Desert Designs set to explode back on to the scene at Fashion Wweek Caroline Sundt-Wells, Stephen Culley and Jedda Daisy Culley at the Chippendale store surrounded by Jimmy Pike art. Picture: Bob Barker. IT started as a happy accident in the early 80s, but this year Desert Designs knows exactly where it's headed. The brand, which was resurrected in 2012 by Jedda Daisy Culley and Caroline Sundt-Wells, has truly discovered its groove and will explode onto the fashion scene this year with a show at Australian Fashion Week and a documentary film about its rebirth. Desert Designs designers Jedda Daisy Culley and Caroline Sundt-Wels at the Chippendale store surrounded by Jimmy Pike art. The origins of the brand may be familiar to those who lived through the 80s, a decade defined by the colourful designs of Ken Done and Jenny Kee, but probably not for Culley's gen Y peers. The 29-year-old, whose father Stephen Culley founded the label, grew up among indigenous artist Jimmy Pike's psychedelic designs, which sparked the label's conception in a Western Australian jail more than 30 years ago. "Dad fell into fashion by accident," Jedda explains. He met Jimmy when he was teaching art in a maximum-security prison in the late 70s, and was in awe of his work. Steve was worried about the archival nature of Textas Jimmy was using, so they made silk screens and made prints from them. The screens were just hanging around, so mum started creating fabric and that's how the (label) came about. After the brand lay dormant for more than a decade, Jedda decided in 2012 to resurrect the label with Sundt-Wells, and in April the pair will hold their first solo show at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia. While they still only use fabric prints of Pike's work, the overall style is very different to the pieces originally created. "It's the silhouettes which make it different, as well as digital printing, which has allowed us to retain the original colourways which Jimmy originally used," Jedda says. It's great because Jimmy originally used a very hyper colour palette. He worked in Texta pens and the vibrancy doesn't translate in screen printing which was used back then. Jedda is currently based in New York, and the two designers are planning to expand internationally.