The British accessories designer's S/S17 campaign puts colourful moulded plastic furniture front and centre
Ally Capellino founder Alison Lloyd has something of an obsession with plastic chairs. It started on a holiday to Kerala in the south of India four or five years ago, she explains, where the sheer amount of moulded plastic furniture decorating the streets – in doorways, at market stalls, in gardens and on pavements – was overwhelming. “I just noticed that every sort of outdoor office, or anywhere, just had these ridiculous, kind of disgusting plastic chairs,” she explains. “It almost took over, like they’ve got a presence of their own.” She quickly started attributing characteristics to each one, with the wistful regret of a sort of empathetic hoarder (“shy and less shy chairs,” for example, or “serious chair”) and decided to use her accessories brand – the name Ally Capellino has for decades been synonymous with beautifully crafted leather accessories – and its blog as an outlet for them. About a year ago, when supply began to overtake demand there, she decided to make an Instagram dedicated entirely to them instead – “people got fed up of the chairs and how disgusting they were, so I thought ‘right, I’ll do my own’,” she says – and they’ve since trickled over into window displays and collaborative projects for London Design Festival.
This season, at long last, the chairs get a space all of their own. The brand’s S/S17 advertising campaign is dedicated as much to Lloyd’s mismatched furniture collection as it is to her signature bags, purses and accessories themselves, all of which come together to form a kind of colourful family portrait. “Ally likes waifs and strays,” explains photographer Agnes Lloyd-Platt, her daughter, who shot the campaign. Lloyd-Platt has been working with her mother since she was 16, following in the footsteps of her brother Hamish, who has similarly been involved, in the graphics side of things. This love of the unloved is true of chairs, but also of people, she continues: “We’ve got lots of family that aren’t real family, but we have sort of grown into one.” Assembling a portion of the Capellino collection along with some additions from set designer Georgina Pragnell, who also worked on the campaign, the team shipped down to the nearby Haggerston School, the Ernö Goldfinger-designed co-ed in London’s Hackey, to shoot it. The school turned out to be an ideal backdrop, not only because it was plain, as Lloyd-Platt points out, but also because it has a stash of plastic chairs all its own.
Working both with and against their environment, Pragnell and art director David Lane set about transforming Goldfinger’s trademark Modernist architectural signatures – the funny tiled wall, the defiant concrete staircases – into an ideal spot to shoot Capellino’s bright, practical satchels, skinny leather wallets, crossbodies and umbrellas. In a fortunate twist of fate, the day of the shoot the team found that a film crew were also using the school as a location, and thus were forced to stalk through it in search of lesser-used rooms. For this, they recruited the school’s caretaker, who, in exchange was granted a place in the campaign. “He’s the black guy,” explains Lloyd-Platt, “and it was the day after his 65th birthday. I think he may have retired now, or not even be there, but that gave him the freedom to let us into the gym, which is where those funny paintings are on the wall.” His inclusion is not out of place at all; his co-stars, the young daughter of a family friend, several models Lloyd-Platt has worked with previously – make for a kind of family portrait of their own, too. Fun, closeness and originality seem to sit as much at the forefront in these decisions as in everything else about the Capellino offering.
Furniture makes for an apt extension to the Capellino brand, and it provides a welcome antidote to fashion’s infamous seasonality. “I like the furniture side of things,” Lloyd explains. “It’s a different time-scale. I mean fashion is a bit ‘six months, six months, six months’, but chairs move a bit slower. Whenever anyone comes to our house they get really excited about the things we’ve got in there, like the lovely big green sofa and loads of collected things.” “But it’s not like fashion-led,” her daughter adds. “It’s just lovely things, that have got a nice design, and detail and things like that. That’s more important than a trend.” “I think that’s what we try and have in the bags as well,” concludes Lloyd. “Although we’re having lots and lots of fun, the bags are fairly serviceable. They’re mostly for putting stuff in. They still do the job and hopefully look good.”
As for the chairs, now that they’ve had their moment? Currently they are in pride of place in Capellino’s shop window. “They’re a good design feature for windows aren’t they? They stack well, and you can put things on them easily. I think we might give them away after that!” There’s talk of a musical chairs event in April, at which winners might find themselves taking their various seats home as prizes. As creative conclusions go, it couldn’t be more fitting.
Art Direction Dave Lane; Styling Katie Lassen; Hair and Make-up Kristina Ralph Andrews; Set Design and Props Georgina Pragnell; Production Katie Davies.
