London-based brand Rixo and Los-Angeles-based label Ciao Lucia have teamed up to design a collaborative colorful, feminine summer dress capsule, which will be released Thursday.
“It was very fun, because I used to have a multibrand and bought Rixo for my store [Shop Super Street], so I was very familiar with the brand and had met [Rixo cofounders] Orlagh [McCloskey] and Henrietta [Rix] years ago. They initially reached out to me about doing the collaboration and I said I would love to,” Ciao Lucia founder and designer Lucy Akin told WWD.
Akin and McCloskey said their brands shared many similarities, including the fact that both are independent, female-founded labels.
“We’re actually quite a small business — we don’t have investors, or anything like that — so when we get an idea, we try to make it happen without it being too corporate. It has to feel quite natural, and I think that’s when you get the best result from the collaboration, when it’s not forced and it feels that the two brands can work really well together. The collection came to life, actually quite easily,” McCloskey said.
“I think we’re such similar brands but geographically have a different customer — it made sense to team up and create something cool together,” Akin added of their shared aesthetics, including a love of lightweight fabrications (silk, cotton and viscose); girlish elan; dedication to fluid, flattering silhouettes, and an emphasis on designing each collection with versatility and multiuse wear in mind.
The collaborative capsule was designed with each brand’s signatures in mind — taking elements from each other’s collections, such as Rixo’s bold and playful prints or Ciao Lucia’s easy bodies, and melding them together to create 12 new, reimagined mini and midi-length frocks.
“We didn’t just take each other’s best shapes and put a print into them. We actually worked into them together, pulling inspirations from bits of vintage that we’d find,” McCloskey said, pointing out dresses boasting the hand-drawn cherub Rixo print or signature Ciao Lucia check motif, as well as vintage-inspired lace and ribbon details that run throughout the collection.
The Ciao Lucia and Rixo collaborative capsule collection, priced $295 to $425, is available exclusively through the brands’ e-commerce websites.
“We hope to see all the ladies of New York wearing them on the streets on sunny days, or at a wedding. It’s actually going to be really nice to see more customers from Los Angeles, New York, etc., wearing the brand, and for Lucy, I’m sure it’ll be great seeing pictures on Instagram of loads of London ladies wearing it across the pond,” McCloskey said, noting the brands will be hosting industry events in Los Angeles and London with friends of the brands to celebrate the launch.
