The designers' guide: Easton Pearson archive (Catalogue essay)

Many things have been written about Easton Pearson over the brand’s history: a selection of fashion editorials call up words such as ‘exuberant’, ‘embellished’ and inevitably refer to the brand’s luscious use of layered texture and colour. However, beyond the finished pieces on the runway, in exhibitions, in wardrobes, how did their approaches develop? It is easy to say, ‘Easton Pearson worked with artisans for close to three decades.’ It is quite another to explain what this work actually involved, day to day, season to season, and how these relationships and collaborations entwined to form an extraordinary body of work. As extraordinary as the garments produced by Easton Pearson is the 27-year design partnership between Pamela and Lydia. In 2003, Easton Pearson said of their work, “our way of working is inseparable from our design ethos… we work in partnership through all passages of our process – planning, designing, finishing, travelling and selling” (quoted in Lovell 2003, 1). The exhibition, The Designers’ Guide, opens up their design process, techniques, collaborations, experimentations, successes and set-backs for the viewer. The leitmotif of this essay is time– the time an artisan takes to weave a cloth or complete an embroidery, the decades of a partnership, the natural seasons (one cannot screenprint during the Indian monsoon), and fashion’s artificial seasons. Now, for the Easton Pearson Archive, there is archive time. There, the Archive exists as a constellation of garments, skills, and histories—both inside and outside of time. The garments held in the Museum of Brisbane archive are as layered up with skill and knowledge as they are with colour and texture, and The Designer’s Guide captures these layers. The following sections explore the context of Easton Pearson in fashion’s time, both fast and slow, before turning to their processes, materials and garment stories.