The collar comes off Nina Hopkins's Carrington coat. A belt can pull its broad shape closer to the waist. Remove the faux fur collar, release the belt, and the same leopard-print wool-blend coat occupies a different place in a wardrobe. These are modest changes, but they explain the question Hopkins now asks more insistently than she did when she became known for faux fur outerwear: what happens after a coat has made its first impression? At Samdi, the London designer is building clothes meant to carry a person from one part of a day into another. The visible detail matters because it changes how the garment can be used.
Hopkins co-founded Jakke in 2015, making animal-free outerwear a recognizable part of British fashion retail. She left the business in 2024 and launched Samdi with a business partner for pre-spring 2026. The new label begins with dresses, blouses and jackets rather than building everything around one kind of coat. Hopkins is a London designer with a Nigerian mother and Welsh father, as she has described in a first-person interview. Her identity is part of her biography; the work here is legible in the cut of a wrap dress, the use of a reversible jacket and a repair swatch tucked alongside a new garment.
The name Samdi plays on samedi, the French word for Saturday. The house describes a weekend that may begin with ordinary errands and continue into a wedding or dinner. That scenario can sound like marketing until a designer gives it actual form. A jacket has to layer over different garments; a dress needs enough ease or adjustment to last through changing hours; a blouse must have a surface worth noticing without becoming difficult to wear. Hopkins approaches these tasks with more detail than she used in Jakke's earlier, more category-focused wardrobe. The new label's argument is made at the level of closures, prints and proportions.
The coat she can change
The Carrington coat in leopard and powder blue has an oversized silhouette, a matching belt and a detachable faux fur collar. The body is a warm wool blend with a leopard print. The coat can be left wide or cinched. Its collar can make the neckline more emphatic or leave the underlying cut quieter. These are not transformations that require a specialist or a sewing machine. They are decisions a wearer can make while dressing. Hopkins gives a large statement object a practical range by making two of its most conspicuous elements adjustable.
The print does a different kind of work. Leopard has an immediate visual history: it announces itself before the viewer is close enough to notice a pocket or the precise line of a shoulder. On a broad coat, that pattern could dominate the person inside it. The belt counters by giving the wearer a way to establish a waist, while the removable collar lets her decide how much more texture to add near the face. A bold surface is held in conversation with choices of shape. The coat's interest lies in that negotiation, not in a claim that leopard print alone makes someone daring.
Hopkins makes a shorter version, the Jameson. Its official description names a wool-blend leopard-print felt, drop sleeves, a removable faux fur collar and a tie belt. The cropped form changes where the garment ends relative to trousers, skirts or a dress. A long Carrington can contain much of the outfit beneath it; a shorter Jameson leaves more of the lower body visible. Both coats use the same family of print and detachable details, but the wearer's relation to the rest of her clothes is different. That is a design decision with consequences across a wardrobe.
The Johanna jacket proposes another route to change. It reverses between faux shearling and faux leather and has a slightly oversized cut. One object presents two surfaces. On one side the texture looks soft and dense; on the other it appears smoother. Reversibility makes the inside a potential outside, so the finish of each face must be considered. It also means a wearer can alter the jacket's visual weight without changing the garment beneath it. The idea fits Hopkins's broader shift: outerwear remains important, but it is asked to cooperate with a day rather than dominate the whole brand.
Her 2026 first-person interview places the Carrington and Johanna at the beginning of Samdi's launch. She describes Jakke as a brand that became strongly identified with one product category. That success made it harder, in her view, to persuade customers to understand a full ready-to-wear line. Samdi reverses the order. Coats anchor a collection that already includes dresses and blouses; they are part of an outfit, not the entire proposition. A reversible jacket or a detachable collar is especially useful in that setting because each can answer to more than one of the other pieces.
A dress that can be adjusted
The Dasha leopard dress uses a wrap shape with side ties. The house describes its jacquard as shimmering in movement. A jacquard pattern is built into the fabric rather than merely printed over it, giving the leopard field a different surface from the coat's wool blend. The wrap is equally important. Ties let the wearer decide how closely the garment meets the waist. The dress does not need a fixed internal measurement to impose the same shape on every body. Its silhouette can be adjusted within the range the pattern permits.
The side ties also make dressing an act rather than a final static image. A knot can be drawn tighter or eased; the front overlap can sit differently as the person moves. The designer's promise of versatility becomes concrete here. A woman may want the dress to feel secure during one part of a day and looser later. Hopkins has built a small capacity for response into the cut. The leopard motif supplies the spectacle, but the wrap and ties decide how that spectacle fits a body.
The Delaney in blue with black flowers moves away from that closer wrap. Its soft rayon, cowl neckline, front pleating and relaxed sleeves make a different kind of ease. A cowl gathers cloth into folds around the neck and upper chest; pleats direct additional fabric at the front. The wearer gets movement through drape rather than through a tie she adjusts herself. The print is playful, but the garment's construction does the quieter work of making space. It is a dress for a different relation between body and cloth than the Dasha.
Hopkins names a polka-dot Delaney among the first Samdi dresses in her launch interview. The blue floral version on the house site shows the cut carried into another print. That continuation makes the distinction between a garment's design and its surface visible. A cowl and front pleating can support different images; a print changes the mood of the piece while the draped logic remains. A wardrobe gains range when a design is strong enough to survive that variation.
