Dannii and Tabitha are always thinking ahead about their brand
Why did you want to design this new bag for Kenco Millicano?
Tabitha: I think it was just a really nice opportunity when we were approached with it and I think that the Project D woman and the Kenco Millicano woman marry really well as a partnership. Dannii and I are now both working mothers so we need something versatile and the Project D brand is about going from day to night and trying to make women's lives easy and I think that worked really well with the handbag as well because we wanted to create a really versatile handbag that is easy to take from day to night. Now that we're both mothers we literally have everything that we posess in our handbags, bottles, baby sick things, everything. So when the opporunity came to us we just felt like it was a really, really good idea and it would be a really nice brand collaboration. It's the first ever luxurious handbag that we've ever done, it was an exciting project for us and it was good to have a reason to do it. We get approached about things like this quite a lot but Kenco Millicano is a brand that we both love and we both love coffee so it seemed ideal.
Where did the inspiration come from for the bag?
Dannii: It's really our Project D philosophy of going from day to night as we do with our dresses and maybe just changing with accessories to make it work for different events. You've got the larger bag, then inside you've got all of your pockets and compartments and there's a smaller clutch bag inside and they both fit all of your stuff. You've got the big bag to hold everything but the kitchen sink and your clutch bag which you can literally just dettach in the inside and have your essentials in and be on your way. Caffine filled and on your way, that's what we need to be we're mums and up in the night.
Tabitha: If we had a thermos of hot water in our bags that was ready in the morning, we could put a satchet of Kenco Millicano in it and we'd be ready to go.
Dannii: Exactly, that's how we roll.
How would you sum up the Project D woman?
Tabitha: A woman who is confident, practical and likes beautiful things. We always try to put that into our dresses and we've also put it into the K bag that we've designed. It's very luxurious, but very practical at the same time.
The summer collection is out and available now. Where did you get your inspiration for that?
Tabitha: Yes, the Spring/Summer collection has recently gone on sale; we really love prints. We've been investing time, money and effort into prints and we really wanted some light, fun, flirty prints that would appeal to women and that has been quite a lot of the inspiration for the spring/summer collection. We've named it after all of the Greek Godesses, which is ofcourse slightly inspired by the Olympics this year. It's quite a fun, flirty collection and we've done quite a lot of peplums; which has really worked for us because it's so on-trend this season. It's one of my favourite collections. How about you Dan?
Dannii: Well, I remember us loving peplums and me saying about three years ago 'We've got to do something with peplums.'
Tabitha: You did, you predicted the trend.
Dannii: We were at a musical, I'm not Tabs if you wanted me to give that away, but we were at a musical and one of the characters that was really sassy that we loved, she had a jacket with a peplum on it. And now it's all trendy and we always say 'we're not trendy, we don't do trendy stuff'. So you realise that we're not when we find inspiration from a musical character. I don't know where everyone else gets it from, but we're not normally doing trend stuff.
You obviously have the perfume too, any plans to do any more?
Dannii: I'd love to do more, it's such a passion for me.
Cosmetics become such a huge part of designer brands. Would you ever consider making a whole range of Project D cosmetics?
Tabitha: I think it is definitely something that we would love to do in the future, it's probably something that we'd rather collaborate on rather than doing ourselves because that's such a major thing and we want to focus on doing our fashion and doing that well.
Then, there are all these other side lines that we would love to do to make it into a lifestyle brand. I think it's when the time is right, but it's definitely something that we'd love to do. It's something that Dan and I have always talked about. Obviously we'll have to do a dark red lipstick for you Dan because you love it.
Dannii: Pink sparkles for you.
A lot of designer brands do sister lines too, have you ever thought about doing something like that?
Dannii: I guess my biggest thing that I want to do, and I just annoy Tabitha with it everyday; I want to make Project D bridal wear. That is in the vein of how we make our dresses. There are so many dresses in our collection already taht you'd wear for beautiful events, you could evenw ear as a bridesmaid, because I think that everybody's vision of what a bridesmaid is these days is very different to what it was years ago. I'd love to be able to make wedding dresses that were affordable but are very, very beautiful. Taking designs that already exist within our collections that we've had. From the first collection, we had editors come in and see us and one of them said that she would love a particular design as her wedding dress if it was in an ivory colour and that was sort of when the idea sparked and I thought that a lot of our designs would work that way.
