My work explores traditional menswear tailoring with surface pattern design. I found inspiration in Barabara Hepworth's sculptures, 1950’s textile design and within the photographs my father kept during his 25-year long career as an RAF pilot, recorded in his logbooks. Abstract shapes are fundamental in my surface designs and I wanted to use subtle and tonal colours within repeat pattern to create an outerwear-focused collection for the younger man. I enjoyed contrasting humorously shrunken silhouettes of my blazer jackets and cropped trousers with the longer overcoats. I used large ‘bagged-out’ shapes as functional pockets to further explore my interest in abstract forms and to incorporate a strangeness into an otherwise structured collection. Design responsibility is important to me and thus I endeavoured to solely use second-hand and discarded wool -a naturally sustainable material- to create garments inspired by my father’s uniforms. I combined a variety of wool colours and surfaces as a base for my designs to be digitally printed onto. I experimented with self-coating, which prepared the materials in order for them to be printed at the Centre of Advanced Textiles here at GSA.
