Natural material: A flying start for graduates

The non-profit-making organisation, which supports emerging British textile design talent, selected four award winners from 24 graduates from UK art and design schools. The graduates are all textile designers working in print, weave, knit, embroidery and mixed media.

David Bradley from the Royal College of Art was awarded the Body prize for best fashion fabric. He said he was inspired by the illusion of movement in surface patterns in his use of pleating techniques to distort optical patterns, creating a sense of movement about the body.

Harriet Toogood from the University of Brighton won the Space prize for the best interiors fabric. She used diverse woven fabrics and a variety of everyday materials to create new surface textures.

Chloe Hamblin from Chelsea College of Art and Design won the Colour prize. ‘At the heart of each of my designs I aim to capture the expression of a bird’s flight and variety using the shape, symmetry, tone and pattern found in a bird’s wing,’ she said.

Emma Shipley from the Royal College of Art won the Pattern prize. She told LS:N Global: ‘I love the imbalance of nature and I look at things such as chaos theory where patterns in nature are never symmetrical.’ Shipley is launching a scarf label and her first collection is called Hyper Nature.

For more on 2011 design graduates, see LS:N Global’s reports on the Royal College of Art and New Designers shows.