The past six months have been pretty massive for young Melbourne textile designer Cassie Byrnes. She’s worked on some exciting collaborations with businesses as far afield as the USA and Europe. Closer to home, she’s excited for the upcoming launch of her second collaboration with local fashion label Kuwaii.
However, it’s Cassie’s own label, Variety Hour, which enables her maximum creative freedom. ‘Variety Hour is my print focused label of fun patterned things that will make you happy!’ Cassie says. ‘When I work with clients I enjoy giving them what they want and mixing our styles. Variety Hour is an outlet for me to get as weird as I want, to experiment with new ideas and no restrictions’ she explains.
Each season, Cassie designs and hand paints a new collection of prints which are then adapted to suit a variety of products across fashion and homewares. They’re all created from scratch here in Melbourne.
Her latest prints form the ‘Gondwanaland’ collection, a series inspired by ‘Pangea’, a supercontinent that existed around 200 million years ago. All the patterns in the range have been inspired by this era.
There’ll be no slowing down for Cassie anytime soon. She has a bunch of great projects in the works later this year – including something very special we are working on together (hush hush for now, we’ll fill you in soon!). For now, she’s just enjoying the ride.
‘Pushing myself creatively and seeing my skills develop through all the hard work is really helping me to grow in confidence, and I’m lucky enough to really love my work and enjoy the process’ she says. ‘I guess I’m looking forward to just creating more things! And some days off. They would be nice.’
