It isn’t often that a design house names itself after two apartment blocks, but this is the case with Australian-based Katherine Etheridge and Jess Constance.The Dallas and The Carlos were the apartment blocks the partners were living in in 2009; sited on the Brazilian island of Floianopolis with immediate access to the area’s forty beaches.
It was this Brazilian stay which fuelled the idea of setting up a label. Both had been involved in the worlds of interior, fashion and styling design prior, but now was the time to burgeon and thrill with their own ideas. From the beach life came a love for vivid colours, the sounds and smells of a different country, and the juxtaposition of materials like leather made from fish skins, horsehair, rivets and plastics.
Dallas and Carlos was now a brand making a range of accessories of careful craftsmanship and superb, carefree soul. The photo shows some of the designers’ wristbands – revelling in texture, small engineering and the almost gaudy colours of neoprene. The bands are available at Superette, 106 Victoria Street, where they are displayed with humour around lopped-off branches of silver birch.
