Summerween is here! Interview with Sarah Sprout
What's a spooky gal to do when the temperatures soar - and Halloween feels like a distant dream?
Editor’s Letter
A month or two ago I put some call outs on some more traditional media channels about Summerween and Practical Magic summer content ideas and was met with a wall of SUMMERWHATNOW? and IS THIS ONE OF THOSE MADE UP HORRENDOUS COMMERCIAL TRENDS?
So, yeah, the mainstream isn’t fully there yet - and, as you’ll read in today’s interview - I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
If you are finding this wave of heat a bit too much to manage and are wilting like a wallflower in a gothic courtyard garden, get that iced tea and a scone and meet us in the interview below with hat maker Sarah Sprout…
Keep it eso!
XOXO
Interview with Sarah Sprout, Hat Maker & Esoteric Babe
Esoteric Isle: Sarah, how are tricks? I feel like we this is a funny thing with Instagram friend making. You’re nattering away to people, and suddenly remember, oh, wait, I don’t actually know this person at all!
Sarah: It’s something our generation has got used to. It’s really strange. There’s some people I chat to online that I don’t think I will ever get to meet, because it’s not practical. I mean, we do not live in the same area and it’s nice to be able to do this.
EI: You are up in Bedford aren’t you?
Sarah: I am! Poor old Bedford, bless it. It’s getting there. We’re trying. From a folklore perspective we’ve we do have a lot of kind of cool stuff around like the Boar’s head ceremony I sent you around Christmas. And then there’s little things like that I randomly find out about like a stone circle and Milton Keynes, weirdly, was built on ley line.
EI: I remember hearing that… what’s that about?
Sarah: Yeah, because it’s Midsummer Place and it’s got the light temple at the end in the park, which I never knew about. And it leads up to this kind of amazing sculpture.
EI: We should go make some nonsense influencer content about Milton Keynes! Anyway, we are already sidetracked – we are gathered here today to talk about Summerween!
Sarah: We are! I was trying to work out how I found out about Summerween, pre- the big brand adoption of it and I’m not really sure.
I was looking up about Gravity Falls (the American animated cartoon), which is where the term technically comes from, but I only watched it fairly recently. But I was thinking about how it fits into the UK and I was thinking about Halloween (as we are halfway there now) growing up – and a spooky trip to Whitby!
I am that person that loves Halloween. When people think of me, it turns out they think of Halloween and vice versa. And it’s always been something that people have sent me memes about. For my birthday, as long as I can remember, my parents bought me Halloween stuff!
I think all October babies are obsessed with it, aren’t they?
EI: Did you grow up in the UK because I never remember Halloween being a thing growing up – it felt very exotic and American to me!
Sarah: True! We weren’t allowed to go trick and treating. My parents thought like it, there was something a bit wrong with it! They believed that you’re not allowed to knock on strangers doors to beg for candy. Which actually, I think is quite a good rule for life.
You are right about that exotic allure. The allure of candy, the whole Hocus Pocus thing – that orange Halloween. The streets soaked in orange!
I grew up in a village and we did go to a lot of Halloween Parties though. Halloween was still part of life. It just wasn’t that crazy. Bonfire Night was more the thing!
EI: Oh, I love Bonfire Night…
Sarah: I’d always dress up in a plastic binbag with the terrible green face paint and the rubber witch fingers. I was that Halloween kid. My mum would badly paint me green, and then I’d be rustling around in my binbag and probably really flammable as well!
EI: And these spooky beginnings brought you to create Sarah Sprout, your spooky sister brand. Tell me more about your work?
Sarah: So, it started with me doing Fashion at university. I hated it with a passion, it was just it was too restrictive! Then I worked in marketing for many years, and I used to buy and collect hats, and I stopped buying them and started making them!
I was a vintage hairdresser for about seven years. Unfortunately, my mum died, and I didn’t want to be customer facing anymore, so pumped up the behind-the-scenes side of the business, which was sewing with Sarah’s Doo-Wop Dos. I very lucky that I had a really supportive customer base who moved from coming to me to get the hair done to buying my things. It was really quite special!
I started Sarah Sprout in the summer actually (hello Summerween!) because I designed for autumn, winter mostly. I created Sarah Sprout as the botanical, witchy alternative side of things. I took the first product photos in my little plastic £15 greenhouse!
