ABOUT

Alex is an award-winning bespoke Hand Embroidery practitioner for fashion, costume and textile art. Originally from the Lake District, Alex made the move to London when she started her training at the Royal School of Needlework. She specializes in the historic and prestigious Goldwork technique to showcase the fine art of embroidery whilst also ensuring the timeless craft is not lost. She has a passion for creating pattern through colour and texture by the updating and reinventing of traditional embroidery skills with the exploration of unconventional materials. She enjoys looking to the past for creative insight and understanding traditions to inform new creations with a contemporary quality.

 

‘Harmony of Shapes’, her current collection, is a series of embroidered golden tiles, designed to create an optical illusion which shimmer and reflect the light, drawing the viewer closer. Inspired by the Byzantine mosaics and colour theory, Alex has explored how the same colour and material can be stitched in different ways to create different textures, shadows and movement. Created by couching with Japanese gold thread and chipping on silk dupion, Alex's work is a modern and vibrant use of traditional and historical Goldwork embroidery techniques.  

 

Alex graduated from the Royal School of Needlework in 2018 with a First-Class BA(Hons) in Hand Embroidery for Fashion, Interiors, Textile Art and subsequently graduated from the University of Leeds with an MSc in Textiles in 2020. Her awards include first place in the Student Textile Art category at the Hand & Lock ‘Prize for Embroidery’ and the Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers’ award for Goldwork Embroidery. Since graduating she has worked for couture brands including Ralph & Russo, Safiyaa and Tamara Ralph. Furthermore, she has also worked with Embroidery Designer Cathryn Avison on costumes for film & TV including productions such as, Disney’s Mulan, HBO’s The Regime and House of the Dragon and Universal Pictures’ Wicked. To date her work has been exhibited in London at the Guildhall Art Gallery, The Goldsmith’s Centre and The Fashion & Textile Museum. As a commitment to her craft Alex joined the Worshipful Company of Gold & Silver Wyre Drawers as a Trade Freeman in 2020; the company aims to support those working with metal wires and encourages the sharing of knowledge and skills.

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