About
I started off in the fashion world in 2020, where I attended college to study fashion design and from that point my creativity and passion grew. From college I gained skills in pattern cutting, sewing and CAD and now that I have completed my final year of university studying fashion design my skillset has become even more comprehensive and confident.
I have a huge passion for sustainability practices and in each of my projects I try to be as sustainable as possible sourcing existing materials from friends and family, charity shops and using deadstock fabric. I love the manufacturing process of garments and putting so much into something to make it as effective and has a lighter environmental impact as possible. I have experienced some amazing opportunities throughout my fashion journey including selling my own bag collection in a pop up shop in Shrewsbury retail space, modelling for a catwalk for high street brands and working backstage at the Graduate Fashion Week event in London, and through these experiences I have become more confident and learned so much about designing, marketing and branding.
Project overview
Worn with Purpose
My womenswear collection is inspired by my life and my four siblings growing up wearing each other’s clothes following the ‘hand me down’ tradition. My family was a low-income household and as such we used to get most of our clothes from charity shops and we would all share everything, so we would get bigger sizes as it would have to fit my older sister and my youngest brother. I started to develop designs from my primary images of me and my siblings in the same outfits throughout the years, differing in size and fit, but I also researched into the 1980s fashion label 'BodyMap' whose silhouettes and fabrications influenced my work.
I have been able to investigate contrasting tight-fitted but also extremely oversized silhouettes and layering that have influenced my garments and become the main focus in my collection. The elements of my collection will be created from items that I find in the charity shops that are then patchworked together, linking my findings in my research of the hand me down aspect and having to adapt and rework items together to make them fit.
I also created lots of texture for my collection, which included knotting techniques and knitting inspired by my research on archive photography of street urchin children. My colour palette has been inspired by these monochromatic archive images combined with a palette recreated from my primary images of me and my siblings. The fabrics I will use for my collection will be a mixture of repurposed knitted garments and 'deadstock' jersey fabrics including printed jersey featuring my own prints inspired by the street urchin and BodyMap archive images, which are all taken from my in-depth research sketchbooks.
Worn with Purpose, womenswear collection
Worn with Purpose, womenswear collection
Worn with Purpose, womenswear collection
Worn with Purpose, womenswear collection
Worn with Purpose, womenswear collection
