CNY 2019 marks our seventh Chinese New Year collection and our largest collection to date. Elly first launched its cotton CNY cheongsams in 2012 and started designing our own CNY prints in 2013 with a capsule collection of just four prints. Over the years, we've seen your children grow up and every year, it warms my heart whenever customers send collages of their children growing up in our outfits.
During this time we have learnt that if we want our customers to grow up with Elly, Elly has to grow up with you. That means not just having a wider collection, or having a wider size range to cater to your growing children, but always bringing you fresh ideas to cater to your needs! It’s not easy to make each year different and better than the last especially to do it with a slew of different prints every year for the past seven years. So what did we come up with this year?
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Introducing our Fun Prints - Ducks on Water, Ducks on Bamboo, Lanterns, Retro Flowers
During CNY, it's common to see flowers and Chinese symbols everywhere. We wanted to do more than just that.
This year, we chose quite simply - lanterns and bamboo as our core themes, and we introduced non-zodiac animals - cranes and the mandarin duck.
Why ducks? Mandarin ducks are a symbol of togetherness and devotion as they are one of the duck species that mate for life. In our past seven years of running Elly, we have been blessed along the way with an abundance of warmth and friendships and as a family, we have come together stronger and better than before, and we want to celebrate this with a unique fun print this year.
We also wanted to experiment with layers on top of our traditional prints. If you look above to the mandarin ducks on water, you'll see there are waves behind the ducks, and similarly for the ducks on bamboo - it makes for a little more complex printing but we love the outcome of layers and texture.
We also created a pastel set this year, ducks on bamboo, so if you prefer muted colours, these are especially for you.
Yes you know we always launch turquoise every year but we get a different look this year when you put turquoise on cream!
For 2019, we also created a wider range of prints so that you'll have a variety of prints to shop at our different stockists such.
Chinese New Year is the one time in the year where you have the license to wear something bright and festive so why not? You'll find four bonus prints in this CNY collection to give you the widest variety of twinning options!
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Introducing our Gold Prints - Cranes (Red, Blue, Green and Oriental) & Lanterns (Red and Blue)
The second type of layer we created this year is gold metallic printing. We first printed with gold metallic for CNY2017 with our gingko leaf prints.
This year we decided to bring back the gold metallic printing on six (yes 6!!) of our prints. We have combined the beauty of rich CNY colours with the brilliant shine of the gold foil to create one-of-a-kind prints for this collection. On a computer screen when the prints are drawn, the gold on the cranes and the red and blue lanterns looks like a dark yellow or orange.
But when you see the final product, you'll understand why it makes all the difference.
On top of gold metallic print, our signature lantern prints has an additional background layer using the oriental grid motif, which we first launched in CNY2017 with our pandas collection. The oriental grid motif underneath the lanterns gives a more textured look. During the printing process, the gold was stamped last on top of the other colours after they have dried so that it really pops!
Introducing our Luxe collection
But that's not all. We also wanted to have a collection that caters to all the different styles and needs our customers have. That's what growing up with our customers means to us. So in addition to our classic cheongsams and casual range, we will be launching for the first time our lace collection of cheongsams for ladies and girls.
We have been planning our luxe collection for some time but working with a delicate material like lace has not been easy, especially because we want to keep to our commitment that our clothes will always not just look good but also feel good and be comfortable. For ladies, the lace colours were deliberately chosen to match all the different prints we have. So no matter which prints the rest of the family chooses, mums could have a lace cheongsam to match which they could also wear after Chinese New Year!
Our signature CNY colours year on year has been our reds so of course we had to choose a beautiful red lace with a turquoise lining which could match red cranes, retro flowers, oriental cranes and red bamboo jerseys. And if you look closely at our blue lace, you'll notice it can match peach lanterns and pink ducks on bamboo as well.
Introducing our Casual range - the Jerseys for the Family and Other Dresses
While we were working on our luxe collection, we were conscious that many of our customers want something they can wear for more casual days, such as on CNY Day Two or Day Three, or even something for everyday wear after CNY. We also know some children want something without the high collar you have in cheongsams or mandarin collar shirts.
For our casual collection, that’s exactly what we want to give you.
We brought back our jersey collection in three prints, stripes, turquoise lanterns and red bamboo, for the whole family.
We've chosen an even softer and lighter fabric similar to our casual constellation fabrics so it is more breathable and comfortable for the hot weather. Even grandpas will be happy to wear them!
WAIT.
It's not just jerseys that we made. For girls, we will launch our widest range of non-mandarin-collared dresses. Over the years, we've heard your requests that your children don't like wearing CNY styles so instead of just changing the traditional cheongsam styles, we've taken our festive CNY prints and made them in our classic styles - our sleeveless jersey dress, our summer maxi Alexis dress and a brand new design, our Gracie crossback dress. That means that there really is something for everyone!
If you're as excited as we are, look out tomorrow (Thurs 27th Dec) on Facebook and our blog for the complete album of our CNY2019 collection.
Limited-edition Jo & Mink Dolls
To celebrate the launch of our collection in-store, we have collaborated with Jo and Mink (@lovejomink) to introduce limited edition Elly lace cheongsam dolls, specially designed to match our collection. Each doll is lovingly handmade by Corinna (even the pompoms)! Every purchase of a lace cheongsam entitles you to buy one in-store. We have always been fans of Corinna's handiwork and stocked her dolls in our store when we first opened way back in 2013.
A quick reminder of our launch dates!
Launching online at 9 a.m. on Fri 28th Dec.
Drop A in-store at 9 a.m. on Sat 29th Dec.
Drop B in-store at 9 a.m. on Sat 5th Jan.
We want to thank you for growing up with us, and we want to keep growing with you. If you’re new to Elly, welcome to the Elly family.
From the bottom of our hearts, we proudly present CNY2019 - Growing up with Elly.
x, Audrey
P.S Our gorgeous photos were shot by The Studio Loft - Maryann and her team have been shooting our CNY collections since our CNY2014 collection! Its our favourite CNY photoshoot to date!
