Cloth kits were a central part of home do-it-yourself pictures in the mid-1970s such as The Wombles or The Good Life on television; they came as a piece of fabric on which all parts of a garment were printed to be cut out and sewn together to make an outfit.
It didn't feel like tailoring, but rather like modeling with a needle and scissors. And they had a new kind of graphic attraction: where printed T-shirts used a torso as an advertising panel for a slogan or a picture, fabric samples were placed, initially using the screen printing process, and adapted to the cut and construction of items of clothing – with cutouts, one Skirt hem, down sleeves, like decoration on traditional folk costumes. Motifs can be transferred to matching panties or a bag to take up space on the fabric.
Janet Kennedy, who died at the age of 87, was responsible for much of the patterning of Clothkits, working in and overseeing print design from 1971 until catalog retailer Freemans devoured the company in 1988.
Born in Pinner, Middlesex (now part of the London borough of Harrow), Janet was the daughter of Stewart Eady, who worked for a railway company and made unusual trips for the family in France in the 1950s and 60s, and his wife Connie. She attended North London Collegiate School, where Peggy Angus was art director from 1947 to 1970.
Angus, an artist and extraordinary – if unfounded – advertising designer, was an advocate for living patterns in daily life and for creativity for everyone; Janet said the Angus motto was Art for Life. She enrolled girls in the school for her ambitious projects, and since she always needed a few extra hands to print her wallpaper as well, she remained close friends with some art lovers, notably Janet, who studied sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art.
Clothkits play tablecloth by Janet Kennedy
Angus had been a familiar visitor to the artists' colony of Great Bardfield, Essex, since the 1930s, and these artists lived in their own rented country house, Furlongs, near Lewes in East Sussex, where they owned the nearby bohemian home of the Bloomsbury Bell family , Charleston, knew. She introduced Janet to a number of English artists who also worked in commercial design and believed in the joy of patterns.
She also introduced her to Tyl Kennedy, the future designer of stairs, whom Janet married; she loaned the desperate couple enough to buy a house in Glynde, near Lewes.
Angus praised Janet's art to Tyl's sister-in-law, Anne Kennedy, who was looking for someone who could work within the unusual textile parameters of her young firm, Clothkits, influenced by Angus' radical ideas; Angus lent the company enough money to buy their first store in Lewes. Anne wanted to make animal prints for children and Angus said Janet could draw anything.
Anne, together with her husband Finn, created fabric clothing at their kitchen table in 1968 by mail order. but he had a new need for the homemade, was willing to do simple work to get fun clothes, especially for children, at prices lower than the fashionable imports from Scandinavia or France, and wanted playful prints.
Janet contributed these and selected others; Theirs shared the unusual, bold colors, like lithographic inks, and worldwide folk art references of Angus' tile and wallpaper work. She imagined the pattern as sculptural, how designs that are precisely tailored to items of clothing would appear in the group. Your popular Clothkits children's quilted jacket in Farmyard design is now being revived.
Children wearing cloth smocks felt like they were part of a book illustration or cartoon, and the company compiled albums of photos of them sent from around the world by happy families proud of their humble accomplishments. Anne's four children, along with those of Janet and Tyl – Sasha, Patrick, Lucy, and Jason – were among the company's catalog models; Kennedy families had to take the cold shots that weren't inflicted on guest posers.
Kit and Kitty dolls in the Clothkits catalog, where Janet Kennedy was Head of Print Design from 1971
The catalogs represent the mid-1970s so accurately that an image of young Patrick in lion-print dungarees inspired a figure in a tapestry centered at that time that Grayson Perry created for his House for Essex artwork, the art that nourishes textile design, the textile art nourishes circle completed.
Clothkits wasn't wasteful (projects left little leftover), and since Anne and Janet were working mothers, the company gradually made crèches and flexible hours available to the parents of its 400 employees around Lewes in its heyday. The company expanded into a chain store in the 1980s, switching from kits to ready-to-wear clothing, but was defeated by ever cheaper imports even in children's clothing, and Freemans bought them for their long-established customer database, turning it into a dormant business in 1991. Janet didn't take another permanent position.
She is survived by Tyl and her children.
Janet Kennedy, print designer, born June 28th
source https://seapointrealtors.com/2021/08/09/janet-kennedy-obituary-design/
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