Meet Hardcastle

Who is Lousie?


Louise Hardcastle is the owner and creator of Hardcastle.
Has worked as a designer for 10 years.
Apart from fashion design, her expertise covers Graphic Design, Art Direction (photoshoots), and Illustration.
Louise studied Fashion and Textiles in Australia.
Moved to London to pursue opportunities within the Fashion Industry.
Classes herself as a self taught  “Garment designer”  with training and industry experience
in Graphics, Marketing, Art Direction and Advertising.
As the owner of Hardcastle she is extremely confident in her skills as designer and creator.
Believes her most important qualities are her strong creative vision, dedication, unperturbed
attitude and undeniable passion.
Creeping towards her 30’s her hunger to make this lifelong dream a reality has pushed its way to the top of her priority list.


SS 2011 Collection 

The inspiration for her debut SS 2011 Collection came from the Quechuan Women, who are a part
of a rural community residing in Central Andes, Peru, South Africa.

Quechua people, partiocularly the women, identify themselves with their distinctive clothing, wearing
fantastically bold and clashing wrap-around dresses. skirts and blouses; and brightly coloured shawls,
an intoxicating mix of deep orange, blood red and electric pink.

The Quenchuan Women also sport a bowler-style hat which are said, by some, to have been
adopted by the Quechua after a British hatter dumped a load in the nineteenth century. Others
claim that they are a copy of the hats worn by the Spanish invaders, but it is this clashing style of
maculine and feminine that is so appelaing to the designer.

The Quechua indigenous women also take part in the Tinku Festival in Macha, Bolivia. Tinku is an
ancestral ritual that consists of rival villages engaging in hand-to-hand combat. The ritual supposedly
ensures richer, more prosperous crops in the coming year. These women actually slug it out with
one another as the ritual supposedly ensures richer, more prosperous crops in the coming year. It is
this fiercness that inspires Louise.

See her show on Saturday 18th September at 17:30