Once my dad came to see me at our Union Square holiday booth, and he said that it seemed like every year the Village was a year older, as in we had our act together a little more and we seemed like a little bigger of a company. Which was a nice way of thinking about it, although it makes me worry for our upcoming awkward teen years.

Anyway, one of the milestones of our mature nine-year-old ways is that now I’m supposed to design fashion seasons ahead of time. Not every single thing we offer, but the big stuff. It’s nice because it’s possible to curate the colors, shapes, and design inspirations much more tightly, so we can offer you more foolproof mix-and-match ensembles for your animals and baby friends. 

So when I was in the design phase for this collection, I thought about snowy pine trees and furry little forest creatures in the damp and snowy forest, glowing red berries and toadstools, funny sunrise colors bouncing off the snow.

 I thought a lot about Children of the Forest by Elsa Beskow, especially the tiny children's excellent little toadstool hats and their dad's cool pine cone armor.

You can see our version of a mushroom hat in the alpaca knitwear we did with our Peruvian knitting partners. We weren't sure if this mushroom beret was going to work out, but we love the final version and we think the bittersweet red yarn is very sophisticated.

We also made some new pompom hats. It was hard to communicate the colors we wanted in the multicolored pompoms. I wound up making these diagrams, which are probably my favorite piece of art I've done lately.

We developed a custom double-knit leaf jacquard that looks like overlapping leaves. It's more thick and snuggly than regular T-shirt fabric because it has two layers intricately knitted together. It makes a cozy romper or shirt. 

Our other new styles for kids are a cranberry red elf jacket with pointy hood and a lining developed from a vintage quilt print...

...and long johns with a custom print of fawn spots.

I'm happy about how gender-neutral these pieces are, perfect for all your little forest creatures. Anyway, I hope you like them, friends!