As for crochet, the idea came about whilst working with waste yarns; at the time I was having to tie short pieces together to create lengths that I could work with, so I had to adjust the process to better work with waste products. It was also inspired by work I’ve done with
Bethany Williams, who I’ve worked with for nearly 5 years now. In previous collections, she wanted to patchwork lots of old pieces of knitwear together, and we found that the best way to do this was with crochet joins. The outcome was beautiful, and I decided to include a similar process in my own work.
The decision to work with leather was inspired by the Mari Lywd, which included leather harnesses and such because of the horse – it also had the effect of giving each garment a little sex appeal, preventing it from veering into being too twee. I worked with shoemakers who sold leather offcuts, which worked well alongside knitwear and also allowed me to further repurpose waste byproducts.