Shona Heath: The starting point was probably about five months ago, Mulberry asked me to come in and said right, we have five main windows in Harrods and we need to create a fantastic magical Christmas scene, whatever that might be, and please will you make it beautiful and British and very Mulberry. That was near enough my brief.
The initial idea I had that developed was to create a seemingly continual landscape depicting the English countryside in the middle of a snowy winter – then it felt very Mulberry to use all the British wildlife that I could get my hands on! I’ve always been drawn to the countryside, I like nature and I’m often inspired by it in a lot of my work. I felt like it was a good starting point to do something really beautiful and really magical that would appeal to everybody – I didn’t want it to be overtly blingy or ‘fashiony’, I just wanted it to be really beautiful and special and really magical. There were lots of ‘magical’ surprising elements that you wouldn’t find in nature – the gold acorns, golden arrows in a tree trunk, little elements of mystery.
TG: Did you envisage this place that you’re describing, this moment in the countryside? How do you feel about this place you have created?
SH: I suppose I feel at home in this place – it feels like a collage of certain elements of my childhood, walking in the snow in the countryside in Worcestershire. I also like to inject elements of fantasy and fairy tale into something natural and organic. There is a pre-Raphaelite beauty about some of the props – the arrows, the peacocks, some really iconic symbolism that fitted into the theme and gave it a feminine edge that I suppose I always try to add into my work. So I feel very comfortable in this Mulberry place that I have created.
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