The Beatrice blouse brings that idea into a smaller garment. It uses 100 percent cotton in a navy and cream check, with gathered frills and voluminous sleeves. The check gives the cloth a clear grid, while the frills disturb that order. The sleeve adds breadth around the arm without turning the torso into the same shape. A blouse like this can become the focus of an outfit under a plain coat or above familiar trousers. Hopkins uses print and volume to give the wearer an expressive part without insisting that every part of the look be equally loud.
The relation between the Beatrice and the Carrington is revealing. Both use a familiar pattern, check or leopard, and then give the wearer a way to live with its force. The coat's collar and belt can be removed or adjusted; the blouse's body remains comparatively straightforward while its sleeve and frill carry the drama. Neither is simply a basic dressed up by a print. Their cuts locate where the pattern should be felt on the body. The designer's challenge is to make recognizable fabrics work in changing combinations across a full wardrobe.
From Jakke to Samdi
Hopkins spent two decades designing for British high-street businesses before building Jakke, according to the 2026 interview. Her earlier conversation about the label explains the initial appeal of faux fur as an alternative to animal fur and the later challenge of polyester's environmental impact. In that account, customer questions pushed her to reconsider material choices. The two concerns cannot be collapsed into one virtue. Avoiding animal fur and reducing plastic-related harm answer different problems, and a designer working with faux surfaces must keep both in view.
Jakke grew as an outerwear label because Hopkins found a clear gap. Its colorful faux fur jackets made an immediate visual case in shops. That success had a limit she later recognized. In her own explanation, a customer who knows a house for a coat may not look there first for a dress to wear in spring. Samdi begins with the dress already at the center. It still makes faux shearling and faux fur, but those materials are one part of the wardrobe rather than the whole identity. Her new venture is a practical response to the category she helped make visible.
The departure from Jakke was also a business change. Hopkins says she and her former partners agreed to part ways in 2024 after their approaches to leadership no longer aligned. Samdi is a new partnership, with Hopkins contributing the creative direction and her co-founder bringing commercial and wholesale expertise. The division is her description, not a claim that design and business can be kept in separate rooms. A collection intended to reach independent shops needs shapes, sizes and prices that those shops can carry. Decisions about a collar or a repeatable dress cut meet decisions about production and sale.
Samdi launched its pre-spring 2026 range through selected UK independent retailers, Hopkins says. The label's own current shop holds jackets, coats, dresses and blouses. This spread is important because it tests the business story against actual categories of clothing. A designer can announce a complete wardrobe before one exists; Hopkins has put multiple garment types into circulation. The test continues with each season, but the launch already makes it possible to assemble an outfit rather than buy only the final layer.
The house's statement of contrast and balance becomes specific in these garments. The oversized leopard coat can be cinched; the reversible jacket offers a plush and a smooth face; the Dasha's shimmering jacquard sits on an adjustable wrap; the checked Beatrice gives its sleeve more volume than its body. Each places one emphatic quality next to a restraining or adaptable one. The formula is not valuable because a brand has named it. It is valuable where the pattern pieces, ties, closures and fabric choices let a wearer feel the tension.
What the garment brings along
Hopkins says each pre-spring 2026 garment includes additional yarn or a matching fabric swatch for repair. The Samdi site repeats that commitment. A swatch is small, and its presence does not prove that a piece will last for decades. It does change what is supplied with the garment. A loose button, a snag or a damaged area can be approached with material chosen to match the original. The repair element recognizes a likely future in which the garment is worn, handled and sometimes harmed. It gives the owner something useful for that future.
There is an instructive contrast with the removable collar. A detachable detail anticipates deliberate variation; a spare swatch anticipates unintended damage. Both are ways of designing beyond the first photograph. The owner may use the coat widely and open one day to find that the collar feels excessive, or that the fabric needs attention. Hopkins cannot control every event of wear, but she can give the person options within the object and materials to maintain it. That practical imagination is a stronger account of longevity than calling a garment timeless.
The first season does not erase the environmental questions that followed her at Jakke. A wool-blend coat and faux shearling jacket have different material histories. Samdi's product descriptions disclose forms and some compositions, but they do not establish a single impact score for the whole collection. Hopkins's contribution here lies in repair provision and in designing pieces with ways to change their appearance over time. Whether an owner keeps and repairs a garment remains a matter of use, but the invitation is built into the purchase.
The 2019 London interview places Hopkins in East London, alert to people and what they wear in the street. Her new label widens that observation from a striking coat to the ordinary sequence of a weekend. The user of the clothes may need a soft blouse, a dress that can be tied to her body, or outerwear able to sit over both. None is guaranteed to carry every occasion. Together they suggest a designer interested in what happens between them, when one part of a day runs into the next.
The Carrington coat remains the clearest emblem of that turn. It is big and patterned enough to be memorable, but it does not insist on one fixed version of itself. Its collar comes off, its belt changes the line, and the length allows different clothes to live beneath it. Hopkins learned the power of a hero coat at Jakke. At Samdi she makes that power share space with a dress, a blouse and the repair material kept for later. The question is no longer only whether a coat can make an entrance. It is whether the wardrobe can go on with its wearer after the entrance has been made.