Fashion Design School of Design
Mhairi Reid
I’m a Scottish Fashion Designer with a deep interest in bringing my community into my craft. I’ve been sustainably focused throughout my entire life and it’s driven me to be more resourceful and connected to my designs through my often second hand materials.
This year I focused on my skills in knitwear, particularly crochet, and created designs pushing the famously simple stitch; ‘The Granny Square Stitch’, by playing with gauge and shape. When creating my initial samples, I realised almost all of my yarn was donated or gifted, accidentally, I had already brought my community into this project with me. I kept going with this and now all the colour you’ll see in my crochet is from my loved ones unintentionally helping me with my final pieces <3
During this time I also wrote my 10,000 word dissertation, drawing on my love for sustainability and public transport, on the gender biased design of bus stops. This may seem far fetched but when you look into the politics of spaces and who they priorities, you start to notice the world is exclusively designed for men by men and these little things add up and affect people daily. I hope if you read my piece, you take this new way of thinking and apply it to everything, not just bus stops.
The Granny ‘Square’ – Portfolio Book
In fiber arts (knitting, weaving, embroidery, etc.) there is a strong sense of community, people are always swapping materials, techniques and their time to help teach you. I feel very spoilt when I mention I crochet and people practically dump their yarn and patterns on me to clear up space for them. It created an enormous amount of yarn for me to pick and choose from how I please, and feel as if I’m taking the person who donated it along with me.
I took this idea and turned it into the backbone of my project, and since the material was so spontaneous I controlled it the best I could by limiting the stitch and adding in basics. This lead to me pushing what a normal ‘Granny Square’ could be and allowing me to celebrate this community through my craft of crochet.
The Granny ‘Square’ – Material Book
When creating my collection I wanted to emphasis the link of community to my material, as well as the craziness of colour and texture. Creating this book helped get this idea across in a way that still felt connected to my main portfolio book. It’s filled with the main donors to my project and little descriptions of them and their material.
I always smile reading it, hope you do too
Gender Biased Bus Stop Design
mention of crimes and assault against women statistics in dissertation
My 3rd Year lecturer Eleanor Herring is deeply interested in public furniture, I read her book, listened to her podcasts and caught the bug. She goes deep into how things are designed does affect people in societal ways. And as someone who takes busses a lot (thank you ‘Under 22’s Go Free Act’!) I developed an extreme interest in bus stops in particular.
I can’t tell you why their design fascinates me but it just does, there’s something about designing a place to wait, and picking who gets to be comfortable depending on seat height that I cant get enough off! I hope you take these ideas of analysis into your everyday life after reading this, you might catch yourself making some changes because of it.
