Founder & Creative Director
I am an experienced fashion designer, consultant, researcher and project manager focusing on sustainability. I have set up and run several enterprises in fashion and textiles, gaining a broad experience of managing businesses, from challenging current industry systems to developing strategies for more connected production operations. I have also consulted with a variety of private sector and third sector businesses as well as developing teaching approaches for sustainable design with universities, schools and colleges across the UK and work as an expert and community partner on a number of research projects.
I started in the industry as an apprentice in a shoe designers in London, then went to study fashion at Leeds College of Art. I already had a good idea of what the job opportunities were going to be like and always had an aspiration of running my own label. I founded my first shop ‘25 Spaces‘, supported by Unltd, in 2007 during my second year. Whilst I was studying in Leeds, I became very aware of the waste generated by the fashion industry and the wealth of local skills and resources around the country which were going unused. Throughout the final year of my degree all of my designs used reclaimed materials, using Yorkshire heritage textiles to create forward-thinking fashion. Antiform as an idea was conceived, and since then has continued under the very same ethos – always aiming to push the boundaries of ethical, sustainable design by using locally sourced reclaimed materials and mixing fashion forward shapes with heritage craft materials and processes.
I went on to study a Research Masters with MA Fashion and Environment in 2008 as a Harold Tillman Scholar at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion and had the chance to see what locally made fashion might look like. While working on this research project (‘ReMade in Leeds‘) I helped found the Leeds Community Clothes Exchange and the ReMade in Leeds boutique and workshop. On completion of the MA, Antiform launched as a fully fledged fashion label from our HQ in Leeds.
Currently I am the Creative Director of Antiform, working with my amazing team from our new studio in Bristol. I also work parttime at the Royal College of Art at SustainRCA as a specialist sustainability tutor. My full academic profile is here.
I want to make fashion clothing but I am not prepared to do this if it causes environmental or social problems. In fact I believe it can actually be such an amazing tool for development. I see it as an exciting challenge rather than being limiting which is why we really strive to create interesting clothing. In the UK our greatest raw material is waste and there are so many opportunities to use it to make something really beautiful and create a myriad of second lives.