Bought of J. Murray

My collection is a celebration of my bold & adventurous design style, which challenges the connection between traditional & contemporary menswear. I consider pattern cutting to be one of my main interests, & found an affinity to my craft through the meticulous trial and error of all my ideas in 3D form. I want to explore the gap between my traditional men's tailoring & modern streetwear design styles. I envision this collection to be my version of Savile Row in a modern context, driven by print, colour and shape. I like to contrast formality and informality, bringing a playful nature into what is usually seen as prestige & hierarchical. My inspiration came from research into my own family history & my great Grandpa's love of tailoring in his 20s. This inspired a lot of my shapes & fabric choices. A historical receipt from a tailor in Salford 1935 is the main motif across my collection, which I have visualised in knitwear on the Shima Seiki and through screenprint. As I have developed my design ethos over the past three years in Manchester, I thought my family's Mancunian roots should be celebrated in my graduate collection. I find shape influence through interesting research garments. For my graduate collection, it was a pair of 1930s children’s jodhpurs that inspired lots of my garments. Their structural shape & construction led me to experiment with the same ideas but in different parts of the body, such as sleeves and necklines. I also found a lot of visual inspiration from time spent in Mexico last summer, where I collected plastic shopping bags. These have inspired my bright colour palette and repeated print pattern that I explored on garments with new techniques such as vinyl cutting, laser etching & digital knit. This collection has shown me the valuable experience of creating something from start to finish. It is a testament to my creative vision, and perseverance of experimentation to finish with a final collection I am really proud of.