Designer Henry Holland called the collection his "love letter to America."
House of Holland might be a label known for its tongue-in-cheek approach, but that doesn’t mean designer Henry Holland isn’t thinking about the bigger picture. “It’s very difficult not to be looking to America at the moment so the collection was kind of my love letter to America. What I wanted to do was celebrate the culture of the country,” said Holland.
He took a characteristically exuberant attitude for a collection filled with Stars and Stripes prints, retro checkerboard patterns and lace and fringing. His ever-youthful silhouettes had an off-hand, Nineties quality this time around, as Holland said he’d been taken with how the era’s hip hop stars had interpreted cowboy looks. There were designs such as a slouchy, pink-and-white checked fluffy sweater worn over a slipdress. Jeans printed with white stars were paired with an oversized lumberjack shirt and a sweater with a Woody Woodpecker motif (part of a capsule collection inspired by the cartoon character.)
As much as the collection channeled a bold, brash mood – fishnet tights and cowboy boots worn with a coat in red-and-white shaggy shearling checks – there were looks that tempered all those wild elements. Nodding to the grungier side of the Nineties, there were lace dresses in muted shades of mauve and khaki, trimmed with silky fringing.