A Dress and a Dream: Samantha Pleet

Wearing something created by Samantha Pleet’s fairy fingers feels like stepping into an enchanted world. She is one of Victoire’s most cherished designers, and each one of her collections turns the page onto a new chapter that brings us on an adventure. While wearing the Brooklyn-based designer’s beautifully constructed and ethically made pieces, you become the heroine of your own story.

Samantha grew up in Philadelphia and moved to New York to study at The Pratt Institute before establishing her line with her husband, Patrick Pleet. She creates each collection by immersing herself in books, paintings, and films and dreaming up whimsical prints and embroideries that have been inspired by everything from the medieval unicorn tapestries, Alice in Wonderland and the story of Joan of Arc. Pictured above is the Wallflower dress, available online here.

This season, the designer was inspired by homes, dreamed or remembered: collared dresses are embroidered with window pane pockets and charming floral prints are nostalgic recreations of the wallpaper that hangs in her grandmother’s house. For this collection, Samantha collaborated with New-York based painter Jenna Gribbon, whose paintings of misty landscapes were transformed into ethereal prints. The artist also created haunting prints where a surreal collection of objects including statues, swords, ghosts, and candles seem to float on dresses and shirts. These pieces are truly works of art!

Left: Window Dress available online and in the Ossington shop. Right: Beacon Dress in Dreaming print also available online and in the Toronto shop.

Here is how Samantha describes this season’s pieces: “SS 16 is very nostalgic to me. A lot of it is inspired by my grandmother’s tudor outside of Philadelphia. She hasn’t renovated it since the 60’s so it has a very beautiful nostalgic sensibility to it. We decided to take some wallpaper from her actual house and make it into some prints. I spent many years of my childhood there and it’s filled with many memories. It feels like the most beautiful place in the world to me. This glamourous resort feeling also came into the collection but in a haunted, magical kind of way. Recently my grandfather passed away so there are echoes of him and his life. I wanted the collection to feel like a haunted house so I reached out to Jenna Gribbon, an amazing New York surrealist painter, who also owns The Oracle Club in Long Island City. We’ve been friends for a long time and we are inspired by each other’s work so this was an exciting collaboration. She really helped bring my vision to life.”

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A Dress and a Dream: Samantha Pleet