Back to School

 

The summer holidays are nearly over, and the fun of picking out their new back to school essentials is here. School coats for girls and boys with all the little extra bits to match (backpacks, scarves, umbrellas and so much more), we have all you need to have them school ready.

 

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All the favourite kids’ school coats

 

 

Red, navy and black school coats are at the top of our list each and every September – a go-to, they’ll wear these all the way through the winter season.

 

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And those that add a playful pop of colour …

 

 

 

Add bright shades and shimmering details to their school wardrobe with these sweet girl and boy coats in our new collection.

 

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All the matching accessories

 

 

Backpacks, hats, scarves, shoes, socks and everything in-between, find all the little essentials you need for their return to school.

 

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And little things they wear in their hair…

 

 

Hair accessories are always a good idea – from bows to butterflies we have something they’ll love to mix and match with, in our collection.

 

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Artisan Studio: The Art of Artisan

 

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Introducing our new artisan collection, a celebration of beautifully made craft icon pieces to treasure always. Each piece traditionally made by hand with bandhani, woodblock and screen-printed techniques, designed in London by our in-house team, then crafted with considered fabrics, including soft organic cotton – these styles are made to wear now and pass down to loved ones throughout the years.

 

 

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Discover how our Artisan Collection is made – handcrafted with traditional techniques, experience these beautifully designed pieces from the hand-printed dresses to the quilted jackets come to life…

 

 

Or read more about the techniques used in this collection below…

 

Screen printing

 

Our screen print designs are created digitally and processed on a reusable screen, before being washed and prepped ready to add the dyes, where the pattern will seep through the screen on the relieved areas.

The dyes are poured on the screen using a squeegee and then pulled back and forth over the fabric – after each layer has dried a different layer of colour is added.

 

 

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Woodblock

 

Carved and crafted from mango wood – each layer of colour is placed on top of each other. Borders are printed and designed in rows, before being cut and inserted into each garment.

 

Coming soon

 

Bandhani

 

Tied and twisted, each dot on the fabric is crafted by hand and layered up to show the different colours. The twisted cotton threads create areas where the dye doesn’t reach the cloth, before being layered up with colour and dyes to give the final look.

 

Coming soon 

 

Quilting

 

Fabric is placed and stitched with borders. Wadding is sandwiched in-between the fabric and overstitched to create the quilted finish.

 

Now you’ve seen how they’ve been made, it’s time to make these beautiful pieces part of your forever wardrobe. Shop our latest artisan collection in full >

 

 

Summer Activities with the Kids: Marlenka & Flo

 

 

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Summer holidays are in full swing and we’re all for inspiration on how to keep the kids busy on those days at home. Marlenka and Flo show us how to make flower crowns, bath soak bags and dried flower clay ornaments, and we couldn’t be more excited to get started…

 

Flower crown

 

 

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We absolutely loved making these! We picked all the wildflowers on our walk and Flo enjoyed choosing different colours and types of blooms. It gave her a little bit of responsibility and awoke her creative side. Once we made the crown, she really enjoyed playing with it, pretending to be a fairy. I guarantee your little ones will really enjoy this activity.

 

 

What you’ll need:

 

Floral wire

Tape, ribbon or a string

Fresh flowers

Scissors

 

How to:

 

Cut your flowers so the stems are 1 1/2 inches long.

Create your wire loop to the size of your head and use the extra length to wrap around the loop again for stability. 

Place one of your centre flowers on your wire loop and use the floral tape or a string to attach the stem to the wire.

Place another flower behind your first flower and tape that stem to the wire as well. Continue this process until you have that side completed. Repeat the process for the other side by placing a flower next to your centre flower (the heads of the flowers should be facing each other) and working your way down that side of the wire. Cover the exposed wire in the back with the floral tape, and you’re done!

 

 

Bath soak bags

 

 

We absolutely love these! It’s such an easy and yet extremely satisfying activity! The bags are perfect as a little gift to your friends or loved ones to help them relax. You can make the bags as little or as big as you wish and even decorate them with a stamp or add a tag with ingredients. Flo’s idea was to add a little lavender stem to each bag. It looked so cute.

 

 

In our bags we added:

 

Organic oats

Dried lavender

Dried rose petals

Epsom Salt

Himalayan Salt

Few drops of lavender oil

 

You can really use whatever herbs or dried flowers you have in your house.

Simply add it all together to your bag.

Your little ones will love it. Flo adores making potions and mixtures with all sorts of ingredients, so this was a perfect activity for her. It kept her entertained for a good while. It was also a great opportunity to talk about different herbs and flowers and how they help us. For example, Flo now knows that lavender helps us sleep better.

 

 

Dried flowers clay ornaments

 

 

If you and your little ones love drying flowers just as much as us, you will love this activity!

