, just in time for Christmas shopping! I am utterly in love with it all, it is bold but pretty, vibrant and abstract, a nod to vintage and botanical, a tiny bit Memphis in its pattern sensibilities. Lizzie has very kindly provided Design Soda with her press shots of the items so you are getting a little sneak peak today of the collection in all its glory before it rolls out during the coming month.

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Image: Courtesy of Lizzie at Smug

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The inspiration for the collection came from Lizzie’s impressions on her recent trips to Portugal where she spent time in greenhouses and botanical gardens, hunting out the most vibrant and beautiful floor and wall tiles in secluded courtyards and, by her own admission, enjoying a fair few Portuguese custard tarts along the way!  All of these things have combined to make a truly inimitable and utterly covetable first collection in Lizzie’s signature style that is sure to be a big hit this season.

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Images: Courtesy of Lizzie at Smug

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There is so much variety within this inspired collection, a lot of lesser mortals may have stuck with just one or two designs for there first pattern launch but Lizzie has gone all out with a plethora of fantastic designs and I love them all. Lizzie for Smug spans an assortment of lifestyle items from cushions to iPad cases, trays to make-up bags, wrapping paper and cards to canvas totes, and in the new year you can expect stationary and ceramics too. Alongside the pastels, geometrics and botanicals you will find some fabulous loose brush stroke and splatter patterns. Because she’s a perfectionist, Lizzie has worked really hard making sure every detail of this collection is perfect, from the patterns themselves to the colour choices, and it’s really paid off, the designs are so fresh and pretty. 

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Image: Design Soda

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I’m having a hard time choosing favourites but I think the two designs which make me most excited are the botanical leaf print cushion (Greenhouse) and the abstract print wrapping paper (Patio) – there Santa you have your orders! Keep an eye out on the Smug website over the next month to see the pieces in more detail as they launch Which are your favourites? Did you view the collection during design week?

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Image: Design Soda

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One final note on Smug, I couldn’t write a piece on Smug (especially in relation to LDF) without mentioning their other great curation for the London Design Festival this year – Smug Plant Pot (image above) which was a collaboration between Lizzie and her favourite British designers. The plant pot designs were produced by Donna Wilson, Kangan Arora, Geo Fleur, The Pattern Guild and a whole host of other great British talent, how darling are they? Which would your cactus or succulent choose to live in? You can still buy some of them on the Smug website here. 

With thanks to Lizzie Evans for taking time out of her busy launch schedule to answer all my questions and provide images for the piece.