2025 at Caroline Groves Studio
2025 proved to be another busy and creative year for the Caroline Groves Studio. We continued to work for our amazing loyal clientele and also were pleased to add a couple of new names to our waiting list. We look forward to every new order & every new challenge!
As with previous years I made a number of trips to the USA. Mostly to New York which begins to feel like a second home where I am very comfortable and made very welcome by my clients in their homes or others come in to visit me at The Kimberly Hotel. Lilly was able to accompany me on a couple of occasions, which does make life a bit easier!
Derek Guy, an influencer mostly active on X, writing mainly on menswear and style but also a great supporter of craftsmanship was kind enough to give my US trunk shows a shout out from his platform. That has proved to be a very unexpected but welcome form of publicity.
In May it was nice to be featured along with other craftsmen in Country Life Magazine.
Also during the year I enlisted the support of MJS Groupe to handle my PR. This looks as though it will be a very successful partnership. Michael Snell is a true entrepreneur who understands the vagaries of the bespoke model in business ….
During September I was very honoured to be the recipient of a Gold Award from The French Fashion Awards for a pair of bespoke heavily embroidered long boots - photo above.
During October my business was featured in this luxury American publication:-
And during December a little mention in the gift guide:-
December saw 2 pieces of international press. A feature in FN, Footwear News, part of WWD, Women’s Wear Daily. I was interviewed by Katie Abel in the FN offices in New York. Although it is a trade publication it is good to be recognised within one’s industry.
The year rounded off with an interview with Kati Chitrakorn of CNN. I was one of a number of ‘experts’ interviewed for this feature investigating quality of products within the Luxury sector. In fact she picked up on my name, due to a contribution I made to a conversation on X that Derek Guy (Dieworkwear) was involved with due to the furore do to the quality of the Tabi boot!
New Tooled Collection
So much of what we do in the Caroline Groves studio is contemplative. I find I need that space for inspiration to come.
I had a moment in the summer, it was the idea to explore the use of 22ct gold tooling as used in fine bookbindings as decoration on the finest book calf vegetable tanned leather from Edinburgh and also the use of the most sumptuous 100% velvet from France (think top hat silk !) these are tried and tested classic shoe silhouettes but my work has never been about reinventing the wheel, more about exploring techniques.
We have also added a low, Louis heeled zip bootie to the range - very wearable! As all my work is fully bespoke, we can play with the heel heights and shapes and other details, to your taste or requirements.
What next in the Caroline Groves Studio?
We have an exciting year ahead !
Whilst listening to an episode of Haptic and Hue.
I was interested to hear Sam Goates of Woven in the Bone, the most wonderful artisan weaver. I contacted her with a view to having my own weave created….
I was born, raised and live in the Cotswolds. Almost everything about the landscape has been influenced by sheep farming over centuries and the wonderful medieval & subsequent architecture of our historic wool towns was a result of the wealth of that industry.
According to a 12th Century saying, ‘in Europe the best wool is English and in England the best wool is Cotswold’. The ‘Golden Fleece’ obtained from the golden, long-haired Cotswold Lion breed, thought to be introduced by the Romans during their invasion of our British Isles, was renowned for its heavy wool clip. The market towns of the Cotswolds were bustling, with wealthy wool-merchants from rich cloth-making towns abroad flocking to the hills to get their hands on the finest Cotswold wool.
Another yarn also produced in my particular part of the North Cotswolds was silk:-
‘Attempts to create a silk industry were made during the reign of James I but the British climate was inimical to a reliable sericulture. Silk weaving, as a result of the influx of Protestant Huguenots into Britain following persecution in France, was more successful, reaching the Cotswolds in the eighteenth century, when the wool industry was in decline. The main centre was the village of Blockley, near Chipping Campden, whereby in 1884 six silk mills powered by the fast-flowing Blockley brook provided work for about six hundred people preparing silk for ribbon-making factories in Coventry. This small centre of industry began to decline after 1860 when the levy on imported silk was imposed. Other centres were Broadway and Winchcombe, where the industry is commemorated only in the name of one of the back streets. Blockley, on the other hand, owes its character to some extent to the brief period of nineteenth-century industrialisation.’
Chipping Campden History Website
I have long thought there is a visceral affinity between leather, wool & silk.
Sam and I have had our heads together and plans are well underway to create a Caroline Groves weave that uses a worsted yarn spun for us with a combination of Cotswold fleece wool and mulberry silk. The yarn is already in production and dying will come next. Lilly & I intend to do a workshop visit to Sam in May when she will be ready to do a sample weave. Sam, who creates bespoke weaves for some of the finest tailors on Savile Row including Anderson & Shepherd and Richard Anderson(Lilly’s uncle), is as excited as I am to evolve a fabric of sumptuous luxury that speaks to my origins, my passion for natural materials and ultimate craftsmanship!
Just a foot note, my maiden name was Dyer, my family roots are in the Cotswolds. It stands to reason that my ancestors were dyers of wool !