I still retain the image in my mind of Susie Bubble wearing that luscious-looking orange coat (see it below) with the fuchsia stripe during fashion week earlier this year. I was curious about the designer, but really didn't find much information until now. Hannah Weiland is the name behind Shrimps, and is poised to amass a cult following.
Her cozy and colorful faux fur coats are perfect antidote for those drab days of winter. She's not just about coats, as she's created fun accessories as well. Read on for more about this "rising star," and see her entire collection courtesy of Net-A-Porter.
Hannah Weiland of Shrimps. Photograph: Lily Bertrand Web
London has a new It girl. You may have never heard of Hannah
Weiland, but she is easy to spot: she is the girl in the crazy-coloured
fake fur coat.
Actually, scratch that: it may not narrow it down much. If you are in
an It-girl kind of place, chances are there may be two or three
crazy-coloured fake fur coats. Because the faux fur coats in the cartoon
colours that have made Weiland a new fashion star and her label,
Shrimps, the 0-60 trend of 2014 are absolutely everywhere.
If you could tally the number of times a designer label is
name-checked during pre-show front-row chit-chat, Shrimps – a tiny label
that didn’t even have a catwalk show – would be right up there with the
biggest fish in the pond. At this show season, if you weren’t wearing
the unmistakable short furry coat with the classic 60s collar, then you
were probably sitting next to one and experiencing for yourself (show
seating rarely being a spacious affair) just how deliciously cuddly they
are.
Style blogger
Susie Lau outside the Alexander Wang show on 8 February 2014 in New York
City, wearing a Shrimps coat. Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images
Photograph: Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images
I could bang on about how Shrimps are on-trend, but what really
matters is that a Shrimps coat makes you happy. You can’t really be
grumpy in one. Laura Bailey, whose early adoption kickstarted the
Shrimps phenomenon, tells how “Hannah, who I’ve known since she was
little, came round one evening about six months ago with bagfuls of
early samples, and I tried everything on with a smile on my face.” When I
email Weiland to ask her to define the personality of Shrimps, she
says: “Sweet, fun and welcoming.”
Laura Bailey wearing a faux fur by Shrimps. Photo by REX Photograph: REX
Everyone wants a little piece of happiness, and this is a coat that
unites the many tribes of fashion. The look is, as Bailey says, “modern
and nostalgic, rainbow-bright but rough at the edges”. Natalie Massenet
of Net-a-Porter wears hers (navy with white stripes) with a short skirt
and classic heels. Susie Lau of Style Bubble wears hers (orange with
pink stripes) with jeans and a woolly hat. Laura Bailey wears hers
(camel with bubblegum pink stripes) with printed cocktail trousers. A
Shrimps coat is part old-school glamour and part streetwise attitude.
The silhouette is vintage in feel, the colours are searingly modern. And
it is a coat that is accessible to adoption by different body shapes
and different generations in a way that a skyscraper heel or a cutaway
dress will never be, adding to the smiley mood of the brand.
Natalie Massenet at London fashion week. Photograph: REX
Shrimps is faux, not fur. (Weiland is clear that she would never
work with the real thing.) But while the colours say faux, the feel is
very real. Where once the worlds of real fur and fake were miles apart –
sumptuous neutral mink and fox on one hand, garish static nylon fakes
on the other – they have lately shifted closer together. Recent Fendi
and Prada collections have featured “fun” fur coats in crazy, pop-art
colours, with faces and squiggles – that for all their silliness are
real fur. Miuccia Prada said of the colourful trimmed shearling in her
recent Milan catwalk show that she wanted it to look like “poor fur”.
One prominent designer who takes a stand against fur told me recently
that there had been heated debates in the design studio when the newest
fake fur samples came in, over whether using fake fur that looks and
feels real will serve to stoke or sap demand for the real thing. The
oppositional model of pampered, glossy-fur wearers versus paint-wielding
fur protesters in dungarees seems to have pixellated into a more
fractured picture where the youthful, colourful aesthetic codes of fake
fur are aspirational for all – which surely means the opportunity to
edge real fur out of the fashion market is stronger than ever.
Stylist and model Kate Foley wears a Shrimps coat at London fashion week. Photograph: Kirstin Sinclair/Getty Images
Shrimps was born when Weiland, a history of art graduate studying
textiles at the London College of Fashion, came across a sample of the
latest Chinese fake fur technology. She loved its gloss and softness,
and ability to hold a strong, saturated colour. Fashionable friends such
as Bailey began to spread the word; Avenue 32 ordered the very first
season, and Net-a-Porter has swiftly followed suit. Such is their faith
in the vogue for Shrimps that a mini-collection of Shrimps coats for
summer will go live on the site on 19 March, when conventional wisdom
dictates that women will be moving towards their warm-weather wardrobe.
When will we wear furry coats in the summer? “With bare legs, at a
festival, to a summer party in the evening,” says Weiland.
What gives the Shrimps brand an edge is that the cuddliness is offset
by it being positively a little off-kilter. Weiland’s hero is Grayson
Perry (she sent him a fur clutch bag.) In the short film that showcases
the upcoming autumn collection, co-directed by Weiland’s brother and
best friend, Bailey and fellow model Adwoa Aboah hang out in a caravan,
watching cartoons and eating pomegranate seeds with a safety pin. “The
Shrimps world that everyone knows is quite sugary sweet, whereas the
film adds a darker, surreal element,” says Weiland. “It portrays another
side to the brand.” For autumn, furry-collared biker jackets and
cropped shapes with contrast sleeves – navy with strawberry pink, camel
with flaming orange – have been snapped up by retailers.
The name Shrimps is a snapshot of what makes this brand tick. It was
Weiland’s nickname when she was little – a sweet, very English pet name
for a tiny blonde poppet – but it is also a deliberately surreal choice
for a fake fur label. Not only the textural contrast to the softness of
the fur – referenced in the film, with a closeup shot of a boiling pot
of langoustines – but the mischievousness of naming a fake fur
collection after an animal we eat. Weiland is a name to watch for the
future. And right now, Shrimps is the name to wear.
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