I firmly believe that a collection is best received when it has a meaningful connection to you and your lifestyle. My job is to create a wardrobe that sparks your inspiration with colors, fabrics and Key Looks. My aim is for you to fall in love with the whole collection, and each season to create the newness and excitement that will keep your J.Hilburn wardrobe top of mind. Our loyal Clients know that they can consistently rely on J.Hilburn to be there for the big occasions and the smaller moments—always outfitting them to look and feel their very best. This is the design brief I continuously strive to solve.
I believe that to do this consistently, season after season, I need to create collections that feel inspired from their inception, and that I use a meaningful process to keep you captivated by what we do. Modestly, I sometimes compare the design process to creating music, in the way that you start composing with the melody—the core notes on the page that are meant to be played in a particular order. But it is only when you add the arrangement, with orchestration that combines the melody, the harmony, the rhythm and so on, that you end up with a moving symphony or a song that you can’t forget.
In looking at our newest season, it may not consciously register that there is a certain thread, theme, or mood across the different elements of a season, and that every choice during the building of the collection was made with your needs and preferences in mind. You may not consciously notice the subtle connections—those invisible threads interweaving to evoke the impressions and emotions that reflect your aspirations, your dreams and your ever-evolving journey through life itself.
In my experience, our Stylists and Clients always enjoys a collection more when it is put together this way. If this deliberate process is absent, and a collection is put together purely by algorithmic results or automated sales analysis, you’ll notice on some level that something is missing, which means that you won’t connect as deeply with what we do and will migrate away from us over time.
Tomorrow, we launch the Spring/Summer 2022 collection. The new season started coming to life last spring, as the development for any new collection kicks off at least 10 months out from when the season goes live. This timing has to capture lead times for bulk fabric, swatching, prototyping of new styles and the myriad big and small tasks that go into launching a new collection and delivering the perfect updates to your custom-made wardrobe. These last several weeks have been a nail-biting countdown with a deadline looming, trying to calculate exactly what will arrive in time for the finish line with this season.
With the pandemic affecting supply chains for nearly two years now, we’ve been playing catch-up round the clock to deliver everything we can on launch day. With that in mind, I think the joy and optimism of the J.Hilburn Spring/Summer 2022 Collection will be a welcome breath of fresh air, and I invite you to browse and enjoy the influx of cheerful color and energy in all our new arrivals.
