Dress 09, Autumn Winter 2008 (T176)

The central theme for the Collection began with the novella by Charlotte Perkin Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. I showed the first series of work based on William Morris' designs for wallpaper in September 2005. In 2007 Marios Schwab approached me to collaborate on his AW08 collection. The premise for the collection was the language of revealing and concealing, shown as a series of dresses revealing increasingly more of my designs and the model's bodies through subtle changes of a similar form. The collaboration proved to be fruitful as both of us have a shared passion for craft and use technology mixed with traditional skills. For myself, it was the excitement of working in someone else's field and finding the point where we could both learn from each other as well as maintain our unique vision. The dresses I am presenting to the Craft Council are the culmination in that seminal body of work and exemplify a true view of the nature of our collaboration and both our abilities. Furthermore they show a point in my own path where the freedom of the 'third mind' allowed me to experiment and learn from a dramatic change in scale of marks, images and of course dimension. Conceptually it was a perfect moment and relationship to explore what was a very natural step in the course of my ideas. It led to three subsequent collections and to a language I will continue to explore and learn from in greater and greater depth with Marios. It has also driven me to pursue the third dimension and technologies used in design in order to reach a point where I shall be able to work on future collections whilst maintaining a freer approach to seasonal deadlines.