Tina Knowles takes great care to remove the lid of a giant box. She pulls out a thick purple book and cradles it in her hands. It bears a gold symbol that looks at first glance like a fancy backward letter C. She invites a closer look. “It’s an accent, but it also looks like a mother and child. That’s the House of Dereon,” she says. Mothers and daughters inspired the new clothing line Knowles has launched with her megastar offspring, Beyonce. Its name and logo are reminders of Knowles’ mother, Agnes Dereon, who died in 1984.

Showing off pages of designs in the book, Tina Knowles describes the line in three words: kick, couture and soul. “Beyonce is the kick, I am the couture, and Agnes is the soul,” she says. “We just didn’t want to slap a name on clothes. We wanted something Beyonce would be happy to wear. This is a serious fashion line.”