Tabitha: I think that it's something that we'll go into because I agree that so many of our patterns and our designs, you know we do it all in-house our trialing and our patterns, so it's something that would be easy for us to develop once we have a good collection of them. What I didn't tell you Dan, was that our wardobe buyer was in a few weeks ago for autumn/winter and she said, 'I'm getting married next year and I'm going to come here for all of my bridesmaids dresses.' And I thought, my God, I can't tell Dannii about that because she'll never shut up about it.
Dannii: I'm so excited! Not only do you want to see women wearing your dresses and love them, but when they chose it for a special occassion that's major.
Like you've just said, it's amazing to see women in your dresses. Are there any particular celebrities that you would love to see in your designs?
Dannii: I know Tabs has been hooked on Kate Hudson forever and I do adore her. Obviously Sarah Jessica Parker would be big one for me, I love her. And we've had a bit of a fixation on Michelle Obama because she's just so cool and savvy and knows what suits her.
Tabitha: And she's a real woman.
Like you mentioned before about the autumn/winter buyer, you're already thinking about the next collection. Is there any particular theme?
Tabitha: Well, we're selling the Autumn/Winter main 12 collection at the moment. We've just been in Paris for the first time last weekend, which was really exciting for us because it was the first time that we've shown abroad, so that's a big development for us and we're designing Sping/Summer 13 at the moment, we just starting this in-house. A lot of it's about the prints again. Autumn/Winter we've got these beautiful butterfly prints and lots of hand painted prints, we always add lots of floral in there too. Dannii's like, 'that looks like my Grandmother's curtains'.
Dannii: The thing is, there are certain people who don't like floral and if they don't, but they like the print that we do then we've succeeded. It's like a lace dress, some people don't like lace, but if you make a lace dress that they love then you've crossed over and you've made something special. So instead of being fixated on what you're making the dress with you have to concentrate a bit more on the dress, not let the fabric take over even though as Tabs said it's so crucial and it's so important to get it right. You know we fight back and forth over everything about our dresses and I think that's the magic, I couldn't do this on my own, I wouldn't do this on my own, I wouldn't want to. It's amazing to do this with your best friend and have someone to bounce off and tell you when you're wrong and steer you in the right direction.
You said you were in Paris, did you get to go and see many collections, or was it just about your own?
Tabitha: No, we just done a trade show, we didn't do a catwalk show because we were just showing our collection in and amongst other designers. For us to get to show our collection there it's exciting. We're expanding on the UK market and we're hoping to go to New York in August, it's fun to see the company growing and doing all of that kind of stuff.
Where would you like to see the brand going next?
Dannii: I think that our main focus is always on having beautiful dresses, and we'd love it if every woman had a Project D dress in her wardrobe. But then she loved it so much that she wanted to come back to our brand again and again for that special dress that just makes you feel amazing. That's always at the heart of everything that we do.
Tabitha: If every woman had a Project D dress in her wardrobe we could probably retire, and that would be amazing. [Tabitha and Danni laugh]
Dannii: We'd never retire, you know that's not going to happen. But we would be having manicures and pedicures done and drinking margaritas everyday at work, that would be cool.
Tabitha: You'd be drinking Champagne Dan, don't even lie.
Dannii: We'd be having meetings in our Jet Plane rather than in the office.
Dannii, you split your time ovbiously between here and Australia. I love the Australian designer Dion Lee, which are your favourite?
I love Collette Dinnigan, I love Lise Ho and Aurelio Costarella they're my favourites. And then there's the couture designers J'aton, which have made a lot of dresses over the years and a lot of special ones for the X Factor. There is such a wealth of talent out there. Tabs had a trip out there, not so long ago and it was so whirlwind, we had so much to fit in, but I can't wait for her to come out again shortly and really see what's going on and soak it up because I think we (Australia) used to see ourselves as being very behind the rest of the world because the seasons are different but I think that Australian's have moved on and are just doing their own thing.
Dannii Minogue and Tabitha Somerset Webb - Project D - have designed their first luxury handbag to celebrate the latest trend in instant coffee, Kenco Millicano, now available in a portable Stick Pack. The limited edition K Bag is perfect for day to night wearing – coffee to cocktails – and is available at www.my-wardrobe.com/kbag from 27th March.
Femalefirst Taryn Davies