About Me
Hi, I’m Katie, a fashion graduate from Edinburgh College of Art.
I am a womenswear designer who is interested in exploring modern craftsmanship and playfulness through fashion. Having recently graduated with BA in Fashion from ECA, my practice centres around fine-art and photography, and my work aims to blend fun, sensuality and sophistication.
When researching, I meticulously look through archives to find inspiration. I balance this with a hands-on approach to making and instinctive draping. I collage influences from modern and historical sources to offer playful elegance for the modern wardrobe. My graduate collection, ‘Through the Lens’, aims to capture both the traditional tactile past and the intangible digital future, through a mix of feminine silhouettes and heavier, moodier textiles. Quality and craftsmanship is most important to me. I aim to make precious garments designed for longevity without sacrificing beauty.
INSPIRATION
My collection is inspired by the gaze, and the nuances between watching, seeing and being seen.
This project began when researching the often discarded photo negative and the private memories that they contain. Looking at my personal photo album collection, I value having physical copies of my memories, as I fear them being lost or forgotten on the internet one day. I am also intrigued by the strange intimacy of owning other people’s sentimental objects. To convey this, I created prints from donated negatives and which I laser-etched onto leather and denim to create delicate photographic images.
Introspection and intimacy is also seen in my collection’s second main influence- the ritual of dressing. I see dressing as a calming ritual, central to my enjoyment of wearing clothes. Influenced by how the wearer interacts with their clothing through twisting, fastening and suspending, I created modular perspex hardware, inspired by ‘lover’s eye’ jewellery. Other inspirations for my collection include 1960s retrofuturism, the work of Shuji Terayama and Margaine-Lacroix’s ‘La Robe Sylphide’.
MY WORK
PORTFOLIOS
Researching negatives and the photographer's gaze
'Lover's eye' motif and negative experiments
Draping research focusing on suspension
Developing my 'lover's eye' hardware
Etched denim sample and silhouette development
Instinctive drapery to develop shape
Etched leather sample inspired by negatives
My hands etched on to pinstripe denim
Laced leather development
Leather jacket manufacturing process
My modular perspex 'lover's eye' hardware
Final development through sketch
Final digitally illustrated lineup
Range plan
Mixed-media illustrations of looks 5 & 6
Graduate collection lineup
Lookbook images
Lookbook images
Lookbook images
DETAIL
I believe the future of fashion relies on a balance of digital techniques with hand craftsmanship.
My graduate collection has explored this balance between the traditional and futuristic through my laser etched textiles. To find the imagery for the prints, I scoured through discarded negatives. It was a strangely intimate process, and I felt curiosity for the people in the photographs and the people that had viewed them. I liked the anonymity and distortion of other people’s donated negatives, and matched this with etched images of my own body. To create the etching, I had to transfer the physical negative to a digital file which was then sent to the laser cutter. To make the process more efficient, I digitised the complex patterns for my leather pieces, so the whole garment could be cut and etched electronically. After the pieces were made, the physical craftsmanship began, as the garments had to be treated, eyeleted, lined and then sewn and laced together by hand. I feel like this process embodies modern craftsmanship, as I matched laborious physical processes with automated digital manufacture.
I wanted to create a wardrobe for a confident and sensual woman caught between the pull of the intangible technological future and the tactile, historical past.
Graduate Fashion Week in partnership with:
