Sophie Waterfield
Sophie’s no stranger to awards – she’s already grabbed a couple of scholarships, the Umbro Design Award 2011, and had her design for New Era’s iconic baseball cap exhibited across the globe. Bernie Yates, lecturer at Central St Martin’s, reintroduced her to knitting and she’s happily tackling an MA in Knitted Textiles at the RCA. While she mainly works on fine gauge knit machines, the challenge of the Rowan brief caught her imagination. She admits to not having being particularly aware of the issues around natural fibres before the Award but, now she knows what’s at stake, she’s giving it her every support.
“What I really like in knitting is the lack of control. I start creating the
fabric and that then dictates the form of the garment so you don’t really know exactly where you’re going when you start.” Too true – on one occasion, after three days of toil on a fine gauge Dubied machine to produce a complicated fabric for her BA collection, the machine broke, the piece laddered and the whole thing ended up on the floor!
“Britain is one of the main pioneers of knitwear and I want to keep the entire chain of production, from sheep to garment, on home soil.” To achieve that she’s set herself the task of closing the price gap between designer and high street products and producing exceptional quality garments at a price that ordinary people can afford.
Benedict Holmboe
She doesn’t beat about the bush: “Wool is the best material in the world and the natural choice for my projects.”
Born in Norway, Benedicte has travelled a good deal, learning about herself, various cultures and the different ways people live and think about the world. The Rowan Award appealed as a way to work with her favourite fibre and explore the knitting heritage of her native land and Britain at the same time. She didn’t consider each and try to find a happy medium, but took the best from both and just, well, put them together:
“Through all my travels the feeling of belonging to Norway has grown so it felt natural to focus on the
Norwegian heritage as well as British. The right sleeve is an Aran pattern, the left cuff is from a Fair Isle and the body is made up of patterns from different places in Norway. The middle part comes from a valley called Setesdal and the shoulder part is taken from an Islender.”
Benedicte is aware the home production route costs more money but in terms of caring for the climate and ecology has to be the way to go. And her contribution to the future of the industry?
“I will try and decrease the mass consumption mentality of the customer and make clothes that are designed to last for more than one season.”
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