Famille Summerbelle

All eyes on Hyères

Yesterday was a wonderful Sunday full of sunshine, creativity and surprises.

All my family met in the South of France, in Hyères to support my sister Coralie, one of the 10 young fashion designers shortlisted at the prestigious Festival of Fashion and Photography of Hyères, organized by the Villa Noailles.

We went last night to view the third and final incredible catwalk, after which the winners were announced. Coralie won the Prix du Public (winning the most votes from visitors across the week and from the visitors at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris). We are so incredibly proud of her!

Coralie's collection is inspired by the traditional sheep herders from 1950s Iran, moving from the mens wardrobe to an incredibly crafted and structured women's silhouette. The details on each of her 10 outfits were astonishing, all patiently cut, dyed and sewn by hand. It represented hours and hours of incredibly dedicated work.

For this 29th edition, members of the jury included Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, artistic directors of Kenzo, film director Spike Jonze, Jamie Perlman artistic director of English Vogue, artist Maurizio Cattelan or the actress Chloe Sevigny amongst others.

The first prize was awarded to Kenta Matsushige who designed a beautiful womens collection inspired by the architecture of Japanese museums. The Chloé prize was awarded jointly to two designers Liselore Rowjin (Netherlands) and Roshi Porkar (Austria).

The festival offers a great exposure for the 10 participants , giving them visibility and a chance to be spotted by the top of the fashion industry. I think it's fair to say that the standard was incredibly high; both in level of imagination and craftsmanship.

One of the outfit with Swarovski sequins


The dress Coralie designed for Chloé.

Hello

I'm happy to be back! How was your Easter weekend? I'm in Paris with the children after spending the weekend visiting my grand mother in the South West of France. It was so nice to spend time with my brother, sisters and all the family.
Here are some of my Instagram photos of the week in Amsterdam before we left for France:
After school activity, Ophelia's painting Mount Fuji!


From top left to bottom right:Snapshot of Starch café in Amsterdam, children drawing with thick chalks on the pavement in front of our house, Lucien helping me taking photographs and a very pretty flower shop in Amsterdam.

Creative cutting ideas for Easter with Famille Summerbelle

Hello, we're really excited to share with you some creative cutting ideas for Easter to do at home. This is the first of a serie of Creative Cutting ideas that we will share with you an will become a regular feature on Famille Summerbelle blog and website.
You can download and print our free PDF, follow the instructions to make your own colourful paper cut table decorations. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did!

Click here to download and print our free PDF templates.

A new kitchen for the holidays

We're planning to build a new kitchen in the old barn of our family home in the south west of France over the next month or so. The house is very old and used to be over the years the village school, a barber (!) and an auberge where the men would meet for a drink after a day working in the fields (in the 1920's). My great grand father lived there, my grand father was born in the annex (where they used to dry tobacco!).
Every year at the end of August we all meet there to spend some time together. That's my brother, his wife and their 4 children, my 3 sisters and their boyfriends, my dad, his wife and the 4 of us. It's a happy and rather chaotic place when we're all together. I love it! This year we're going to build a new kitchen in the renovated barn as the actual kitchen is more than 20 years old and start to be very small when we all cook together.
At the moment my sister is drawing the plans while I'm researching ideas and pin them on Pinterest. I love this part of research! The hard bit is to make this happened in a tight budget and on time before the Summer!

Oh! and today we've been featured in the (free) issue 4 of Enfants Terribles, a really nice Danish online magazine! Check out my interview here. Aurélie Lecuyer our stylist and photographer is also featured with beautiful photos of her house in France.

Enjoy the weekend!

30% off The Performers collection to celebrate the build up to Easter!

Hello, I hope you had a lovely weekend. We had friends from London staying with us so we took them on a cycle ride around Amsterdam. It was so warm and sunny we ended up having a bbq in the garden. Oh I love Spring an I can't wait for the Easter break in a couple of weeks to relax in the park...
Have you started your Easter decoration yet? I am preparing a little surprise for you next week so start to sharpen your scalpel and gather lots of colourful papers!
To celebrate the build up to Easter we are offering 30% off our collection The Performers: mugs, trays, hand screen prints, tea towels and cushion. Enjoy shopping!

The 30% off reduction will appear on the checkout page.

Ludo Le Lapin and Maximilien Le Magicien hand screen prints (size 50x70cm)
The Perfomers cushion (rabbit on one side, magician on the other side)


Clown & Flower tea towels (pack of two tea towels)


Ludo & Maximilien Tea Towels (Pack of two)


Ludo birch wood tray and The Performers fine bone China mug.

Clown fine bone China mug

Flower, birch wood tray

Lukas Peet

Canadian designer Lukas Peet graduated in 2009 from the Design Academy of Eindhoven and has since opened his own design studio in Vancouver. He is a multi talented designer working on everything from desks, lights, clocks and graphic design. I first discovered his Village table on my Pinterest. I love the reflection of mirrored shelf with the bright yellow of the underside table top.


Table Lantern is a table light inspired by oil lanterns.By turning the cork knob of the dimmer you can change the brightness of the bulb, from a subtle orange glow to bright white.

Button Series pendant lights. A LED pendant light that is suspended by nylon rope similar to a button. This suspension system allows the light to be tilted on an angle to change the direction of the light. Available at Andlight.

Slab Series pendant lights are a dimmable LED pendant light covered in 100% industrial grade wool felt which provides acoustic dampening to any space. Available at Andlight.