Museums & Galleries is delighted to announce a multi-year licensing agreement with iconic fashion designer Mary Katrantzou for greeting cards, gift packaging, social stationery and gifts.
Hall 3, Stand 3L30-M31
The licence launches in January 2024 with a range of 17 greeting cards and a suite of sheet gift wraps, gift tissue, and gift bags, with social stationery, journals and notebooks, and gifts to follow later in the year.
Born in Athens, Mary Katrantzou studied architecture at Rhode Island School of Design (US) and graduated with a BA in Textile designs and MA in Fashion from Central St Martins (London).
Her graduation show in 2008, which featured trompe l’oeil prints of oversized jewellery on jersey-bonded dresses, took the industry by storm, immediately securing a number of prestigious stockists, notably Browns, Joyce, and Colette. After her graduation show, Mary Katranzou established her namesake brand. She now boasts more than 100 high-end stockists ranging from Selfridges to Browns, Matchesfashion.com, Harrods and Bergdorf Goodman.
Mary Katranzou is dubbed ‘The Queen of Print’ by the press, a moniker that recognises the enormous influence of her work in the medium. Katrantzou’s work changed the face of 21st century fashion, inspiring high fashion and high street designers alike.
“Print can be as definite as a cut or a drape and allows a woman to filter the beauty of food in design. Our collections create a symbiosis between the world of digital technology and traditional craftsmanship, opening up a huge spectrum for possibility. I can create possibility out of impossibility, surrealism out of realism and vice versa,” says Mary.
In her designs, Katrantzou plays with clashing aesthetics, mixes technology and artisanship and explores innovative embellishments. Mary Katrantzou’s world is feminine, innovative, bold and artistic.
Museums & Galleries explored Mary’s design archives to create the launch collection of cards, comprising Mary’s unique way of imaginatively combining natural motifs like florals, animals and birds with innovative, bold geometrics in glorious colour. The cards are set off by a bespoke branded envelope. The wraps showcase Mary’s sensational versatility in approach, with a vibrant butterfly repeat against a cobalt blue background, a green jungle with parrots, a stunning seahorse striped design, and a foiled Mirror Marble design. The Butterflies design is available in gift tissue and gift bags options.
The Mary Katrantzou range is available immediately and will be displayed in full at Spring Fair on M&G’s stand in Hall 3, Stand 3L30-M3.
Ben Dorney, creative director, Museums & Galleries, says: “The opportunity to work with Mary Katrantzou is a real coup for Museums & Galleries, and we’re thrilled to bring her work to the greetings and gifts market. The brand has built a reputation for wrapping original prints onto dresses and the human form, but Mary’s prints and patterns are fantastic – and often enormous – artworks in their own right. It was immediately clear to us that elements and crops would work as standalone fashion-led artworks for greeting cards, and that the prints are also perfectly suited to our increasingly physical range of home, gift, textile and stationery products.
‘’Mary’s muses are varied, with themes and styles changing from season-to-season, so there is a wealth of material and inspiration to consider for the future. Somehow, despite the variety, it all retains its unique brand identity. We have loved working with the Mary Katrantzou team to channel their brand into the packaging for the range, which looks fantastic. The result is a really bold, original launch range, which feels at home – yet completely new – in the Museums & Galleries collection.”
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