Hainsworth has teamed up with an exciting new fashion designer to produce a unique one-off garment in honour of Wool Week 2020.
Lee Hurst, who graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA Fashion in 2019, created a striking tailored ladies’ jacket. It features a high collar as well as raw edges inspired by traditional methods Lee uncovered during his research into Victorian tailoring techniques.
Lee worked with a red and black bespoke ‘New Heritage’ jacquard fabric created by Hainsworth in 100% Merino wool. The fabric design is inspired by patterns taken from historic jacquard loom punch cards held at Leeds Industrial Museum, as part of a collaborative project by Hainsworth and Yorkshire Textiles last year.
On display in Future Fashion Factory’s virtual Wool Week showroom, created in partnership with BrandLab Fashion, the jacket can also be viewed online at https://brandlab-fashion.vr-360-tour.com/e/Ne0BdQTKAp8/e
The collaboration is part of an innovative project for Wool Week led by Future Fashion Factory, bringing together emerging fashion designers from the Royal College of Art with Yorkshire mills from Future Fashion Factory’s community of over 250 manufacturers, fashion designers, brands and more.
The Royal College of Art is one of Future Fashion Factory’s three partner universities along with the University of Leeds and University of Huddersfield.
Julie Roberts, Marketing Manager at Hainsworth: “At Hainsworth we love to work with up and coming new designers and Lee is a favourite of ours due to his commitment to the traditional skills of quality tailoring. The combination of the bespoke woollen jacquard with Lee’s flair for tailoring has created a stunning piece for Wool Week, and we truly cannot wait to see how his career develops.”
Suzy Shepherd, Co-Director of Future Fashion Factory, said: “The dramatic clean lines of Lee’s jacket show superb tailoring skills, accentuated by the high-impact of the black and red jacquard weave. Forging relationships across design and manufacturing is crucial to support the creative process and is at the heart of Future Fashion Factory’s mission. I am delighted to see AW Hainsworth with such a talented designer as Lee Hurst.”
Future Fashion Factory is part of the Creative Industries Clusters Programme, an £80 million initiative led by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The Programme is led by the University of Leeds in partnership with the University of Huddersfield and Royal College of Art.