We had lots of dried pressed flowers that we collected last year so we decided to use them with the air-dry clay paste and turn them into a beautiful ornament. Again, they’re so pretty and perfect for a lovely and very meaningful gift.

If you haven’t got pressed flowers, don’t worry. You can dry them in no time. Just pick your favourite wildflowers, press them flat in between pages of one of your biggest, heaviest books. We used baking paper between the flowers and the paper, to keep the flowers from sticking and ripping when you take them off the pages.

Next, when the flowers are ready get a piece of air-dry clay, roll it out and using a cup, jar or a cookie cutter, cut out desired shapes. We went for circles but really you can get your imagination run wild!

Once you cut out all the ornaments, don’t forget to create a hole to string twine through at the end. We used a straw to do it.

Now it’s time to decorate your ornaments. Gently press all the flowers onto your clay shapes and once you’re done, give it a thin layer of PVA glue or a Mod Podge.

Once you’re done, pop your ornament onto a baking paper and let it fully dry overnight.

Put a string through the hole, once they’re hardened and dried, and tie a knot.

All done! Enjoy!

 

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Summer Activities with the Kids: Meg, Tiggy & Pip

 

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Fill their summer holidays with fun activities that keep the kids occupied while at home. We spoke to Meg to find out what she is up to this summer with Tiggy and Pip, from bookmark to cupcake making, she has given us plenty of inspiration…

 

Bookmark Making

 

 

Entertaining little ones I’ve found needs to be “involved”, to keep their attention for any length of time activities need to involve them, from planning what we’re about to do, to preparation and then of course making. I’ve learned I have no hope with the final stage of the process, the clearing up.

 

 

To make our floral bookmarks our first step was to forage for flowers and this the children particularly enjoyed, scouting out plants with pretty flowers that could then be cut and popped into their little basket. It was an adventure through the garden and once our little basket was full, we set to work with the preparing stage. We lay all the flowers we’d picked and cut out onto the table, made sure we had our blank card to use for bookmarks ready together with hole-punch, scissors, twine and some sheets of baking paper to use to place the flowers between to be able to press them flat and our “pièce de résistance” a small laminating machine (this part is optional but I figured it would be less messy than glue and the bookmarks would last a little longer).

 

 

Once everything was in place, we set to work with the making stage and this we really enjoyed! The girls placed their flowers as they wished onto the pieces of card, we placed their finished design into a laminating pouch and popped it into the laminating machine. Once cooled we cut around the bookmark, used the hole punch to create a hole and tied some twine through it and “ta-da” we’d made a beautiful handmade floral bookmark. The girls were super excited to see their bookmarks finished and all that was left to do was to choose which books to put them in.

 

Butterfly Cupcakes

 

 

This activity stems from my own childhood cake making days when my grandmother used to bake cakes with me, such fond memories and it’s wonderful to be able to carry on making cakes with my own children. One of my favourites as a child were butterfly cakes and I now make them with my daughters but with “added sprinkles”.

 

 

 

The recipe:

 

Ingredients

110g butter, softened

110g caster sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

110g self-raising flour

½ tsp baking powder

1 tbsp milk, plus 2 tbsp if needed, to loosen the buttercream

Strawberry jam (optional)

Sprinkles (optional)

 

For the buttercream

300g icing sugar

150g butter, softened

2 tsp vanilla paste

 

 

Method:

STEP 1

Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Line a cupcake tin with 10 cases. To make the sponge, tip the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, baking powder and milk into a large mixing bowl and beat with either a hand whisk or electric mixer until smooth, pale and combined. Divide the batter between the cases and bake for 15 mins until golden brown and a skewer inserted in the middle of a cake comes out clean. Leave on a wire rack to cool.

STEP 2

While the cakes are cooling, make the buttercream by beating together the icing sugar, butter and vanilla until pale and fluffy. Mix in the extra milk if the icing feels too stiff.

STEP 3

Once the cakes are cool, use a sharp knife to slice off the tops, then cut the tops in half. Pipe or spread the buttercream on top of the cakes, then gently push two semi-circular halves into the buttercream on each cake, doing this at an angle to look like butterfly wings. You can serve the cupcakes at this stage or decorate them with a little blob of jam in the centre and a scattering of sprinkles if you like.

 

Or if like me with small children you can substitute and “speed up” the process by using a cake making set. To make the ones in our pictures I used a Victoria sponge mix, simply added vegetable oil, eggs and water and spooned the mixture between cupcake papers. This of course is down to personal preference and sometimes time too, especially when it comes to little ones. I’m a true believer in “roll with whatever works” so don’t add pressure on yourself to make it from scratch. The most important part is that you enjoy making them and of course the best part, eating them!

