I can't wait to see the designs in person! I have also ordered Lisa's regular collection for the shop too, so customers can buy both the custom dresses and the regular Up The Wooden Hills collection! Interview and more photos of the Up The Wooden Hills collection below.
Where do you live?
I live in Gothenburg, Sweden. I’ve lived here for about five years. I’m originally from a small town in southern Sweden.Can you tell me a little about your design process and where do you draw your inspiration from? Also, where did the name Up The Wooden Hills come from? My design process is a bit spontaneous, I usually don’t work after a theme or a concept - more just on influences and impressions I get during the days. I’m very inspired by music, fabrics, flowers, interior design, films, Lula, The Gentlewoman, Elaine Benes in Seinfeld, Carrie Bradshaw in SATC, people I see on the street, walks in the city, trips to the country side, my hometown, my friends, my family and especially my grandmother.
In the design process I always keep in mind how I want the clothes to feel, like when I made the Emilia dress it was more like trying to find a solution to the problem with impractical fashion. So I just focused on creating a very simple dress that was comfortable to wear and flattering for the body. A dress to feel pretty in.
The name of my brand comes from the title of an EP from my favorite band Saint Etienne that came together with an album called Tales from Turnpike House that was released in 2005. I still remember the day when I took a trip to Malmö with my dad and bought the album in a record store there, I was about 19 at the time. In the beginning I used the name for my blog and after a while it just felt natural to have the same name for the label. Besides Saint Etienne's music the name also makes me think of childhood memories from a forest near my hometown in southern Sweden where we always went on day trips and had picknicks with my school. That forest was also the shooting location for the S/S '11 shoot.
How long have you been designing? I’ve been designing for about five years but in the beginning it was more on a basic level and I didn’t start my own brand until December last year. My grandmother was very much into sewing, embrodidery, knitting and crochet so I learned that when I was a child and later on the interest for designing clothes emerged.
Have you always been interested in fashion? I’ve been interested in style, clothes and combining different outfits since I was a child and I’ve always loved to sew, but it wasn’t until I was about 19 years old and had just started studying at the university when my fashion interest evolved for real and I started to read fashion magazines and books and become more interested in designers and historical and sociological perspectives of fashion. A few years later I also started to make patterns and sew clothes for real and that’s when I realised that I wanted to design clothes of my own, and start my own business. I think it was something I knew I wanted to do since I was a child, it just took me several years to realise it. What type of girl do you see wearing Up The Wooden Hills? What is her aesthetic? I want to think of the girl who wears Up The Wooden Hills as a girl that is happy with herself in her everyday life and who wants to have an easy and more comfortable lifestyle. She is playful, dreamy, sympatic, empatic and curious and she surrounds herself with people and/or things that makes her feel good, calm and happy. She likes beautiful things, flowers and pastels. Who would be the ultimate celebrity (or even a style icon from the past) that you would love to dress? It would actually be Audrey Hepburn. I’ve always loved her style and beautiful look and I always think of her as a very sweet, sympatic and wonderful person. It would be a great honour to dress her up in my designs. Since the boutique is called Audrey Grace what are your favorite Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly films or even specific outfits they have worn? My favorite Audrey Hepburn movie is definitely Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I like every outfit in that film - the black Givenchy dress with the big hat and sunglasses, the orange 1960's coat, the pink coctail dress and the beige trenchcoat just to mention a few. I also like the movies Funny Face, Charade, How To Steal A Million and Roman Holiday a lot. In Funny Face there is a scene were Hepburn wears a beige hood parka, black pants and black neat shoes. I really like that outfit, so simple and yet very classy.
My favorite Grace Kelly movie is Rear Window and I love every outfit she wears in that film too, especially the black short sleeved, v-necklined top with a white full skirt and black pumps. I like that she combines the outfit with white silk gloves and a white scarf - so stunningly beautiful. Can you tell me a little bit about the Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn dresses you are creating for the boutique. The custom dresses for Audrey Grace are more a reference to a 1940’s and 1950’s dress silhouette with a bit of a longer full skirt. I've used the same dress silhouette as the one for my regular dresses but I've added little details to the design like ribbons, different necklines and visible pockets. The Liberty fabrics that will be used has a lot of different shades of pink in them. In a way these dresses might be an attempt to create a more cute vintage version of Up The Wooden Hills that I think goes really well with the Audrey Grace concept. I'm very excited about finishing the samples soon. Who are your favorite artists? Sigrid Hjertén, Carl Hammoud and David Hockney. Who are your favorite designers? Margaret Howell, Nadinoo, TBA, Lover, Twenty-Seven Names and A.P.C. What (music) are you listening to now? Saint Etienne, Robyn, Au Revoir Simone, Kate Bush, Adele, Empire of the Sun, Ivy, Florence + The Machine, Ellie Goulding, Imogen Heap, Astrud Gilberto, Monica Zetterlund, She & Him, The Splendor, Heart, Massive Attack, Fleetwood Mac, The Honey Trees, Feist and Phoenix. Tell me about the Liberty fabrics you use in your designs. I've loved Liberty Fabrics for many years and since I love flower prints so much I realised that it was hard to find other fabrics that was just as beautiful as the Liberty ones. It was actually just a coincidence that I made the first sample of the Emilia dress in a Liberty fabric, but from that moment I knew I wanted to use Liberty fabrics for my designs. The good quality of the fabrics also goes hand in hand with the values of my brand. Who is your style icon? I think Elaine Benes in Seinfeld might be my style icon, even though she is just a character and not a real person. She has the typical Gentlewoman style that I like so much with long skirts, long coats, beautiful silk blouses, floral dresses, blazers and brogues or penny loafers combined with white ankle socks. Lastly, what can we expect in the future from you? I'm very excited that Audrey Grace Boutique is going to carry my dresses - it's my first stockists so it feels like a really big thing since I'm also creating custom dresses for the boutique. I’m soon going to start working on my A/W 2011 collection which will be a more regular collection with more dress models and a little addition of blouses and skirts. The A/W collection will be released sometime during the end of summer. During these last few weeks I have also been working on a little project with some friends of mine that will be revealed on my blog soon.
Thanks, Lisa! Lisa has created a beautiful little short film that reflect her spring designs. You can watch it on her blog. Follow her lovely blog here: Up The Wooden Hills
