We’re delighted to introduce Select Trail 2018 artist, Helen Foot, who specializes in luxury hand-woven textiles and knitwear.
Foot offers traditional design with a contemporary twist. She loves colour and creating tactile surfaces through playing with textures and expectations. Her designs are inherently stylish and we’re particularly taken by her Festival scarf collection. Each scarf is a cashmere and lambswool mix and offers a subtle selection of colour combinations. Choose from a series inspired by different British towns from Brighton to Glasgow where the original Festival of Britain was celebrated during the 1950s. Seen here is Cheltenham inspired by Cotswold stone and the iconic Cheltenham lido.
Foot’s playful style has been described as ‘Rebellious Nostalgia.’ With a strong sense of colour and a passion for keeping traditional skills alive, Foot creates fabrics in harmony with the loom. From her design studio in rural Herefordshire, she hand-weaves fabric for her growing collections of seasonal scarves. Inspiration is drawn from traditional handcrafts such as patchwork and cross-stitch which she merges with contemporary geometric patterns and bold colour combinations.
In her own words: “Using quality yarns is key, without these it is impossible to create truly beautiful cloth. Colour is also of vital importance. I greatly enjoy the manipulation of colour. I find the balance between bright and murky tones extremely satisfying and will often base palettes on expressive pieces of fine art. And the weaving process does not stop when the cloth has been cut from the loom, I must continue to care, play and manipulate the fabric through the finishing processes as well. But I am more than a weaver, I am a designer. The loom is my toy, a continuous playground for experimentation, idiom and fun.”
To discover more about her designs for Paul Smith and Alexander McQueen go here and to see her on the trail, where she is a Guest Artist of Liz Lippiatt, go here.
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