 

Planting Sunflowers

 

 

Gardening and planting are always a fun activity with little ones. Be prepared to get a little messy, the girls ended up with compost in their sandals, gloves, hair, but we laughed endlessly at what is a super easy activity to do with little ones. What you’ll need is a container of sorts or a patch of garden in which to plant, some compost and some sunflower seeds. Fill your container or dig your patch, pop in your seeds, push them gently into the compost or ground. Fill with more compost so that the seeds are well covered and then water well. This activity isn’t possibly the best activity if you have impatient little ones as the results will take a little while to show but when they do, they’ll be amazed as sunflowers grow to be so tall! Mine love to measure them as they grow and love that often the sunflowers are even taller than them!

 

 

Happy growing!

 

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Monsoon Trust: WaterHarvest

 

 

The Monsoon Accessorize Trust is so proud to support WaterHarvest, a not-for-profit that harvests rainwater, for sustainable access to safe clean drinking water. Over the past three years, we have been able to support the construction of over 150 rainwater harvesting structures in Charasada, just southwest of Jaipur. As a result, 150 families (around 900 people) will have year-round, clean drinking water at home. Seeing the positive impact of WaterHarvest, we have just committed to a further three years with an increase of funds by almost double. 

 
This is Gora Kanwar (photographed above) who now has water at home for the first time in her life. This opens up all the wonderful follow-on benefits – she won’t have to walk miles each day fetching water, her heath will improve from drinking clean safe beautiful rainwater that has been filtered, and she can now go to senior school which she’s had to miss until now as she was tied up each day fetching water. 

 

 

 

 

“Driving overland to India in the seventies, water was a scarce commodity in every country on route. It is even more so today and no more so than the end of the journey in Rajasthan where Monsoon the business started a revival of hand-block printing, an ancient craft in the surrounding villages to Jaipur. Water and wells were in dire need, so we remember how crucial they were to the community. 

 

The Monsoon Accessorize Trust fully support the amazing work of WaterHarvest.”  Peter Simon – Founder 

 

 

We have been able support this amazing cause with the support of staff, customers and the business – and you can also get involved. Find out more via the link below.

 

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WaterHarvest Stories  

 

We wanted to find out more about the people directly impacted by WaterHarvest, so we could share their stories with you.

 

Dallu Devi: Bhojpur Village

 

 

Dallu is 30 years old and raising her three young children alone since her husband passed away. Before the project, she had to fetch water very early or late in the day, from the only available water sources 2km away. Earning money for her family has always been her top priority.

Now, with a roof rainwater system at home, she says, ‘Now I have time to prepare food for my children…and water at home has changed my life holistically.’

 

 

Santra Devi: Jal Sakhi – Women’s Community Worker

 

 

Santra works with women in the community, ‘During my walk in the community I ensure people use rainwater harvesting structures for drinking purposes. The water crisis in the village is over because of rainwater harvesting structures, now households are using safe, cleaner and sweeter water. While counselling the women I share financial saving schemes to help women start saving monthly too.

 I am happy to see the change in the village where a drinking water crisis is over. The fight for water has stopped. Social relations are developing. Rainwater harvesting structures saved time and women started small scale income generation activities to raise their household income.’

 

 

Gulab Devi: Bhojpur Villiage

 

 

Gulab has three children and used to get water from a pond 4km away. In the summer they had to dig deep to get any water at all. Gulab got sick and weak and was unable to walk. To survive, her 12-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son left school to help their mum.

A new rainwater system has transformed things. Gulab joyfully says ‘My sickness is cured, and my health improved due to sweet and safe water of roof rainwater harvesting tank. My stomach-ache has gone, and joint pain is also very less. My children are studying in school as well.’

In addition, she has more time and grows vegetables for a better family diet.

 

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August: Monsoon’s Journal

 

 

The last full month of summer has arrived, and we plan to make the most of it, sun shining or not. From Edinburgh Fringe festival and outdoor art classes to wedding season being in full swing, we have just the suggestions you need for August.

 

 

 

Whether planning one yourself or adding all the guest-list invites to your calendar, we all know weddings are back. Find the perfect outfits for brides, bridesmaids and the guests in our collection.

 

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The National Gallery is offering free art classes on the square, so you can take a trip to see your favourite paintings while also then sketching them yourself –  you can find out more about how to get involved on their website.

 

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Our new collection has arrived in store, and we can’t wait to show it off. Come and visit us in your local store and enjoy shopping in real life again!

 

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Book tickets to one of the most beautiful cities and enjoy the Fringe Festival while you’re there. With loads of events to choose from you can catch up with all the live comedy you’ve missed other the last year or so.

 

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Staycations are the new vacations, and the UK has some beautiful places you can visit. Take a look at some of the picturesque parks you can take a trip to (a great pick for your bank holiday weekend).

 

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