Forget florals, stripes, and polka dots—these original fabric designs, inspired by nature, can make any day a walk in the park
Why not take a break from plain-old plain and bring spring into your wardrobe with pieces decorated in unique, unexpected prints? Using original illustrations and other imagery, these five companies are creating clothing featuring fungi, insects, wild plants, and other organic objects.
Sara Charles, the designer behind Simka Sol, offers swimsuits, blousy tops, and dresses she sews herself that star her nature-infused prints, including her original illustrations of mushrooms, fall harvests, and snakes. One of her current bestsellers is a design she calls Meadow, which contains adorable white mice foraging among lush greens. The print adorns dresses, home goods, and the turtleneck shown below ($78, XS to 4XL, simkasol.com) and is evocative of a fairy tale.
Thief&Bandit, a Canadian-based company founded by Amie Cunningham, makes wide-leg pants, skirts, turtlenecks, leggings, and flouncy dresses in prints illustrated by Cunningham herself. Among her designs are Cattails, featuring cats and cattails, and Belladonna, a more traditional floral print with a gothic edge. Shroomed displays mushrooms, beetles, and snails, and, printed in gold-on-black on a pair of high-waisted, wide-legged pants ($181, XXS to 4X, thiefandbandit.com), creates an elegant, brocade look.
Another Canadian company, Oddball Works Studio, is the brainchild of Trina Mateus-Church and features a wide variety of prints on slim-fit dresses, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and jogging pants—including evil bunnies, religious iconography, and, of course, mushrooms. The most inspired piece, however, is an oversize T-shirt dress in black or purple covered in giant moths ($59.44, 2XS to 6X, oddballworksstudio.com) that’s perfect for when the season heats up.
“Retro earthy art apparel for the Goblincore Maximalist,” is how Blume Corner’s Stephanie Neal describes her designs. Her stretchy leggings, sweatshirts, skirts, and dresses are bedecked with her original art featuring bees, moths, mushrooms, feathers, blooms, and leaves. The unisex Bees & Daisies hoodie ($84, 2XS to 6X, etsy.com/shop/BlumeCorner), with its bees and wildflowers in pink, turquoise, bronze, and gold, adds a folksy twist to this most basic wardrobe staple.
Joanie is known for its vintage-style clothing, but the British company also does a ton of collabs, and one of the most exciting ones has been with London’s Natural History Museum. Insects, arthropods, dinosaurs, and meteorites embellish the pieces in this collection, and the Mallory Flora and Fauna Midaxi Dress, shown here ($129, U.S. 4 to U.S. 22, joanieclothing.com), is the spring-iest of them all, with a design of berries, leaves, caterpillars, and seed pods based on archival botanical prints scattered across a cheerful peach background.
