A small token of love, a canvas rectangle, skilfully embroidered with a modest poppy and cornflower, a red, white and blue heart, an ear of corn, positioned around the words ‘To my Dear Wife’, was the starting point for both my dissertation and final collection ‘A Stitch in – Time – Waits for No Man’. a family keepsake sent by my great-grandfather, during his time in a prisoner of war camp in the 1940s. It is a trace of a young man’s life on hold, his love thwarted, where time, a concept at the very heart of fashion, has stood still. Embroidery, seen as quintessentially feminine, A redundant practice in the face of modern industrial production and historically constructed as a tool of heteronormative monitoring – is understood as something that women do and consume but, not men. For me, this piece of cloth has resonance today, as fashion questions our understanding of gender and also the speed of the world around us. Further research into camp life, revealed photographs of inmates filling their time with performances and making costumes from the materials around them. These images and the embroidered samplers have driven the look of the collection, which questions of the aesthetics of menswear, and craft ability to capturing of time. The fabrics all salvaged from duvet covers, pillowcases and curtains, take inspiration from the soldiers’ ingenuity, and challenge the extractive and depleting consequences of fast fashion. These materials, that have already had a life in a home, are reimagined through the slow application of needle work. While the intricate construction folds a moment of masculinity from the past into the present.
