From the Archive: She Bought a Liberty Scarf
A journey into the Liberty archive to discover this season’s illustrated inspirations
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She Bought A Liberty Scarf
A journey into the Liberty archive to discover this season’s illustrated inspirations
By: Team Liberty‘She Bought A Liberty Scarf’ was a booklet first produced in the mid-1930s, charmingly illustrated by Joyce Dennys. Created in a special commission for the Liberty store, it depicts the myriad fashionable uses for a Liberty silk scarf – from golfing, fishing and sunbathing to strolling the grounds of a castle by moonlight.
Figures from the story have been extracted and redrawn in the Liberty studio, appearing on scarves, shirts and sleepwear as part of the Liberty collection for Autumn 2020. “We repainted Joyce Dennys’s wonderful illustrations into contemporary colourways,” explains Design Director Holly Marler. “We also repainted the scarf design worn by the story’s heroine, transforming it to create the border of the lozenge scarf.”
After being rediscovered in the City of Westminster archives and revived for a modern audience almost 80 years on, Joyce Dennys’ “social skit” booklet remains as charming and readable as ever. The booklet’s witty depiction of “the versatile fashion uses of Liberty’s scarves”, gains a fresh lease of life as part of the new season’s collection – proof, as if we needed it, that a Liberty scarf really is forever.
