, 2025
Degree Project Collection, supported by RISD Research's SPUR Fund
HIRAETH -- A homesickness for a home you can never return to, a yearning for a place outside of this plane of existence.
I was named after an astronaut. I have always lived on a spaceship - my own heterotopia, intense, incompatible and contradictory to the British society in which I grew up.
Wales - or as the Anglo Saxons called it, “Walhaz” (“Outsider”) has always informed this way of thinking/being/existing, whether I knew it or not. Existing in, and thriving in, the position of the ‘other’ undermines the whole value system of the mainstream; as Stacy Thompson writes in her introduction to Punk Productions: Unfinished Business, “What I find most hopeful about the punk project is its underlying refusal to give up on imagining something other than the world as it is.”
Through this collection, I examine my own entanglement with empire. From my great-grandfather who was a shipwright on the Cardiff docks, repairing the vessels that carried goods, people and power across the seas, to his son who worked for the National Coal Board - unpicking my ancestral past, using my family’s pathways as a gateway, has become a mode of resistance to those so keen to project a unified, glossy history.
This research is put into practice, for example, through my custom prints, which display my scanned research notes, or examine how weave structures once integral to fabric structures like caernarfon or houndstooth become skeuomorphs: commodified and detached from their history. A Welsh national identity centered around these exports – alongside wool, coal, slate, copper – is a Welsh identity constructed around economic compliance to the broader regime of the British empire.
This is a culmination of my sewing practice - a science fictional exploration of the old ways of working: beading, tailoring; horsehair, spiral steel, pad-stitching, screen printing, and so much hand stitching - alongside the new ways: digital printing, injection molding buttons from bottle caps, quilting bike inner tubes together, 3D scanning, greenscreening, datamoshing.
From land to sea to sky, a journey through spacetime begins…
PIRATE SHIRT: a swashbuckling spin on the traditional button down, combined with 18th century welsh bedgowns & regency era shirts. Made in my signature ‘iconoclast’ digitally printed organic cotton with recycled plastic hardware.
SEAFARER TROUSERS: inspired by WWII Navy seamen uniforms - organic cotton, brass jean tack front flap closure, piped front and side seams.
Bending time backwards and forwards - this is a science fictional exploration of the old ways of working.
Stays, but with a twist. Drafted on a curve with techniques from @theschoolofhistoricaldress1 (and worn with a historically accurate rump!) but modernized with recycled plastic button closure, metal eyelets and scrap denim. Paired with a custom dyed & hand silkscreened pirate shirt in yellow/gold colourway.
A breakthrough moment in this collection was discovering the English word “Wales” comes from Anglo-Saxon “Walhaz” - which translated literally means “outsider”.
Plack pirate shirt with subtraction cut skirt in spirit of glyndwr gold tartan courtesy of @walestartancentres - a welsh tartan designed in memory of Owain Glyndwr (c. 1354 - c. 1415), who led a 15 year long revolt with the aim of ending English rule in Wales. Hand gathered with swarovski pearls (thank you @risd_furnituredesign!!), I see this look sashaying off one of Bartholomew Roberts’ ships ⚓️.
Scrap denim handbag made in collaboration with @kentstetson.
Named after an astronaut, I have always lived on a spaceship. my own heterotopia: intense, incompatible and contradictory to larger British society.
Tailored wool coat in spirit of glyndwr gold tartan - featuring hours and hours of pad-stitching, fully canvassed construction, handmade shoulder pads and spray painted buttons. This was one of the most time intensive pieces of the collection and definitely shows my technical expertise reaching a new level.
Paired with space cadet shirt in yellow & gold colourway - fabric hand dyed by me & silkscreened with my research notes from this collection (thank you @curlyheadedred!!)
Hiding underneath: off-black UNSCRAPPED jeans with side opening. Also hand dyed by me - and made from denim waste. An ode to my freshman collection.
Tartan courtesy of @walestartancentres.
New school grunge meets old school silhouettes and glamour…
The many-buttoned swashbuckler dress in in my signature ‘iconoclast’ digitally printed organic cotton - with recycled plastic hardware. This custom print examines how weave structures once integral to fabric structures like caernarfon or houndstooth become iconic skeumorphs: printed onto fabric, they become commodified and detached from their histories - no longer a structure but a surface treatment.
Unexpected, industrial materials combined in traditional ways - looking simultaneously to the past and future.
The inner tube vest!! Made from salvaged bike inner tubes from @rab_providence - I had a lot of fun navigating this new material. Quilted together and then pad-stitched into shape, this waistcoat is the heaviest piece in the collection, with layers of horsehair, batting and scrap stuffing. Fully lined in my iconoclast print with internal welt pockets, with repurposed valves spiking up the shoulders, this waistcoat a perfect encapsulation of the time dilation I was trying to achieve with this collection. Paired on the runway with hand dyed scrap denim jeans with gold detailing.
Historical corsetry exaggerated to a new level…
Architectural corset - with sooo much hand sewing work. Steel inner structure is padded out with cotton fleece, and covered in a layer of off-black poplin. Featuring hand sewn eyelets and front lacing, paired with a draped & gathered pink/black skirt lined with my signature print.
