Greetings from The Eye in the Cave! - Spring/Summer 2025

Owen Edward Snaith’s first independent collection, The Eye in the Cave, is an invitation to follow his muse, Johnnie, a fresh-faced holidaymaker in search of liberation, to Sunny Dunny. Arriving in the picture-postcard resort town of Dunbar, he is spellbound by its fisherfolk and tucked away beaches. As the sun sets behind the rocks, rumours of a seafront cave entice him, where, hidden by an eye painted on the wall, his fantasies rise from the mist.

Drawing from elements of historical fisherfolk dress, resort clothing and classic menswear, The Eye in the Cave reinterprets these as a uniform for Johnnie and all enchanted travellers. The collection’s signature draping echoes fabric flung onto wet bodies, raw seams signal the debauchery encountered amongst the cave’s rocky shadows, while bias-cut pinstripes suggest the subversion of classic men’s tailoring.

Throughout The Eye in the Cave utilitarianism is contrasted with a camp decorative sensibility. Hard-wearing denim invokes the practical garments worn by coastal workers while tarnished, hand crafted jewellery reflects their ruggedness. Practicality is then subverted by printed towelling with its message of kitsch British seaside tourism and stripes that point to the fierce independence of fishwives, a key visual reference for the designer.

Picking apart the threads of Owen’s Edward Snaith’s Incentive tartan, the collection features a range of bright blues, sandstone oranges and seaweed green. The juxtaposition of natural tones and shades of hot pink evoke the traveller’s queerness and its impression on the locals. Hints of sepia reflect the aged nature of polaroids hidden amongst the pages of Snaith’s family albums, capturing his grandfather’s time on fishing fleets off the coast of West Africa in the 1970s.

An ode to both home and family, the root of Snaith’s Spring/Summer 2025 collection is also found in the poetry of his grandmother - lost love letters in an age of instant messaging. The collection’s research process reflects a beachcomber’s hunt for the perfect souvenir, a process of scavenging through personal and local archives for its inspiration. The result is a liberating exploration of the designer’s vision of home, beyond the boundaries of reality as we journey with him to The Eye in the Cave.

Written by Frederick Antonovics, edited by Jonathan Faiers