Now Sarah Sprout is a Core Collection of the bigger brand Sarah’s Doo-Wop Do’s. I was already on the Summerween train - British summer, you know, seaside rather than pool. A bit bleak and spooky like Whitby, do you know what I mean? I love a bleak beach, like the Scottish, rugged beaches are my dream beaches!
What’s the coastal thing about the black dogs that run on the beaches in Norfolk?
EI: The Black Shuck?
Sarah: Yes! that’s the kind of summer creepy kind of thing that I love. And when we’re going to sit in a pub and it will be a bit overcast and you’re looking out on a really kind of rugged beach - that’s the vibe. Spooky, but British.
EI: Oh yeh! It is starting to make sense why people may celebrate the spooky in summer… that summer holiday ennui, scary stories around the campfire…
Sarah: Definitely! I think Summerween lost the DIY version quite quickly, because big corporations got into it. I feel, as a trend, it was started by small businesses and individuals making spooky summer party food on Pinterest.
I feel like it’s gone mainstream this year, and I don’t like it! It’s the fact that those big brands saw something on the way up, and they can cash in on. Also, the idea and IP stealing is wild! The stealing that TK Maxx does of small brand stuff. I had to break up with them because I was scared that I was buying a reproduction nicked from a small brand.
I’m not always the best a practicing what I preach. Like, I love a TK Maxx Code Orange, But when I see something cute I always do a big of digging and try to find the small maker version of it. Oh and AI can F off!
I hate the word artisan, in a way, because it gets overused, but there is a respect for craft just like the revival in interest in folklore – like seeing your local Morris Dancers down the pub!
EI: Definitely, so if the normies get on Summerween this year, maybe it’s just part of the process!
Sarah: Then I think what will happen is small businesses will kind of get it back, because it will burn out of the mainstream. All the big brand stuff will all get reduced come end of August, it will all be in the pound sale.
We’ll all buy it up, because that’s what I do for my home decor. And then it will kind of go back to being a niche thing. It’ll be ours again. Thank God!
EI: Here’s hoping! What would you recommend someone to do to celebrate Summerween?
Sarah: Good question! As much as I love the idea of summer and I love the brightness of it and creating a Summerween playlist for garden parties. I also want my spooky beaches and I watch Jaws every summer, because it feels like excellent horror tradition.
That kind of horror always kind of feels summery for me. The slashers at the camps on the lake… I feel like Summerween gets me through summer because I hate heat. I get excited for summer because it’s the preamble to Halloween, the cooldown and then the autumn.
I’d say that consciously celebrating Summerween makes me live in the moment. It gets me looking at what’s nice about the season and then relating it to my own little interest and my own little weird corner of the world.
EI: We’re living in the moment!
Sarah: We are living! Summerween could be you and a picnic basket with your mates and a couple of tinnies. Or watching the Morris men, which is free in your town centre. It doesn’t have to be a big commercial spending event.
You don’t need a Summerween wardrobe. My hats are staples, like a cute sun hat for your picnics. It’s a fine line as a business between being like, I don’t want you to spend money you don’t have to, but also I want to survive as a business! And I also want you to have something cute!
I picked up some fabrics with screaming, melting icecreams that I love. Who doesn’t want a murderous looking, screaming ice cream?
I’m a comfy girl and I want stuff to be really comfy and easy to wear. I do have the crazy sequin horns and that, but I’ve also got the sort of the quieter, just everyday stuff that you’d wear to, you know, go grab a nice coffee.
That’s probably because that’s who I am more these days, so that it’s kind of changed with me. You know, I’m older. I don’t dress up as much. I’m down my allotment all the time!
EI: I hear that! What’s coming up next for you – I know you do a lot of markets?
Sarah: Oh yeh, I’ll be back at the Satanic Flea Market in London which is so much fun!
The absolutely huge one at Christmas, which was the first one I did was a baptism of fire. People warned me, if that’s your first one, girl, get ready! Ha!
I’d love to get to some of the Horror Cons too in Liverpool and Manchester, they are amazing!
EI: Nice! And for the rest of the summer I guess you’ve got all your Summerween activities – marshmallows in front of the fire on the tv…
Sarah: Have you tried savoury s’mores?! I’m a cheese girl - you get the cracker, and then you get like brie, and then you get like a little chutney…
EI: My God, that’s such a good idea.
Sarah: Yeah, that’s where I’m at with my life.