Amelia and the illustrators

Amelia Gregory of Amelia's Magazine is on a book tour at the moment, promoting her excellent illustrated eco fashion book, Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration. When she asked if we'd like to host some tour dates, we immediately said 'yes'. Together we decided to bookend her tour with two dates at Tatty Devine, with the opening night at our Covent Garden boutique and the closing night in Brick Lane (coming up on 7th June). The Covent Garden date was really fun. We knew lots of illustrators would be coming so we decided to let everyone loose to draw on our windows. We were actually inspired to do this by the windows at Mimi Berry's boutique on Cheshire Street, which our friend Julia regularly colours in. Julia was kind enough to give us her secret tips on the best pens to use. Luckily we already had a big stash of them from some jewellery colouring-in workshops we did last year, so we put out a tub of pens and let everyone get busy colouring in: Tom Gyr did Amelia's logo. June Champoomidole (in the red) drew portraits of people. And here's June's self-portrait which appears in Amelia's book: Gemma Cook was the first illustrator to arrive, and drew a cake stand with cupcakes. Here she is working on a minty green heart: We served up some lovely loose leaf teas from Lahloo Tea. We had Darjeeling and a beautiful English Peppermint. We passed around the real cupcakes, too, from Cute As A Cupcake. They were mini sized with pink icing to match Amelia's book. There was some discussion on how many mini cupcakes equal one big cupcake. Oh well, who cares, have five. We were worried for a while that we wouldn't have any juice, because Juiceology's courier hadn't turned up during the afternoon. But the Juiceology people drove down to the shop to save the day! We have to say these were delicious - their flavour combinations got everyone talking. Apple, Lime & Mint was our favourite. After that, everyone gathered inside to listen to Amelia's talk: Amelia's talk was really inspiring. She spoke about setting up Amelia's Magazine, which ran as a print magazine for ten perfect issues then switched to digital. She's published two books of illustration, the first imagining a future full of renewable energy after she got involved in Climate Camp, and the new book on eco fashion because she wanted to explore fashion illustration (which she says isn't being used much in the wider world at the moment). For both books she put out an open brief so that anyone could submit their work. Amelia talked about how the cover of her first book was by a 19-year-old who'd never even studied illustration. She then talked about how she likes to create connections between people, and the ways that happens now through Facebook, Twitter, and new sites like Pinterest. She's just been to Russia to talk to fashion designers there about using social media to get their work seen by the world. And she's also just been to Poland Fashion Week for the first time. She also talked honestly about the difficulties of self-publishing (all of Amelia's books and magazine have been published by her). The support and good working relationship she has with her printer is important - and she talked about how important it is generally to get on with people! After the talk it was time for people to get their books signed: And everyone hung around to chat about illustration, jewellery, fashion and, oh, everything: We passed around some Dr.Hauschka face masks. All the boys took them as well as the girls. Love it when boys do that. And people showed off their work. We liked this shadow book by Linda Toigo: Sad you missed it, or just want to do it all again? Amelia's tour is continuing with these dates: Tuesday 17th May at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh Tuesday 24th May at Castor and Pollux in Brighton Wednesday 25th May at Comma in Oxford Thursday 26th May at Soma Gallery in Bristol Tuesday 7th June at Tatty Devine Brick Lane (read more and book your place here) And you can buy either of Amelia's books on our website: A big thank you to everybody who came, and to Amelia for creating such a wonderful evening. See you soon at Brick Lane!

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