Urban Stripe

My final major project has drawn inspiration from Brutalist architecture, exploring the structure, shape, and form of the regular, gridded concrete surfaces of the buildings. Inspired by the dull, grey neutral tones from the Brutalist structures with the contrasting brighter, neon pops of colour developed from Bridget Riley’s stripe paintings and Sandra Blow’s collages. The collection focuses on striped and block draft warps, creating a diverse collection of varied scales of striped, checked and block handwoven fabrics. The woven fabrics explore spring/summer qualities of cotton, polyester, linen, monofilament blocks and stripes with the addition of silk painting the warp creating depth, angles, and disrupted check designs. The designs were developed from primary research of London Brutalist buildings, focussing on the scale, rigid structure, negative space which were translated into softer, looser lightweight spring/summer fabrics.