Cats Brothers, the award winning knitwear/street-wear label give Peter Rabbit a decidedly cool, but very fitting new look on the cover of this edition of the favourite story, one of the Beatrix Potter British Fashion Designer Collection, created to mark the 150th anniversary of the author’s birth. Deciding that if Peter were around today he’d be the bad brother of the burrow, they replace his iconic blue jacket with a hip denim one, customized with ‘vegetable’ patches! Potter’s illustrations are reflected on the end papers too which feature gorgeous embroidered radishes and peas! It’s an idiosyncratic approach, but it really works and this will definitely draw fashion-conscious youngsters into Potter’s world. ~ Andrea Reece
In celebration of Beatrix Potter’s 150th anniversary, Penguin Random House have commissioned five of Britain and Ireland’s most exciting fashion designers to reimagine the cover designs of Potter’s best-loved tales. Visually stunning and completely unexpected, we hope you enjoy seeing Potter’s characters through this new lens – Jo Hanks, Publisher
Beatrix Potter had an eye for fashion as well as the natural world, clothing her characters in à la mode jackets, hats, shawls and dresses with Peter Rabbit being inseparable from his iconic blue jacket. It has been a privilege working with modern British and Irish fashion designers, each creating surprising and wonderful designs inspired by Beatrix Potter’s classic tales adding their own distinctive style into the mix – Adam Wardle, Designer
This edition is part of a collection of five books designed by iconic British and Irish fashion designers to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Beatrix Potter. The Tale of Peter Rabbit was first published by Frederick Warne in 1902 and endures as Beatrix Potter's most popular and well-loved tale. It tells the story of a very mischievous rabbit and the trouble he encounters in Mr McGregor's vegetable garden!
The cover of The Tale of Peter Rabbit is designed by Cats Brothers, an award winning ready-to-wear luxury knitwear/street-wear label with a crafted approach to design, making clothes that are fashion forward and always with a sense of humour - the garments are as fun to wear as they are to make. They recently won Young Designer of the Year 2015, Olympus Pen Scottish Fashion Awards; Scotland Re:Designed Womenswear Designer of the Year 2015.
‘When designing the cover for Peter Rabbit, we started by imagining Peter today – what would he be like? Well, he’d be naughty, streetwise and incredibly cool, of course’– Cats Brothers.
Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866. During her rather lonely childhood and later, as a young woman, she studied art and natural history. She acquired her love and knowledge of the countryside during family holidays, at first in Scotland and then in the Lake District. She started her career as children's author and illustrator in 1901 when she was thirty-five. In the years before the First World War, demand for her work was so great that she was publishing an average of two new stories a year. As she became financially independent, she was able to buy some land in the Lake District and in 1913, on her marriage to solicitor William Heelis, she moved to live there permanently. For the last thirty years of her life, writing and illustrating gave place to a second career as a sheep farmer and countryside conservationist.
Her little books never lost their popularity however and today they sell in their millions, translated into numerous languages, and the pleasures of those timeless tales continue to be enjoyed by children all over the world.
