REAP THE WHIRLWIND!

So, what exactly is the deal with this season’s signature print? Well, let’s just say it works on a lot of levels.

If you know Cheryl at all or have followed her designs for any length of time, you’ve probably learned that absolutely nothing – particularly not design – is done willy-nilly. She has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and she is a sponge of her surroundings and situations, and it all manifests together into ideas and imagery that become your beloved DDR. Unbeknownst to her at the time, this print is probably 30+ years in the making.

“That line – the reap the whirlwind line – is from Young Guns, which the boys watched one gajillion times when they were little,” Cheryl said. “It’s not even one of the most well-known, I don’t think, but boy, was it burned into my brain! So, it kind of became the cornerstone of this conversational print.”

The Whirlwind print was then given a whimsical air with the doodles, two-dimensional outlines – almost cartoon-like – with only occasional pops of color, which naturally, had to be that luscious lavender.

“Conversational print was important to this collection because at its core, Billy the Kid is a story,” Cheryl explained. “He was a real person, but his legacy is part legend, part lore. Also, black and white is trending strong in these spring and summer seasons, so that leant itself to a coloring-book style imagery. Then, we gave it personality with poison colors, which purple is always a great poison color, but because it’s really important to color stories right now it makes for a visually interesting print that encompasses a lot of elements and sums up the story we want to tell with this collection.”